What we have forgotten
Ronald Reagan loved to tell little anecdotes and jokes to make a point. One of his best was when he asked the young daughter of a friend of his what she wanted to do when she grew up.
“ I want to be President of the United States”
Reagan nodded and then asked “ And what would your first act be as President?”
“I would give all the homeless people somewhere to live and enough food to eat.” The child’s parents, high up in the Democratic Party, beamed with delight at how well they had brought up their daughter. Reagan was unruffled.
“Well, honey,” he said “ You could make a start. Come over to my house and tidy up the yard and mow the lawn, and I’ll give you $50. Then you can go down to the supermarket where there is always at least one homeless person outside, give him the $50 and you can make a start on your plan.” The child’s parents beamed beatifically. But the child was looking troubled.
“Why doesn’t the homeless man just come to your house and do the job and get the $50?”
“That,” said Reagan, “Makes you a member of the Republican Party.”
The child’s parents, as Reagan tells it, never spoke to him again.
The moral of the story is we have completely lost this idea somewhere along the way. I expect you picked up the horrific figure that Welfare Spending now costs more than the entire sum of Income Tax collected in the UK. In what universe do people not realise that is an impossible and unsustainable statistic. This equates to the little girl in the story giving the $50 she had earned to the homeless person. Why are we handing out billions for people to do nothing? We have completely lost sight of both a work ethic (“I can earn just as much on the Social as by working”) and a responsibility ethic (“I’m not responsible for what happens to me it’s the Government’s responsibility.”) With the present issue on oil and gas, the expectation is that the government will bail us all out again. This is a serious problem that we think will always be solved by the Government throwing money at it – our money by the way, not theirs. There is, of course, a better way to solve this – increase supply. But the insanity of ideology and Net Zero means that won’t happen. As of right now we are importing more than 60% of what we consume in energy. Just wait until France says it won’t export any more electricity and then watch the riots. And as an aside Rachel (“Focussed on growth”) Reeves has stopped the development of yet another 1 billion barrel of North Sea oil and gas. Wonderful.
I truly despair of where the UK is heading. The biggest sin the present government has committed is upping the pay and lack of productivity of millions. The problem here is once given it can’t be taken away. And believe me, there is a desperate need for some of the largesse to be taken away before there is an almighty juddering, crashing, halt. We are spending £111billion this year simply on interest on our debt. We spend less than 42% of that on education – on EDUCATION for God’s sake - and around 55% of it on defence. What lunatics think this is a good idea? We have mismanaged things to such an extent that student debt is around the same amount as we spend yearly on debt interest. But that figure alone is only achieved (if that is the right word) because of the huge increase from Tony Blair’s day in students which has ruined our best universities and beggared several generations of students. Thankfully, today’s students are not as gullible as those of previous generations and are wary of getting into debt for no discernible benefit. Numbers are consequently falling. Currently standing at 2.86 million or thereby, compare that to around 200,000 or so in the late 1960s when a university degree pretty much guaranteed a job for life at a better than average salary. Sadly, that is no longer the case. In those days academic excellence in UK universities put us at the top of world rankings and was unchallenged. Oxford still retains the top spot overall but it’s teaching, research environment and quality of research are no longer there. Cambridge still clings to third equal place (shortly to be lost by the look of it) and Imperial is there at number 8 but losing on every category apart from international outlook, which also pulls up both Oxford and Cambridge. I’m not 100% sure that having a good international outlook is a killer category.
Tony Blair said there were three things he was going to concentrate on – Education, Education, Education. I for one applauded this approach and am all the more disappointed that it has not come to pass. It does seem the Labour Party likes to have something to focus on and then never deliver as the present mantra of being focussed on growth shows. If anything they are focussed on negative growth.
Instead of looking at countries where Adam Smith’s writings have been enacted, we in the UK look inwards and praise those countries which deliberately restrict growth in the search for ever more State interference. I would suggest that all politicians in the UK should be sent on a fact-finding mission to Argentina. Only two years into his tenure, Millei has managed to reduce absolute poverty in the country from 53 % to 28%. How has he done it? Basically by preventing politicians and civil servants from getting in the way of the free market. At least half our politicians are against the idea of not interfereing. The real point here is that pre-Millei, the general populace was so fed up both with politicians and the statist approach that they were prepared to suffer what was needed under Millei – even giving him an increased mandate. Going back a bit, the same applied to Sweden where an all-party approach finally saved their system. An all-party approach is probably impossible in the UK as there are virtually no points of similarity to build on. It looks to me as if the current momentum will soon push Argentina further up the world economic ladder. It suffered years of stagnation and falling AND failing economic activity until Milei’s accession to power. Now, firmly ensconced behind Mexico and Brazil as number 3 in South America, it’s worth mentioning that Argentina’s 46 million population compares to Brazil’s approximately 213million and Mexico’s 132million. It’s GDP per person is growing at a faster pace now than either of these heavyweights, and is in fact behind only Mexico. Brazil’s large population weighs heavily on its GDP per person.
So let’s try to get people working and not being given handouts. This has all kinds of benefits. Lower government payouts to the unemployed. Increased tax-take from more workers. Increased GDP. And GROWTH to start paying properly for all the things we have lumbered ourselves with.
