Trickle down economics, deficit reduction, austerity, or whatever the next new wonderful wheeze and its stated resolution will be called, when economies again go tits-up. They should simply combine all the terms into one, and call it trickitity. When it's over hose it down re-jiggle and reuse, the next time economies are slammed into a wall.
In 2010 george osborne set a target for the elimination of britain's deficit, its current day-to-day budget if you will. Thanks to the mom & pop enterprises who blew up the economy, radical action had to be taken. Naturally, as they were the majority cause of the financial meltdown, they had to be the most severely penalised by having trillions showered on them, with a firm reminder printed on their foreheads saying "don't do it again." Oh wait, that's just a bit of fiction someone somewhere is thinking of working on, and turning into a film.
The right of centre press managed to pin the blame firmly on labour with enough of the electorate, whose critical thinking skills were lost amongst the fog of alarmist red headlines. The conservatives & liberals (finally with the stick of power in their chubby little paws) told the country that everyone had to dig deep. Dig really, really deep, and do their bit for queen and country. They, with radical agenda, would lead the stalwarts and make all the hard choices - we were in this mess together and we would only arise triumphant by acting with single purpose, together.
It should have been unsurprising that when measures finally made their way into the daylight, the "all, we, together" pact, had transmogrified to impact households that had already been pilloried & vilified in the media. If it was a household with at least one disabled person in tow, then all the better. Their voluntary act of service would be offering themselves to be a part of the first deployed battalions, ready to suck up all those evil fiscal lemons of austerity. Ensuring their unwavering sacrifices would be greatly appreciated and remembered, once the rush of non-exec-with-benefits emails started to arrive during the morning slew of g&t's whilst basking in the french riviera.
If those unfortunates had enough money to buy more than eight tins of dust, well that was one more tin than they'd need for a week; rightly showing their frivolous and wasteful nature. No, it was far better their already bloated waistlines were tightened a bit further, and tightened at least until their bones started cracking.
It took eight years for george osborne's deficit target to be reached. Yet less than a year after for the headline "deficit surges over £7bn in june 2019". But wasn't the entire purpose of the hack and slash austerity to reduce the deficit? Of course not. That was a handy ruse used by the usual suspects, after numerous outlets successfully painted the sick, disabled, and benefit scroungers as being perfect fodder to reduce the involvement of the state; and in time, allow private corporations to begin the process of hovering up all that spare money-tree cash. Which is why the magic money-tree no longer had any, when it came to providing a leg-up for the unfortunates in society.
The idea that every country is just like a household where each penny has to be fully balanced otherwise we would end up looking like that house at the end terrace with its doors hanging off, rubbish covering the garden, and strewn over the fence, the feral cats and dogs biting anything within spitting distance, and the husband flitting off at night to put furious deposits elsewhere. Sorry, my mistake, i'm getting that confused with the johnson house. But that the household, in time of distress, can just print as much money as it wants, or hack and slash as much spare flesh off as they can without rendering themselves unconscious and being air-lifted to an emergency room.
After years of reagen & thatcher trickle down, the conservatives & liberal austerity, then just the conservatives austerity drive, what more proof do whole swathes of the poor (who still vote conservative), non-parachuted handcuffed workers, social & public services users require, that they really just don't like you. They don't like what you represent. They don't like how you dress. They don't like how you eat, walk, nor talk, and when there are colonies in space, you do know which groups they'll be criminalising to send out and do all the grunt work first.
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