If you have ever voted, you are probably cynical about politics. But being cynical about politics misses the point. No matter how cynical the public may be about politicians, politicians are just as cynical about the public. They know what buzzwords will get us to respond; they know we don’t really pay attention between elections. They know we vote as much on manager-crafted images as on issues. They know spin-doctoring works. They certainly know we don’t mean what we say. We tell pollsters the environment is important, but politicians know we don't mean it enough to actually vote that way. A politician can make a promise in one campaign, get elected, do nothing to meet that promise and then make the same promise in the next election and get re-elected on the same platform he or she ran on and ignored the last time.
Ask how much integrity we can expect from a politician and the politician might ask how much he or she can expect from us. We may have to try not just voting for someone, but working for something. Not claiming our Member of Parliament is out of touch unless we've have actually tried to contact him or her. Maybe take a position ourselves, and not demanding several contradictory things at the same time, like a clean environment and limitless oil money. But expect pushback What are you, a Radical? A Keynesian? Concerned about the human condition? Remember, money was not made for society, society was made so that money could move around better.
I laugh at people who don't believe in the redistribution of wealth. What do they think the economy is? How do they think it works? The economy is the redistribution of wealth. You have three dollars, you give it to a baker for a loaf of bread and... What just happened? Wealth got redistributed. The baker pays his staff out of your money and they buy a newspaper that your daughter works for. Some of the money they spend on buying the paper goes to pay your daughters salary, most of which she sends home to you because you are on social security and can only eat dog food. C'est bonne, the wealth, she has travelled round the room.
Hence the beauty of the new paper from the non-partisan conservative think-tank Americans for Democratic Prosperity (formerly Prosperity for American Democracy) On The Need To End Economics. In it the lead author Simon Twilling of N. S. F. U., argues that we need to shut down the economy entirely, so that everyone just gets to keep what they already have, and can neither get, nor spend, anything. This would appeal to the the rich as freezing the game now would mean they win - they have the most and get to keep it. It would satisfy the middle class because it may be the only way to stop them from sliding into the poor class; there is no way to move up in the current system, but many ways to move down. The poor would be happy because, since you couldn't spend money on anything, the fact that they didn't have any money wouldn't bother them.
It will be interesting to see whether the left or right picks up in this report first. Whoever does may have a winning formula in the upcoming election. People being as cynical as they are. I offer this as advice. Join the revolution, get money out of the economy!
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