Cut the Complaining

	Subscribe
	Follow

Cut the Complaining
It's just an opinion, don't shoot me.
09/08/11

Imagine you are in debt (you might not have to imagine this). Imagine you earned 20,000 per year, but you regularly spent 25,000 per year. You would have to borrow an additional 5000 per year from someone to support your lifestyle. Every time you borrowed more money, the amount you owed would, obviously increase. Your repayments would be higher, and the overall amount of interest you were paying would go up too. How long could you support this lifestyle before the only company willing to lend you money would be Wonga.com, at a whopping APR of 4214 percent. How long until even Wonga.com decide you represent too great a borrowing risk?
Soon you would have to consider these options:
a) increase your income
b) reduce your outgoings

Perhaps you can scratch together a few pounds from people who owe you money, and perhaps you can turn to your employer and simply demand more money (but bear in mind your employer will expect to see an increase in productivity in exchange). For a time, at least, you might think borrowing more and reinvesting would be a good way to see some additional returns to increase your income. But who will lend to you when, having provided a detailed account of how much you're earning and spending, it becomes apparent that you are utterly insolvent?

Sooner or later you will have to turn to option b), and cut down on what you're spending. The problem is, everything you spend money on seems necessary. That's when you have to cut right through it and separate things that are truly essential from things that are highly desirable. Then you'll have to go down the 'necessary' list and see which things you can save money on. Could these things be obtained more cheaply?

I am, of course, drawing a vastly intellectual analagy with the UK's deficit and spending cuts scenario.

There is not a shadow of a doubt that any government coming in after the last election would have had to make massive spending cuts. It was required of us by our lenders, upon whom we utterly depend. Similarly the most recent bail out package for Greece would not have been granted if the government had not approved severe austerity measures, and finally the USA has come to the same realisation and tried to appease its lenders by offering to reduce spending. During the tenure of the most recent Labour government, spending on public services was dramatically increased, and this was all funded on borrowed money. Simultaniously, little was done to help businesses and employers, or encourage growth over those years, as Labour instead preferred to get bogged down by detail and red tape, increasing time-wasting and costs for businesses.

No politician could honestly claim that cuts are not necessary, and in the bold and massive swathe of cuts we have endured, nearly everyone has lost out in some way or another. Benefits of all kinds are being reduced and simplified, and public spending is being dramatically reduced, resulting in the loss of many public services we have enjoyed, and in the loss of many public sector jobs. Reforms to make the NHS run more efficiently have been drafted and re-drafted, and every element of government spending has been examined.

David Cameron has been largely ridiculed and reviled for his 'Big Society' idea, where individuals themselves are invited to get involved with their local community and set up services to replace some of those that are being lost. Apparently we have become so dependent on the state for every little thing that the idea of assisting with providing those services on our own time as part of a community effort is absolutely repulsive to us.

I don't consider myself to be particularly right-wing in my views, and generally I am open to sensible arguments on any subject, but here's what I'm sick of hearing:

1. Anything to do with banks or bonuses for bankers - banking is one of our major sources of income in this country, if we can't afford the best bankers we will lose our reputation as one of the biggest players in the banking industry. UK bankers are not solely responsible for the global recession which anyone could have seen coming from a mile off.

2. Anything to do with tax avoidance - the tax system is extremely complicated, and sadly it has legal loopholes which of course some people are going to exploit. I invite anyone who has a problem with legal tax avoidance to comprehensively re-write the tax laws to fix any and all potential problems.

Back to my analagy - when you are spending more than you earn, you have to try to increase what you earn (in this case the main way would be to increase everyone's taxes which would not be very popular), or to reduce spending and ask the people to whom the services being cut are particularly important to contribute a little of their own time and effort to keep them going. This is actually a valuable thing - how are we supposed to have any respect for our fellow man if we only have eyes for the teat of the state at which we suckle?

However it would seem that the 'big society' is to be laughed at. The indulgent parent that was the last Labour government has created a vast sense of entitlement that causes people to expect to be spoon fed public services. After a long period under Labour, inevitably the responsible parent has to step in and say 'enough is enough, mummy and daddy would have to take out a new bank loan to buy you everything you want, and sadly it turns out our credit is not that good'. We have been spoiled at our own expense, and, apparently, are refusing to accept the consequences.

Follow Dermot (MrsNicolaRain) on Twitter

Comment on This Article Your comment will be added automatically once you click on submit.
Your name:
Comment:
Overall Rating out of Five: ZeroOneTwoThreeFourFive