There is, as there so often is, a clip doing the rounds on social media, you may have seen it. It's from the BBC's irksome Question Time and in it a bearded chap berates Labour's Richard Burgon over the party's manifesto. Labour have promised a whole bunch of stuff, and they're proposing to pay for it, in part, by raising taxes for those in the top 5% of earners. They're not aiming at the taxing the top 5% he says, angrily and pointily, they're going to tax ordinary folk, like him, the man with the beard, he's not even in the top 50% he says. He's heard that they're increasing taxes for everyone earning over £80K. He earns over £80K and he's an ordinary working man. It's a disgrace.
He remains hilariously disbelieving when it's pointed out to him that a salary of £80K outs him firmly in the top 5% of wage earners. He can't be. Doctors earn more than him, Solicitors earn more than him. It's an outrage.
Now, leaving aside the fact that this guy clearly missed the whole junior doctor's strike, which was literally about their starting wage being £24,000, and leaving aside the incredulous responses from solicitors and lawyers all earning well under £50K, let alone £80K, and even leaving aside even the massive question of how did somebody this palpably thick get to earn that sort of wage, I mean seriously mate, you were just publicly outwitted by Richard Burgon, I can sort of understand where he's coming from.
Not his outrage, you understand, that, sadly, marks him out as a selfish bell-end, unwilling to see even the slightest dent in his income in order to provide better services for his fellow citizens. No, there's no argument to be had there, the guy's clearly a weapons grade tit. But rather, his incomprehension that he, angry bearded guy, is in the top 5% of earners. That 95% of his fellow citizens earn less than him. It's blowing his mind. It can't be true. There he is, barely scraping by on eighty thou, and that Commie Corbyn wants to take more? Everyone he knows has more than him, he can't be in the top 5%.
That our hapless hero finds himself in this plight is, whilst in no small amount due to his monstrous lack of self-awareness is also, in part, the fault of the game that we all unwittingly play. You know the one. The stuff game. The buy nice stuff and have nice things game. The keep the wheels of commerce turning game. Because dissatisfaction is hard-wired into this game. Sure, you've got nice stuff but it could be nicer. You earn an okay wage but it could be more.
It's this system which has the objectively wealthy looking about them uneasily when talk of tax rises billows nebulously from the news ether. Because whilst they know that they're well off, they don't necessarily feel that well off, as all they have to compare themselves to is their peers. It's a failure of imagination, as much as anything else, which only gets worse the higher up the financial food chain you get.
Never underestimate the human capacity to assume oneself to be on the right side of the argument. Seen from the outside, the ridiculous bonus packets of hedge fund managers, assets traders and investment bankers can seem ludicrous, otherworldly. But ask them whether they think it's reasonable and each one will insist they've earned it, they've had to work hard for it, they've had to sacrifice x, be it family life, time with friends, whatever, there will be a tale of youthful struggle when money was much tighter. The money, as far as they are concerned, is most definitely theirs by right. Even if it is 25 million quid, they've earned it.
You can point out record levels of poverty and inequality, you can invoke food banks, zero hours contracts, uncertain futures, horrific gig economy penalties. You can cite appalling working practices and the systematic torching of worker's rights since the digital revolution until you're blue in the face. In the scorched earth late-stage capitalist landscape in which we find ourselves there are winners and losers, it's not their job to rescue the poor, it's not their fault. The delivery driver didn't have to take that job which fines him a hundred pounds for being ill, that was his choice, he knew what he was getting into.
Here again the problem is one of failure of the capacity for elastic thought, simply put, they can't conceive that they're part of a system. In the soul of each free market capitalist lies the unshakeable certainty that anything they have achieved, it's been their efforts, hence the outrage when Labour comes forward with its hand out. How dare you, I worked for this. It's the politics of envy, they say, it's anti wealth creation. They want everyone to be as poor as each other.
And this is where 80K beard wanker comes in again. I'm sure he doesn't feel that wealthy. I'm sure he's got a mate who's got a better car than him, a bigger house. I'm sure he's got friends whose holidays look better on Instagram than his do, and I'm sure that he's trying like hell to earn more, because that's the race we've all been born into, that's the lie that all of us who were born in the seventies and eighties were fed from birth. Work hard, earn more, buy nicer stuff, show your nicer stuff off, make your friends envious, then they'll buy more stuff.
I'm fairly sure, from the tenor of my writing, that you can deduce where I stand on this, but in the interests of full disclosure I must confess that obviously I, too, am a part of it. I do okay, better than average if you're talking percentiles, but I could stand to earn more, I don't feel well off. But of course, the reason I don't feel well off is because I have peers to compare myself to. Objectively, I am. We own a house, we have savings, pensions, to those with less we must look like we're sitting pretty, but it doesn't feel like that from where I'm sat. It's not a big house. There's a fair whack of mortgage left, I'm going to be working for a long, long time. It gets worse when you have kids, it's a brave parent who is willing to subject their child to schoolyard ridicule by opting out of the console / phone / whatever the fuck bit of plastic in a box they have to have now arms race. I am not that parent (this is not to say that we accede to every request for whatever, and luckily for us our boys aren't the sort to make those requests, but we're hardly ascetic, either).
So whilst I think it would do 80K guy a bit of good to have someone put an arm gently round his shoulders and explain to him why he's an absolute pillock, and possibly have him work a year as an amazon delivery driver, seasonal fruit picker, contract cleaner or Wetherpoons "associate", I don't think it's entirely his fault he's the way that he is. The system has pitted us against each other since the day we were born, and though there was societal and state machinery to mitigate its worst excesses, the erosion of both communities and state regulation since the nineteen eighties has left us without some essential defences against it, reducing us to consumers, worried about having less than our friends. Whilst it's an ideal, seamless state for an economic model, people don't necessarily enter the equation, and it's down to us to figure out ways to opt out of it, because if we continue to play the game, it will continue to devour lives, not necessarily us, you, me, people we know, will probably be fine, but others won't, and if you can't see the fall-out from it, as 80K guy can't, then you're being wilfully blind. It needs to stop.
He remains hilariously disbelieving when it's pointed out to him that a salary of £80K outs him firmly in the top 5% of wage earners. He can't be. Doctors earn more than him, Solicitors earn more than him. It's an outrage.
Now, leaving aside the fact that this guy clearly missed the whole junior doctor's strike, which was literally about their starting wage being £24,000, and leaving aside the incredulous responses from solicitors and lawyers all earning well under £50K, let alone £80K, and even leaving aside even the massive question of how did somebody this palpably thick get to earn that sort of wage, I mean seriously mate, you were just publicly outwitted by Richard Burgon, I can sort of understand where he's coming from.
Not his outrage, you understand, that, sadly, marks him out as a selfish bell-end, unwilling to see even the slightest dent in his income in order to provide better services for his fellow citizens. No, there's no argument to be had there, the guy's clearly a weapons grade tit. But rather, his incomprehension that he, angry bearded guy, is in the top 5% of earners. That 95% of his fellow citizens earn less than him. It's blowing his mind. It can't be true. There he is, barely scraping by on eighty thou, and that Commie Corbyn wants to take more? Everyone he knows has more than him, he can't be in the top 5%.
That our hapless hero finds himself in this plight is, whilst in no small amount due to his monstrous lack of self-awareness is also, in part, the fault of the game that we all unwittingly play. You know the one. The stuff game. The buy nice stuff and have nice things game. The keep the wheels of commerce turning game. Because dissatisfaction is hard-wired into this game. Sure, you've got nice stuff but it could be nicer. You earn an okay wage but it could be more.
It's this system which has the objectively wealthy looking about them uneasily when talk of tax rises billows nebulously from the news ether. Because whilst they know that they're well off, they don't necessarily feel that well off, as all they have to compare themselves to is their peers. It's a failure of imagination, as much as anything else, which only gets worse the higher up the financial food chain you get.
Never underestimate the human capacity to assume oneself to be on the right side of the argument. Seen from the outside, the ridiculous bonus packets of hedge fund managers, assets traders and investment bankers can seem ludicrous, otherworldly. But ask them whether they think it's reasonable and each one will insist they've earned it, they've had to work hard for it, they've had to sacrifice x, be it family life, time with friends, whatever, there will be a tale of youthful struggle when money was much tighter. The money, as far as they are concerned, is most definitely theirs by right. Even if it is 25 million quid, they've earned it.
You can point out record levels of poverty and inequality, you can invoke food banks, zero hours contracts, uncertain futures, horrific gig economy penalties. You can cite appalling working practices and the systematic torching of worker's rights since the digital revolution until you're blue in the face. In the scorched earth late-stage capitalist landscape in which we find ourselves there are winners and losers, it's not their job to rescue the poor, it's not their fault. The delivery driver didn't have to take that job which fines him a hundred pounds for being ill, that was his choice, he knew what he was getting into.
Here again the problem is one of failure of the capacity for elastic thought, simply put, they can't conceive that they're part of a system. In the soul of each free market capitalist lies the unshakeable certainty that anything they have achieved, it's been their efforts, hence the outrage when Labour comes forward with its hand out. How dare you, I worked for this. It's the politics of envy, they say, it's anti wealth creation. They want everyone to be as poor as each other.
And this is where 80K beard wanker comes in again. I'm sure he doesn't feel that wealthy. I'm sure he's got a mate who's got a better car than him, a bigger house. I'm sure he's got friends whose holidays look better on Instagram than his do, and I'm sure that he's trying like hell to earn more, because that's the race we've all been born into, that's the lie that all of us who were born in the seventies and eighties were fed from birth. Work hard, earn more, buy nicer stuff, show your nicer stuff off, make your friends envious, then they'll buy more stuff.
I'm fairly sure, from the tenor of my writing, that you can deduce where I stand on this, but in the interests of full disclosure I must confess that obviously I, too, am a part of it. I do okay, better than average if you're talking percentiles, but I could stand to earn more, I don't feel well off. But of course, the reason I don't feel well off is because I have peers to compare myself to. Objectively, I am. We own a house, we have savings, pensions, to those with less we must look like we're sitting pretty, but it doesn't feel like that from where I'm sat. It's not a big house. There's a fair whack of mortgage left, I'm going to be working for a long, long time. It gets worse when you have kids, it's a brave parent who is willing to subject their child to schoolyard ridicule by opting out of the console / phone / whatever the fuck bit of plastic in a box they have to have now arms race. I am not that parent (this is not to say that we accede to every request for whatever, and luckily for us our boys aren't the sort to make those requests, but we're hardly ascetic, either).
So whilst I think it would do 80K guy a bit of good to have someone put an arm gently round his shoulders and explain to him why he's an absolute pillock, and possibly have him work a year as an amazon delivery driver, seasonal fruit picker, contract cleaner or Wetherpoons "associate", I don't think it's entirely his fault he's the way that he is. The system has pitted us against each other since the day we were born, and though there was societal and state machinery to mitigate its worst excesses, the erosion of both communities and state regulation since the nineteen eighties has left us without some essential defences against it, reducing us to consumers, worried about having less than our friends. Whilst it's an ideal, seamless state for an economic model, people don't necessarily enter the equation, and it's down to us to figure out ways to opt out of it, because if we continue to play the game, it will continue to devour lives, not necessarily us, you, me, people we know, will probably be fine, but others won't, and if you can't see the fall-out from it, as 80K guy can't, then you're being wilfully blind. It needs to stop.
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