In my search for a new Sunday paper to read, this week I tried the Independent on Sunday (the "Indie on Sunday"). Their top story focused on the proposals made by members of the public for reducing the government's deficit.
The list contained a mix of the obviously sensible and the not so - however, in all of it the thread that doesn't appear to be present is that relating to consequence.
Consumption by its very nature requires production, transportation, marketing and selling. To each of those there are jobs and additional consumption, production, etc.
By suddenly removing the consumption of the public sector - are we not in danger of creating a very painful rod for ourselves (and others) further down the line? For example: one of the ideas is "to plant more herbaceous plants and stop planting pansies". I am actually in partial favour of the idea of stopping mass plantings of annuals in municipal planting schemes - but for environmental rather than economic reasons. However, my reasons aside, what happens if every local authority stops planting annuals in its parks and town / city improvement schemes?
The seed merchants go broke first of all; followed by the nurserymen and there's the consequent unemployment of their seasonal workers (ie people at the bottom end of the skills and income scales). The truckers / delivery people are next as there is no longer anything to deliver. The councils will cut back on their gardeners / horticultural operatives (not really a big saving there as they are all on minimum wages).
The city managers / Town Clerks will of course still stay put - but instead of overseeing a pleasant town centre, will be watching the grass grow longer between cuts, the shrub beds choke on bindweed and litter. More and more people will grow more dissatisfied with venturing into the centre on account of the physical state of it, and the numbers of unemployed, semi-skilled people sitting around either begging or drinking the last drops of their unemployment benefit cheques.
I'm thinking of replacing my six-year old car. I've four years left (maybe less!) until I retire - so it makes sense to buy one now to see out my days of employment. However, the new mood sweeping the country suggests that this is not such a good idea. Despite the appalling lack of interest being paid - I am actually being encouraged to save; to stop spending; to join in the new hobby of seeing how little we can spend.
So like a cancer, the discontent and economic decline spreads; government department savings become the necessary source, not of investment or services, but of benefit payments to those unemployed by the austerity programme.
To avert a pensions crisis, the age of retirement is being moved back steadily. The effect will be to increase the number of grey haired, slower moving / thinking people such as myself and a decrease in the snappier / sharper young people leaving schools, colleges and universities. Mrs Thatcher and her colleagues did away with the manufacturing sector in Britain, in favour of a service economy being fed, clothed, financed, and powered by cheap resources and labour abroad; we are likely to now see more and more young people queuing for fewer and fewer "service" jobs that, ironically, fewer and fewer people can afford, or will want, to spend their money on anyway. Yes we do need people with experience to run our services - but not at the cost of ensuring the generations following us are able to also gain experience of their own.
Bored, young people with limited skills and plenty of free time at their disposal are an absolute feeding ground for those already aggrieved or feeling dispossessed to proselytize their extremist, often fundamentalist, positions on the politics of the community and eventually the state. We are potentially about to unleash a dark age the likes of which our generation has never seen. It was no accident that Hitler came to power on the back of an economic recession and political disasters and discontent that arose from the treaty terms forced upon Germany at the conclusion of the First World War.
The banking sector was bailed out despite having been the major cause of the recent recession. It's future was seen as being critical to our economy. The banks have responded to their rescue by the tax payers (who are ironically about to face their own economic ruin as a consequence) by shoring up their reserves and screwing down on investment by the private sector. The ugly faces of international capitalism (bankers' bonuses and extortionate fees) are going to figure highly in my vision of the impending apocalpse.
Governments, not banks, have the ultimate control of our economies. It is time politicians sat up and took stock of the real situation. I am not proposing spending more than we have in our coffers. I am suggesting a sensible Government spending and borrowing programme that reduces excess, removes profligacy and through a programme of investment in the capital infrastructure of the country, spends its way out of recession. Adding, as at present, to a burgeoning population of young, unemployed people, will be disasterous.