Pessimism or optimism; what’s your bag? At times it feels like a terrible world. The planet burns and the poor get poorer and nothing it seems can be done. The frustration is in the gap between what is needed and could be done and what actually is done. Change is needed, desperately; lots of people want change but our political class have become too timid. Too many people still want to shop.
But then things happen, they always do. The first black man get elected in the USA, a political revolution takes place in Japan, the Chair of the Financial Services Authority calls for a tax on the speculative activity in the City, the moderate Labour backbencher Paddy Tipping calls for a maximum wage and President Sarkozy calls for a general well being index to replace GDP as the indicator of governmental success. The last three ideas have been knocking around the fringes of politics for years. All of a sudden they are ideas that are in or near the mainstream. What was impossible suddenly seems at least possible.
That is the problem with the possible, it’s just round the corner and we can see it until its there. That’s why we have to keep looking, pushing and struggling for a better world. It’s nearer than we think.
Just been looking at the French TV news. Some chap harping on about the need for more growth (ie more consumer spending and shopping). It’s not hard to understand. The French have just budgeted for next year a deficit of €240bn. They have budgeted a deficit every year for the last 30 years, apparently. One day someone is going to have to pay for it, so they need more growth to do so. Or they could just throw all the state employees out of work – a huge amount of people. There are no easy answers in this economic paradigm.
Sarkozy may be with the zeitgeist, but he’s got an economy to run – that’s what they elected him to do. If he doesn’t, it’s bye-bye.
Its why we all have to get off the treadmill together. No person or even country can do it alone. But it might take an enviromental disater to make it happen.
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