Ready to hear about austerity

Above: at last someone is talking sense.

The Prime Minister has told us all off for wasting food. It is a message that has captured the popular imagination (the newspapers are full of it, and in the G2 section of the Guardian today Laura Barton has written a guide to using up left-overs and not shopping in supermarkets). In the office this afternoon Judy was re-using tea-bags when making tea.

On one level Gordon Brown’s advice is clearly absurd. No-one in this country goes without food. Whatever the shortcomings of the welfare state it is not possible to starve in the United Kingdom (unless by choice, and even then an army of social workers, NHS nutritionists and assorted state “nannies” would probably nag you to death first).

On a deeper level I think people are ready to hear about austerity.

Speaking generally, during the boom years everyone has eaten too much, drunk too much, wasted too much. Bought far too many things we do not really need. Gone on too many excessive “trophy” holidays.

Above all borrowed too much (far, far too much).

Many individuals are now ready to cut down on waste (food, packaging, car journeys), take simple sensible exercise to get themselves fit, make a strenuous effort to clear their debts etc.

The trouble is that as a “lifestyle choice” this abstemious behaviour would open them up to ridicule or (even worse) imply that they were losers in the game of life.

By packaging austerity as a patriotic duty (perhaps with a goal of clearing the national debt within five years) political leaders can make the inevitable economic down-turn a desirable social experience (desirable because the inevitable will be seen as “fair”; and also desirable because the enforced social interaction will improve society).

I havn’t done a survey on the subject, but my guess is that even quite extreme measures would be accepted, possibly even welcomed (with grumbling) - petrol rationing, energy rationing, limited conscription to achieve social objectives.



Above: cast-iron version of a favourite Victorian “value”.

But as an economist friend told me: “We don’t have a production problem. The West could feed the whole world with very little effort. We only have distribution problems - social, geographical and political.”