The Sunday Ishmael 24/07/2022

Learn Economics with mrs ishmael, rishi and liz

 

Now, this is an apple. It is a real thing. It has intrinsic value. Daddy Apple Tree sent his pollen by express bumble bee to Mummy Apple Tree, who grew seeds

seeds in their apple pentagram

and wrapped them in a package of apple-iness, designed to tantalise passers-by into eating all that apple-y goodness and distributing the seeds so that new apple trees can grow.

This isn't. A real thing.

They used to be called promissory notes because they bore the legend "I promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum of £10."£10 of gold money, as opposed to a note. These Scottish notes don't have that promise, because there isn't any gold. Gordon Brown got rid of it. What about this, then? Isn't this real?

Nope - the big brown ones are made out of copper covered steel, the silver ones cupro nickel, the gold ones brass and nickel - money has no intrinsic value - just ascribed value. It is a concept - an idea that we keep in the bank. We exchange our labour for the money-idea, and, if we live in a society with a social conscience, we pool some of our idea-money to give to our fellow citizens who are unable to exchange their labour for idea-money.

Fred has two apples. He keeps one and sells the other. He thinks he might get 30 pence for it, to buy a piece of cheese he's seen at 25 pence. Rognvald offers him 30 pence, but Doris offers him 40 pence, whereupon Rognvald ups his offer to 80 pence. Doris doesn't have that sort of money, so she asks her employer for a pay rise and comes back with an offer of £1.00. Rognvald goes to his employer for a pay rise and then offers  £1.20. Meanwhile, the seller of the cheese now wants £2.00, so Fred needs to secure £2.10 for the apple.

This is called Inflation. Fewer goods than money. There are several things that the folk with their hands on the levers of the Economy can do to control the situation and restore confidence in the idea that  money can buy stuff.

1.   Fix the price of stuff
2.   Fix the price of wages
3.   Reduce taxation so that people  have more money to buy stuff, thus stimulating the people that make stuff into making more stuff, so that there's more stuff than money.
4.  Increase taxation, so that people can't afford to buy anything with their money and close your ears to cry from the street - after all, if they want to eat they should marry a billionaire wife with non-dom status.
5. Ignore it all and let the Bank of England sort it out. And say, look, it's not my fault.
   
6. Print more money - after all, it's only an idea - and give everybody a wheelbarrow to transport their cash to buy a loaf of bread.

All of the above have been tried. And failed. Essentially, nobody knows very much about how to control these periodic shudderings in the EconomyStupid. Doesn't stop them pretending that they do, though. 

The only significant difference between the two aspirants to the top job is their position on the Economy. Liz Truss, her degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economy from Merton College, Oxford and Rishi Sunak, his degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economy from Lincoln College, Oxford, are pretty much peas in a pod in all other areas of policy - although they clearly hate each other. Both are Conservatives, although Liz started out a Lib Dem; both are Brexiteers, although Liz started out a Remainer; both think sending illegal migrants to Rwanda is a jolly good idea and both support the proxy war against Russia. Both are unpardonably ugly. But on the Economy Rishi snarls that Liz is peddling fairy tales. 

Having presided over the Magic Money Tree during Lockdown, printing money to stop people going to work and making stuff, he now wants to tax it all back, presumably to burn it and reduce the money supply so that people can't force up the price of apples. Swallow the bitter medicine today and have jam tomorrow. The fairy-tale that Liz is peddling, though, is that the Covid-debt is ignored, the National Insurance hike is cancelled and corporation tax is reduced in order to stimulate the making of stuff so that we have as much stuff as money. This is fairly Keynesian: a theory that says that government should increase demand to boost growth because  consumer demand is the primary driving force in an economy. The Conservative membership is very likely to reject Rishi's idea in favour of Liz's jam today and jam tomorrow.

Although this piddling about with economic theory is their chosen battle ground, the real battle ground continues to be in Eastern Europe and the absence of stuff is a consequence of imposing sanctions against Russia as the UK cut off its nose to spite its face and Russia merrily responded by cutting off our ears.

The problem with having Tank Girl Truss as P.M. has nothing to do with her economic model, but everything to do with the aggression she displayed towards Russia as Foreign Secretary. The Russian Ambassador designated her as the "belligerent Mrs. Truss"  and Putin put his nuclear forces on alert in response to her nastiness. She is unlikely to dial down the UK's involvement in this proxy war against Russia - an involvement consequent upon Boris' need to maintain his popularity at home by distracting from his peccadilloes and misdemeanours with tripettes to Ukraine and telephone calls to Volody.The i-paper analysed Bo-Jo's announcements of phone conversations with Zelensky and found that they aligned with crises in his own political career last month. Downing Street rejected this claim as ludicrous and categorically untrue, despite which the calls continued. Just after the Commons was told that Boris had "not immediately recalled" being warned about Bum Pincher's behaviour and just before his Health Secretary and Chancellor jumped off ship,  Downing Street announced that "the prime minister spoke to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky this morning to update on progress and discussions held at G7 and Nato last week." What were they talking about? The Eurovision Song Contest and how Boris would support Ukraine hosting it.

Will future generations remember the Russian/Ukrainian conflict as The War of Boris' Reputation? 

................................................................

Let us enjoy the flowers whilst we can:

Rosa Rugosa

double geranium

Poppies and borage

yellow loosestrife and cultivated thistles.

These flower portraits were taken in the Firth Community Garden in Finstown last week, on a cool, damp Orkney morning whilst temperatures in England were in the 30 to 40 degree range and California was burning.

Here's mr ishmael on matters of the economy. Don't think he'd be very distressed by California Burning. 

 

How to Fool Yourself Into Wealth - 19th January 2017.

Far as I know, you can't adjectivise a verb; a verb needs an adverb - it should be Think: different or Think differently.
Think different is shit.

I go to sleep at night - when I go to sleep at all - worrying about a  chap in  a TeeVee commercial.  He's not very bright and he has a demanding daughter, you know the type,  the country's plagued with the little bastards, gotta have a gap year,  le grand tour de nos jours, before she goes to Uni. 

 If I was Seckaterry of State for Education I would ban this practice; if you need a year's holiday after meaningless A levels and before you start a degree then you're not up to it, most of them aren't up to it, anyway, after Blair's Uni Revolution, few graduates can frame a sentence;  I'd say to GapYearBrats,  you've got a place, take it up and work like Hell or fuck off and get a proper job,  even if you're taking out a loan it costs taxpayer money to maintain higher education; if you'd rather be on holiday then fuck off, learn a trade and do something useful, you can't just interrupt the study mechanism, go fucking and drinking around the world and then carry-on studying as though nothing had happened, besides, your life is a fucking holiday, you don't need another one, you cheeky fucking bastard.

 It is no wonder that employers are all a-whine about graduates hardly being able to spell their own increasingly preposterous names, now that they, by virtue of their undergraduacy consider themselves entitlementistas. 
But I suppose the gap-year brat is just an extension of Thatcher's property-owning democracy bollocks, in which people shackle themselves to a tiny, rudely built and unimaginably over-valued house, one they can only afford by both of them working their arses off, and then when it's paid for, selling it to pay for social care - to be bullied and abused, pinched and prodded, wrongly medicated and left in piss-soaked bedding by very welcome, culturally enhancing and totally necessary Polish immigrants, without whom we simply cannot do, the fucking horrible bastards, smirking that they've come here to make better life, no; and so everybody bend over or get out of their way. Why don't they stay and make better life in fucking Poland, eh? Why not make Poland better place. Making better place was what Britons did, after the Hitler war, fought on behalf of Poles and French and Dutch and countless others, all now berating Brits for their temerity in wanting to leave Greater Germany. 
Scottish catering is full of them, Poles, and everywhere you go in hotels and restaurants there're little saucers with pound coins in them, so's we can help these horrible fuckers make better life by giving them free money, as well as free health care and education. Oh, but mr ishmael, they work so hard. No, they fucking don't, they just say they do; they can't even speak English most of them, and they make that your fault, you should learn Polish to help Magda make better life. I knew a Magda, in social care, she was a liar, a cheat, an incompetent,  a right monster, hostile, belligerent; a bully, untrainable, every constructive suggestion eschewed as being inspired only by racism - is because I am Pole, that you criticise.

For now, anyway, those like my man in the Apple advert, well,  their half-wit spawn need supporting through their three- or four-year course because, quite rightly, no grants are available for hairdressing and leisure studies, and, in the case of this poor sap, they need supporting on a one-year world  holiday, too. And then  the kids - DoAnyfin'4'Em,Me - need help with the starter-home down-payment, y'know to help them get their foot on the housing gallows. And to drive-up the prices for everyone else.

What Dad does, anyway, is allow himself to be dragged into an Apple store to get his kid some gap-year tech, a sales assistant talks to him for all of about two and a half seconds and he purchases an Apple I-pad Pro, so's his horrid little monster can send all her so-called friends movies of herself, dossing all over the world, and do whatever the fuck else it is you can do with an i-Pad.  It's over nine-hundred quid, this piece of junk, and he just says Oh Yeah, Will This DoYa Love?

We own our house, we own our cars, everything which we own we really own; we have no dependent children and an above-average income but it'd be a long cold day in Hell before I paid a grand for a tablet, even for myself. 
 I already have an i-Pad, one with no apps, and I am continuously receiving billing enquiries, threats to cut me off because I don't use the AppStore.  I really do believe that Apple and Facebook and Twitter are an insidious consumer tyranny, le totalitairianisme consumeriste nouvelle.  That the TeeVee is used to define good parenting as the gifting to non-productive children  of Apple's current model is not only wicked in itself but is a slap in the face - another one - for the majority of parents, who are unable to  spend so extravagantly.

According to HMRC the average UK salary is £28K on which tax of £6K is paid. The average house costs notionally £288K but over a 30-year mortgage will actually cost £630 K, so, assuming  that inflation rises at the same rate as the house repayments, and that the resale value of the house, once paid for, reaches more than the £630K it actually cost - this is the hope upon which house ownership is now built, that howevermuch it cost a house can be sold for more -  we can assume that AppleDad's residential care costs adjusted for that inflation will be about £3k a week, and if he and Mrs AppleMum both need care then the proceeds of their house sale will cover barely two years' residential care, unless, of course, they transfer ownership of the gaff to Little Poppet, which, if they do, should see them jailed, in my IMHO. 

Assuming  longevity for all, apart from Gnasher's Glaswegians, the very best use of one's earnings would be to rent as cheaply as possible and spend any spare money on having nice cars and other sorts of fun because by stepping on the housing gallows you are only saving money with which to pay for dubious care and regular bullyings and mistreatments by people being paid the minimum wage in care homes, whilst obsessing about making better life - the kind run by Mad Mick Fallon, before he became War Minister.  This, of course, is why there are no council homes to speak of and why the property-owning democracy is a myth created to serve private enterprise and discourage workers  from quite rightly going on strike.  The stake of the stakeholder in the property market is actually one to which he is tied.

As well as the abolition of decent, affordable council housing, Junky George Osborne and  That Albino Cunt Johnson made London a money laundry for International Crime; gangsters park their money in over-priced housing stock, forcing unaffordable price rises in  homes formerly occupied by ordinary workers.  This unwelcome trend is now spreading to provincial cities and towns, with the blessings of national government, local mayors and councils, all of whom will be on the take, as usual. 

All our democratic masters are happy, as long as the myth of AppleMan is meat and drink to those poor but Aspiring. 

  Aspirational, it was one of Cameron's favourite words, him, the one with the family money, or some of it, in an offshore tax haven, he loved to describe the voters as Aspirational, meaning poor and stupid, believing  that they, too, can be filthy rich, even though the number of rich people has to be strictly limited, otherwise what's the point of it,  there have to be far more poor people than rich people, otherwise the rich people cease being special and become almost like poor people, only with money, and what would be the point of that? If everyone had lots of money then what would be the point of Lewis Hamilton, people'd think he was a fucking lunatic, he's got loads of money and here he is, risking his life, driving like a nutcase, he could be roasted alive, what's the point of that? And if pretty young women were rich then why would they want to snuggle-up to a suicidal lunatic with a bizarrely  stupid beard, whose greatest thrill is squirting champagne over other suicidal lunatics, only not as suicidal as him, because he's the world's champion suicidal lunatic. And as for Mutant Murray, well, if everyone had money then nobody'd go and watch him, punching himself, having Turette's Syndrome and smashing his racket to pieces, climbing into the crowd and snogging his own mother. And if everyone had money then everytime Prince Brian opened his gob he'd get a fist in it or a boot. Keeps things in proper order, it does, most of us being skint, and only a few of us being minted.

 But Cameron's approval of aspirational  voters is  nothing to do with equality because  an aspiration, by definition, is something in the future, you're never actually going to be rich, you just dream about it, like winning the Lottery.  Aspirationalism  is Cameron's form of the American Dream, in which the citizen is permitted, encouraged, to dream, whilst his masters shit in his face and use his tongue for toilet paper. In that We Shall Overcome nonsense, it is the Shall, that counts, We Shall Overcome, one day, overcoming is an aspiration not a certainty;  aspirationalism is a form of SOMA, whose active properties take away brutal, impoverished reality, for a time, and substitute a waking dream.

If properly aspirational all you gotta do is not rock the boat, live in a house you don't own, even though you pay for it two or three times over;  drive a car you don't own and borrow the petrol money at 28% per annum, if you're lucky; accept that your bosses, who don't actually do anything other than fuck things up, require substantial payrises and that you,  actually, because of things you don't understand, must work for less and less each year;  that way you can be properly aspirational, aspiring to get into even more debt so that you are  able to raise useless, ineducable children and buy them expensive and unnecessary love tokens, on borrowed money,  just like my man in the Apple ad.  And better still,  Apple, like all successful initiatives,  is, as a matter of principle, fully committed to not paying any UK tax on its sales of the Apple Dream. What could be better than borrowing money in order to support an industry which doesn't help pay for schools and hospitals?

You only have to Google "Average Incomes" to discover armies of Mrs Askey's, what is it, JAMs, those JustAboutManaging. 

 These aren't the couples doing half a dozen disgraceful zero-hours minimum wage jobs in which we, the taxpayers, support the robbing-bastard employers with tax credits, so's they don't have to waste money on proper wages;  these JAMs are married couples, both with expensive-sounding job titles - systems analysts and senior sales executives - earning between them about £50K and once they've paid mortgage, child care, grocery, credit card and car costs they haven't got a pot to piss in, never mind a grand to spend on a kid's tablet.  Neither the abused zero-hours workers or the twin careerists can afford such a thing, although the Apple advert would  make you think it was just perfectly natural, a casual purchase.

From 2001-2016 average wages have risen by less than 3% whilst the costs of housing, food, fuel and energy have rocketed. During that same period MPs have weathered the exposure of their expenses crime spree and still managed to increase the own wages by 30%.  
MPs still manage the impudence of second and third jobs, Michael Spit, MP, this week, working-away for Mr Murdoch, interviewing Donald Trump, and writing for the Times regularly;

The MP for Surrey Heath attends to his constituents' interests

 his must be a blessed constituency, enabling him to let it care for itself, while he earns a crust, an activity made cruelly necessary, by him only being on £80k, plus food, clothing, IT, postage, travel, housing, bungs, bribes and freebies, the cheeky cunt.

 Despite massive and unprecedented rises in the costs of  living, despite static or falling incomes, zero return on savings  and soaring personal debt we allow ourselves to be persuaded that inflation is running at between one and two per cent when effectively it is ten or twenty times that; just as we allow Apple to persuade us that their devices, produced by slave labour in China, are simply essential to the proper development of our precious consumer children.

The reality - rather than the aspiration - is that a proper society would hound the Apple trash-people into the Thames and burn their bright, shiny shops to the ground. As it is, the Apple adverts will continue to taunt those outside the charmed circle of discretionary, disposable income, whilst its owners will continue to brazenly evade lawful taxation to which the rest of us are compelled by fear of imprisonment.  
Stop me if I've mentioned this before but Apple founder and whiz-kid,  Steve Jobs, was a pathetic Bob Dylan freak,

  he could  never get near Bob but when a chance came up to date his fellow-Californian, Joan Baez - 

Dylan's cruelly humiliated former lover -  
Stevie jumped at the chance. 
Weird, really, but then he was.

One day billionaire Stevie said,
 Hey, babe, I saw this really cool little French dress,  in a couturier's over in Santa Barbara, wanna take a ride over and have a look? Baez says that she thought what any woman would think in that situation but when she did him a twirl in his recommended garment he said, Yeah, I was right, it does suit you, Joanie,  you really should buy it.
Now, that's what you call Thinking Different.

......................................................................

Richard Thompson: Crawl Back California, 2005

 Now Available

If the above essay has whetted your appetite for more from the originator of Call me Ishmael,  look no further than  Ishmael’s Blues - which is now published, in both paperback and hardback editions; both editions are immediately available from lulu.com.  The paperback is also listed on amazon. Honest Not Invent and Vent Stack, the first two books in the sequence are also available from Lulu and Amazon. If you buy from Amazon, it would be nice if you could give a review on their website.

Ishmaelites wishing to buy a copy from lulu should follow these steps :

 Unless you’ve done this already, please register an account first, at lulu.com. This is advisable because otherwise paypal seems to think it's ok to charge in dollars, and they then apply their own conversion rate, which might put the price up slightly for a UK buyer. Once the new account is set up, follow one of the links below (to either paperback or hardback) or type "Ishmael’s Blues" into the Lulu Bookstore search box.  Click on the “show explicit content” tab, give the age verification box a date of birth such as 1 January 1960, and proceed. 

The book’s full title is "Ishmael’s Blues – further Chronicles of Ruin", and the cover you'll see is red with white titles and a picture of blogdog Buster retiring from the fray, cat gloating from a safe distance. The cover is the same for both editions.

Link for Hardcover :  https://tinyurl.com/je7nddfr

Link for Paperback : https://tinyurl.com/3jurrzux

At checkout, try WELCOME15 in the coupon box, which (for the moment) takes 15% off the price before postage.  If this code has expired by the time you reach this point, try a google search for "Lulu.com voucher code" and see what comes up.  

With the 15% voucher, PB (including delivery to a UK address) should be £16.84; HB £27.04.

 

 

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