Boo, Capitalism, Boo!!

Yet another painful brain-turd from Comment is Free. This time having a go at the biggest evil of all: capitalists. So let's have a look...

By far the most significant consequence of "selfish capitalism" (Thatch/Blatcherism) has been a startling increase in the incidence of mental illness in both children and adults since the 1970s. As I report in my book, The Selfish Capitalist - Origins of Affluenza, World Health Organisation and nationally representative studies in the United States, Britain and Australia, reveal that it almost doubled between the early 80s and the turn of the century. These increases are very unlikely to be due to greater preparedness to acknowledge distress - the psychobabbling therapy culture was already established.

Nice of him to get in a plug for his book, and also to quote his sources.

Add to this the astonishing fact that citizens of Selfish Capitalist, English-speaking nations (which tend to be one and the same) are twice as likely to suffer mental illness as those from mainland western Europe, which is largely Unselfish Capitalist in its political economy. An average 23% of Americans, Britons, Australians, New Zealanders and Canadians suffered in the last 12 months, but only 11.5% of Germans, Italians, French, Belgians, Spaniards and Dutch. The message could not be clearer. Selfish Capitalism, much more than genes, is extremely bad for your mental health. But why is it so toxic?

The WHO's mental health pages are here. UK basic stats here. Why is it that Sweden appears to have higher figures on just about every measure than the UK? France doesn't seem to be a picture of happiness and light either. I am not sure where his stats come from but the ones I can find don't seem to match up quite. But then that is the problem with statistics - you can measure the same thing in different ways, read into them pretty much anything you want, and prove anything you want.

Readers of this newspaper will need little reminding that Selfish Capitalism has massively increased the wealth of the wealthy, robbing the average earner to give to the rich. There was no "trickle-down effect" after all.

Give to the rich? I wasn't aware we handed large sums of money to high earners. Oh...he means tax cuts; taking less from the rich and allowing them to keep more of their hard earned money. Oliver also seems to forget the brain drain of the 60's and 70's and the present brain drain which is the "worst in the world", both caused by high-ability people with high earning potential leaving the country in search of higher paid jobs. Cutting taxes for these people has a similar affect, increasing their net income and encouraging them to stay. Thank fuck Thatcher did cut the tax rates for these people or we would be in a seriously terrible state as an economy. The poor would be even poorer, and no doubt this would still be blamed on greedy capitalist pigs!!! As it happens, the poor in Britain have some of the best living standards of poor people inthe world; there's a few billion people around the world who would be more then happy to swap places with the British "poor"!!

The real wage of the average English-speaking person has remained the same - or, in the case of the US, decreased - since the 1970s. By more than halving the taxes of the richest and transferring the burden to the general population, Margaret Thatcher reinstated the rich's capital wealth after three postwar decades in which they had steadily become poorer.

The solution is therefore to strip back government and cut taxes for middle-lower earners then isn't it? Oh no...illogical...does not compute...FUCK OFF!!!

Although I risk you glazing over at these statistics, it's worth remembering that the top 1% of British earners have doubled their share of the national income since 1982, from 6.5% to 13%, FTSE 100 chief executives now earning 133 times more than the average wage (against 20 times in 1980); and under Brown's chancellorship the richest 0.3% nobbled over half of all liquid assets (cash, instantly accessible income), increasing their share by 79% during the last five years.

And this is a problem why? So long as these people achieved their success by honest means then where is the issue? Is Oliver perhaps concerned because everybody is not equal? Tough shit, that's life. Aren't we lucky these people are in Britain generating wealth, and not in another country? If they were elsewhere we might look more equal as a society but we would be materially worse off. Who wins exactly?

In itself, this economic inequality does not cause mental illness. WHO studies show that some very inequitable developing nations, like Nigeria and China, also have the lowest prevalence of mental illness. Furthermore, inequity may be much greater in the English-speaking world today, but it is far less than it was at the end of the 19th century. While we have no way of knowing for sure, it is very possible that mental illness was nowhere near as widespread in, for instance, the US or Britain of that time.

Aha. So here we really get to the crux of it. He is saying that capitalism is to blame, and yet the unbridled free market of the 19th century was far less equal than today. Further, inequality cannot be blamed for the increase in mental health cases as it has remained pretty constant for over 3 decades as the table below shows...

What does the damage is the combination of inequality with the widespread relative materialism of Affluenza - placing a high value on money, possessions, appearances and fame when you already have enough income to meet your fundamental psychological needs. Survival materialism is healthy. If you need money for medicine or to buy a house, becoming very concerned about getting them does not make you mentally ill.

I contend that it has very little to do with capitalism at all. I am stressed, not because of the pressures of running my business, but because of the oppressive government that looms large above me. Regulation, taxes, erosion of freedoms, nannying, initiatives, programmes, taskforces, ASBOs, CCTV camera proliferation, politicians, incompetence etc, etc, etc. If government was so small as to be virtually imperceptible, I would be free to get on with my life and I would be a great deal happier and far more content than I am now. The state takes 40% of our incomes, and by similar measure thus invades into 40% of our lives, if not far more by the burdensome nature of regulations/licensing etc. Take this intrusion out of my life and I would be far more free.

But Selfish Capitalism stokes up relative materialism: unrealistic aspirations and the expectation that they can be fulfilled. It does so to stimulate consumerism in order to increase profits and promote short-term economic growth. Indeed, I maintain that high levels of mental illness are essential to Selfish Capitalism, because needy, miserable people make greedy consumers and can be more easily suckered into perfectionist, competitive workaholism.

I work about 60-100hrs each week. I have not had a holiday for almost 4 years. I scrape by at present while I divert every extra penny and ounce of energy into my business. Why do I do this? Yes, because I want to earn good money and live a nice life, but money is not what motivates me. I am motivated by achievement. My nightmare is to be a number - born, go to school, get a job, retire, die - and to leave no lasting impact on the world. I want to achieve, I want to prove myself, I want to carve my own path and have something to be proud about at the end of my life.

Money is a measure of achievement and a means to an end. Up to a point extra money improves your lifestyle, but there is only so much you can spend money on. Once you have yachts, cars, houses, islands etc what next. Beyond probably about £50m money becomes a tool. The game is investment. Making money for the sake of money is not actually about the money at all, it is about winning, it is about playing the game. The likes of Branson uses their vast wealth to have fun by playing the business game. It is the excitement and achievement which drives these people, not the money itself.

With overstimulated aspirations and expectations, the entrepreneurial fantasy society fosters the delusion that anyone can be Alan Sugar or Bill Gates, never mind that the actual likelihood of this occurring has diminished since the 1970s. A Briton turning 20 in 1978 was more likely than one doing so in 1990 to achieve upward mobility through education. Nonetheless, in the Big Brother/ It Could Be You society, great swaths of the population believe they can become rich and famous, and that it is highly desirable. This is most damaging of all - the ideology that material affluence is the key to fulfilment and open to anyone willing to work hard enough. If you don't succeed, there is only one person to blame - never mind that it couldn't be clearer that it's the system's fault, not yours.

Well, people who believe earning lots of money will improve their life are absolutely correct. If you are a normal person with income in the thousands, then a few hundred thousand or few million will undoubtedly improve your life. Your path to that money may not do anything to improve your quality of life, but that is no business of anyone else other than the individual concerned.

Depressed or anxious, you work ever harder. Or maybe you collapse and join the sickness benefit queue, leaving it to people shipped in to do the low-paid jobs that society has taught you are too demeaning - let alone the unpaid ones, like looking after children or elderly parents, which are beneath contempt in the Nouveau Labour liturgy.

I believe there are lots of people in jobs who are quite capable of getting better jobs but who don;t bother to actively look or improve their training through inertia. Once you have a job the easy thing to do is nothing, you turn up each day and get paid and it is easy. To go and search for a better job, or to take training courses, or whatever, takes effort. It is ultimately about self-motivation and priorities. When you have bills to pay, mouths to feed, and get stuck in a rut, it is hard to keep your motivation.

There is much tearing of hair across the media and advocacy of nose-pegging on these pages of the "grin and bear it" variety. In fact, there is an alternative. We desperately need - and before long, I predict we will get - a passionate, charismatic, probably female leader who advocates the Unselfish Capitalism of our neighbours. The pitch is simple. Not only would reduced consumerism and greater equality make us more ecologically sustainable, it would halve the prevalence of mental illness within a generation.

No doubt his ideal female leader is Polly Toynbee! And is suspect if such a hypothetical situation occurred, that mental health would not halve within a generation. I just hope we never get a chance to test my prediction.

Of course if that is the life Oliver, or anybody else, wishes to have they are free to do so. A free and libertarian society, even the authoritarian one we have currently, provides for such diversity. Oliver and his friends could follow the Jewish Kibbutz model and set up a commune right here in the UK. Wealth and responsibilities could be shared and they could exist in a micro-socialist bubble. In this way both libertarians and egalitarians, individualists and collectivists, could co-exist quite happily. Unfortunately people of Oliver's ilk are not happy about that, they are hell-bent on forcing the rest of us to follow their model.