bard

2. "The system works", or "We deserve this"

We don't. The system doesn't work. So how do they get away with this lie?

By rigging the definitions. It's a very simple lie, one of the biggest around, which relies on confirmation bias. We have good, strong, emotional reasons for wanting to believe this lie.

We wanted to believe that something, our hard work, our ingenuity, our religion, our skin colour, whatever, meant we deserved the unprecedented affluence of our society. We wanted it so much that we were prepared to shoot a whole bunch of people in order to retain our illusions. During the magic thirty years, we wanted to believe that it was right and proper that our kids should have more than we did. We also wanted to believe that our kids deserved to have more than anyone else's kids. One of the most successful marketing campaigns of all time? "Because you're worth it!"

Of course we wanted to believe that. So let's move on to how the lie was sold.

The core of this lie is the concept of 'trickle-down' economics. It was a very clever marketing concept which translates as: "If we let the richest 1% of our population become a new class of Robber Barons by leveraging our tax-payer funded infrastructure and military, they'll spend enough cash here at home that we'll see some of it in our own pockets." This can only be good for us if the slice of pie they're eating is so damn big that even the crumbs are more wealth than we, the 99%, have got right now. And hey look; it is. The trickle down is meaningless when the Niagara is falling up.

So we supported the wars. We voted for people who were going to strip-mine our pubicly funded infrastructure, who were going to pull up the ladder behind themselves as they climbed it. We voted for policies which put entire generations in some communities out of work. Joblessness and ill-education are now so embedded in some places that people have been out of work longer than you've been alive. Really, actually, longer than you've been alive.

The system only 'works' if we accept the idea that a 'working system' is one in which the rich get steadily richer and the poor get steadily poorer; because that's what's been happening since 1970. Wait up, you say, how about the Internet? What about the big-screen TVs and the designer jeans? Don't we all have mobile phones now?

That's how they sold us the lie. Misdirection; bread and circuses. No-one wanted to hear that we'd stopped spreading wealth around two generations ago. No-one wanted to know that the crumbs of affluence we received were not being earned by us, they were being earned by the people who grow your coffee and sew your trainers together. Because that would have meant we didn't deserve the big-screen TVs and the PS3s. But we're worth it. Right? No.

No we're not, because the only way the illusion of affluence could be maintained was by conning people into borrowing money they could never possibly have afforded. They talked us into selling ourselves down the river to pay for the distractions they needed us to buy. The 1% make money when stocks rise, and they also make money when stocks fall. We could never afford the loans they gave us, because we only earn when we work, and a labour surplus is good for their pockets. Hey, look what we've got now...

Everyone in this country consumes at a rate which, if our lifestyle were expanded to cover the people who earn it for us, would require four whole planets like this one to maintain. Call that Earth 4.0. The Americans consume at Earth 8.0 levels. The rest of the world pays for that.

The system can only be said to work if you define a working system as one which funnels money from people who make things to people who own things. So again I ask you; cui bono? The answer is in two parts. Firstly; you do. You benefit because you happen to have been born in the richest place on earth, standing on the wealth earned by others and protected by force. But the second part is; not you. Because the people who are really winning this game are the top 1%, and you will never be one of them. We're talking about Rupert Murdoch; we're talking about David Cameron; we're talking about Richard Branson, here. Not you.