Simpleton’s Economics (Economica Simplitica)

Chapter 12 So What should we do?

©GeraldineBanksJuly2024

Today is first the first of July 2024, and the General Election is now just 3 days away and having looked at some of the economic ingredients that add to the mix of the Recipe for Disaster that will be the next 5 years or so economically in Chapters 1 to 11, now is the time to look at what we should do to make the best of a bad job.( so much more honest than saying make Britain Great Again which has been done to death).

Firstly , should you vote, well yes if you are eligible, it’s probably a good idea. When I’m walking down the street or even thinking of how my relatives and friends will vote, I figure out my vote will be cancelled out by someone who votes in the opposite direction to me, however, if I don’t vote then the ones who vote against what I believe won’t be cancelled out by me so therefore I’m deciding to let them win. Sounds a mite defeatist just to let the other side win and wash your hands of this whole democracy thing. Just think of your vote as cancelling out someone you really don’t like, we are after all a cancel culture aren’t we?

I won’t have covered all the things that concern all the people in Britain in my Chapters, but then again the Politicians with their sniping and sniveling haven’t covered very much in the last 6 weeks either. The Public have been carefully fed what they want you to know, rhetoric about stopping boats and Labour’s GB Energy Company who even the Labour Party’s MP’s don’t quite know what it will do or how it will really affect our supply of Energy. Let’s face it who wants to read those boring manifesto’s? Apart from journalists, who will take great pleasure in telling said politicians that they lied three years down the line. Surprise , surprise.

I got to admit I chuckled at the Reform Party having some of their members caught on video calling for our PM to go home to Pakistan, when he’s a thoroughly British product of upper class education and lifestyle and let’s face it despite not having Sky Television as child he has no reason to visit Pakistan except in his role as the top representative of the UK Government. I’m hoping that this will have made right thinking people in the UK choose not to be prejudiced towards skin colour, when you see the irrationality behind such taunting from a party who wants Reform, but what type of Reform?

Getting back to the Economy, well it’s going to be difficult for everyone for the next ten or twenty years. Things that we’ve taken for granted, peace, clean water supply, cars, public transport, healthcare , energy supply and education are all under threat, but threat from what . Lack of investment. This has been going on such a long time that it’s impossible to make up lost ground. It sounds to me that our next Government will be playing everything by ear. Not the best listeners though, apart from at election time and then it’s only superficial.

Despite Liz and Kwasi’s ideas on a quick, supercharged fix, trickle down economy and new global business deals and markets opening up , well that is just pie in the sky. The whole world wants the same thing, everyone wants to maintain or better their standard of living and if you believe that you’ve got to earn money to do this and manufacture and sell goods that people want or aspire to then, everyone will be doing the same thing.

All the resources we need to manufacture these aspirational goods are in areas that are either owned by someone else or are very inaccessible. These are going to get more expensive and their availability will be restricted. So what is the answer recycle and reuse, enjoy the challenge of making something, at the moment you have a choice to do this , but in the future you won’t. We have to learn and understand how to use our resources better .Why not start now and enjoy it.

The Government can live beyond it’s budget but individual’s can’t . The government can borrow both from the Public or from Global Funding and because in essence they are big borrowers, perhaps they can get away with it. The individual can’t , and it’s a double whammy , because if we start reducing our spend then the government also loses income and increases their costs because private sector manufacturing and service industries reduce head count and increase unemployment. A viscous circle

No one, however, is going to keep lending the individual money, if it looks like they can’t pay it back. That is what is going to happen to house buying and therefore house prices. They’ll soften and the landlords with multiple properties and fewer people able to afford their rents will find their assets reducing in value, at a time when repair bills are increasing, and it is harder to sell their properties on.

This is perhaps the biggest worry for a property owning population. Not to mention, the value of the house being used for future medical or care bills. Can governments afford to have all this money locked up in property , I’m not so sure, particularly if they are not been maintained. I expect a few demonstrations with

” Hands off my Assets” placards.

Push marketing is a young persons career, can you imagine where they want to push the old folk. They want what old people have. Me in my 60’s, I can feel the ire that young people feel towards us. Ridiculously , I have to work until I’m 67, I have to work with young people and find it quite funny, they want to succeed but lack confidence and no wonder.

If I was them I’d wonder what the hell I was working for, over the last thirty years working terms and conditions and job quality has been eroded. Even a push marketer is expected to be deskbound for 8 hours a day and knows their future is to be replaced by an AI software programme, once the patterns of consumer behaviour have been established and “human” input is no longer required. My confidence would be knocked too.

In other words the job market has changed for the worse. There will be less people to sell to and the only work that will be available to those of working age are jobs that society needs and inevitably they will be regarded less well and be lowly paid eg. road maintenance, healthcare , customer service.

The skilled jobs, such as lawyers and bankers will probably go the AI way to , after all , it’s the process of reading, assimilating facts , recognising patterns and implementing a plan based on that information. Thus it may well be that the higher level jobs will disappear along with the higher level salaries. I mean Keir Starmer has given up his lawyerly career to become a politician, that’s telling isn’t it?

So the world of work will change significantly and less people will need to be employed. It is then that a universal income plan will need to be introduced , as well as a human right to be suitably housed and have access to suitable leisure facilities. This won’t be just in the UK, it will be throughout the whole World. This is Global Economics or at least Global Aspiration Economics.

Car manufacturing used to play a big role in employment, I’m not so sure that it will in the future. It’s been decimated in the UK, and I suspect , increasingly other manufacturing countries will go the same way. Without putting restrictions on travel, individual car ownership will reduce and people will decide not to travel. I used to think nothing of driving a hundred miles to a beach at the weekend, but now I look at the price of petrol, wear and tear on the car and decide no it’s not worth it.

I certainly won’t ever be able to afford an electric car every five years or so( when the battery reaches it’s end of life.) Replacement batteries are not going to be cheap.

Because I’m old I’ll accept that, but the young won’t, and because of lack of investment there is no good public transport option. Thus , the new government has a dilemma, just how do they sustain an economy based on a combustion engine and with no cost effective replacement for every day working people who have restricted employment opportunities?

The most likely solution is that the combustion engine will be around a lot longer than people think and that there will be good quality second hand market for cars with low emissions and no I think the new Government will find it hard to tax them out of the market, although they may try. I do believe that any government will find it impossible to give working people no options on transport and will override the noise about battery power and the reality of climate change. Yes , get rid of diesel buses, but the truth is modern cars with combustion engines are pretty clean and efficient.

Finally, reduce what you consume you’ll feel better for it .The Global Economy is out of your control, but the big Plans that politicians have, needn’t impact you for the worse. Whoever is voted in must be held account for their decision making, we are a smaller Britain, we have an economy that is teetering on the brink of implosion, a lot of money has been wasted by corruption. Vote with your heart and head and whoever gets in monitor what they do and if they do something you don’t like contact your MP and talk to others about how they feel. Don’t feel that you aren’t part of it and that somehow these Gods in Parliament know more than you do. They don’t. Thank you for reading.