Yesterday the IFS were ‘whining’ again. Information put to
the electorate by the established parties wasn’t comprehensive enough, Really?
You don’t say. The Parties dare not outline the specific ‘pick n mix’ cuts
package just in case but we all know that it’s a question of, ‘austerity or
austerity light,’ as Natalie Bennett of the Greens likes to yelp so often.
However, whilst voters are secure in the knowledge that a first past the post
system will give them at least 30 billion of cuts to public services they are
waking up ‘en masse’ to a growth in inequality.
It is not just the disgruntled paupers, a recent You Gov
poll suggested that 56% of participants would rather see a less wealthy nation
in the round than an unequal one. This is particularly the case for young
people. Last year saw an open letter sent from Nick Hanauer, who was involved in founding more than 30
companies including giants like
Amazon.com, in which he famously said, ‘I
see pitchforks coming.’ ‘I agree with Nick.’
This seems an especially stark comment this morning set against a backdrop of
Baltimore MD, which from what I know about ‘the Wire,’ is more a tale of two
cities divided by wealth than by race.
Yesterday the yearly GDP figures
were released to a Tory tune of, ‘let’s stick with it,’ and a Labour lament of ‘,austerity
isn’t working. Each party political ‘durge’ has its flaw. Sticking with a ‘long
term economic plan that sees a declining result is a tough sell no matter how wistful
one is with the split cane and the whole ‘,austeristy isn’t working’ argument from
Labour come up hard against the fact they signed up to 30 Billion in cuts in
the last parliament. The public are not stupid and as Armando Iannucci
mentioned in his column today, young people especially, are misinterpreted as
being disengaged. They are as he puts it, ‘feeling exasperated’ with a system
that increasingly doesn’t represent them, or at least they do not feel that it
does.
Young people and indeed everyone
else are not concerned with GDP figures or unemployment statistics, they care
about their own subsistence and how this can be improved. As I mentioned in a
previous post and Stanley Johnson kindly corroborated on yesterday’s Daily
Politics, a more representative indicator of the Nation’s average wealth is GDP
per capita, which has fallen. The commonly thrown around economic indicators
like GDP and such, I would imagine fall on deaf ears when most of us feel worse
off than before the crash. This, again is especially true for young people who
have suffered a particular stark fall in GDP per capita due to the rise in
sectors like retail and catering which of course have contributed to the
Coalition’s triumphant fall in overall unemployment.
The accommodation and catering
sector grew by 89,000 jobs in 2013 according to the Office for National
Statistics and for the same year, industries like financial services and
insurance contracted. So there is a real question about employment and what
employment for the future of Britain looks like. The nature of employment seems
to be coming to the fore but when I hear complaints of young people being
disengaged with politics, I have to ask, as I think Armando Iannucci was in his
piece, why would they engage with a system that only works for them when they
are rich? The majority of our nations young will never be rich.
Productivity growth has fallen to
worrying levels according to the New Policy Institute and they state that
behind the employment figures, that the government drool over is a message of
worry. Too many self-employed people simply means a sluggish recovery for household
income, if any. The NPI warn of another looming recession hidden behind the Tories’
long term economic plan and I doubt life will be much nicer under labour for
those at the low end of the payscale. Especially the young, have I mentioned
that?