Are you enslaved? Is your country enslaved? Here's why it feels like that, and why it's true.

Sometimes it can feel like you're trapped. Trapped so that you have to go to work, and no matter how unpleasant the work is, you can't not go, or throw in your job, or tell the employer to be more reasonable. You have no power, and no freedom to say no, no matter how bad the conditions. Indeed sometimes it seems as if you are subject to a kind of bullying. 

And yet you are not enslaved to your employer. You applied for the job, and you signed a contract voluntarily. So why does it seem as if you are enslaved?

Part of the reason is that most people are enslaved, but not to their employers (though the employers may also be taking advantage of the situation). People are enslaved not directly to the people they work for, but to the banks and other financial institutions, as a result of which their labour is not free but is bound over to the institutions to whom they signed away the rights to the fruits of their labours, usually by so-called "buying" a house. Mrs Thatcher thought it was a great idea that the council house tenants would "never pay rent again but instead would own their own home." Doubtless many thought that she meant that they would not be paying for the house they lived in any more, because they would own it and need pay no rent to anyone. Sadly, in fact they would have had to take out a loan, and for the rest of their working life they would not just be repaying the loan, but interest too. In fact many would only be able to pay interest and never expect to repay the loan, unless they had also paid a premium to guarantee a lump sum at the end. But in reality that lump sum for which they had saved so much would often be too small.

A case in point, for example, is the sad story of the first owners of 39 Amersham Road, the flagship council house sale where Margaret Thatcher went to tea to celebrate with its new owners in 1980. The story, as told by the Telegraph on 9th April 2013, is a telling one:

Having lived in the property for 18-years, the Pattersons qualified for a 40 per cent discount and, after putting down a deposit of just £5, they purchased the house in August 1980 for the sum of £8,315. The Patterson’s marriage broke down amid the financial pressure of meeting the mortgage payments, which were rocketing due to high interest rates. Mrs Patterson, who was working at an old person’s home, struggled with the bills for sometime on her own, before eventually being forced to sell up and move into a mobile home. Speaking in 2002, she said: “If I’d foreseen the end of my marriage I’d never have bought. I got trapped there without enough cash to cover bills. “The mortgage was about £250 a month and after my husband left I survived only because my sons gave me board-and-lodging. I was desperate in a house I couldn’t manage and wished I’d never bought. “It broke my heart when I had to sell. It went for £57,000 and when I’d paid off the mortgage I had only enough left to buy a mobile home so I’m back down the property ladder.

"Owning a home" was not owning a home. It was assigning your entire working life to paying interest on an impossible debt, which meant you would never own your home and could lose it at any time. The mortgage company had bought your home and your life's savings and your labour. You might  be working for someone else, but it was to pay interest to the bank. That is why you feel trapped, because however bad your job, the threat to your home is too great to risk leaving it, unless jobs can be had two a penny. But since everyone is desperate, being in the same boat, everyone is insecure, and no one can stand up to the employers or threaten to leave if the job is unpleasant, or the pressure too great. Exploitation of the labour force becomes easy. So not only is the so-called home owner's labour enslaved to the mortgage company, but the employer for whom the labour is demanded is also able to increase the demands, and provide inadequate pay , because the employee lacks freedom and is powerless to demand better conditions (unless there is a trade union... but that is another story).

Was the money borrowed from the mortgage company real money? No. The mortgage company does not need to have any money, in order to generate this life-long debt and interest payments. All they do is operate the right to write a certain number on your mortgage statement, to which you then put your signature. This number then gets transferred into your bank statement, and is then transferred to the bank statement of the previous owner from whom you are buying your house (or car or whatever else you are borrowing "money" for). What you are actually doing is signing up to pay interest to the company. They do not need to have any money to do all this. All they need is the power to manipulate their incoming and outgoing numbers to match up. And the more people they enslave in this way, the more interest is coming in, so that although they keep you enslaved, because you have never paid back the capital and never will (if they can help it) they have the right to take your daily income as interest payments, and this is what constantly drives you to work at the job you hate, so as to feed their demands. If you ever earn enough to have some left over, you will want to pay off the capital to get shot of this slavery, but this leaves nothing for actually spending on the good things in life. Slavery is where all you do is work, for someone else, and never get left with anything. And you depend upon your masters for even the accommodation you live in. So you can never tell them to get lost, and just go. You are in chains, when you thought you were being set free by "getting onto the property ladder". How different from the freedom offered by the council housing, where a good level of spacious and well -maintained housing was carefully provided with rents set at an affordable level and paid to the council. Once you were in your "own" house, the chances are you would then need to take further loans to repair it! 

Ownership of this kind is not a freedom "never to pay rent". It turns everyone into a bondsman, working to pay the feudal landlord his dues. Only it doesn't look like it, to the one who has been led into this ideology by the rhetoric of "ownership". The "home owner" is told that she should be proud to be the possessor of property. She is supposed to think of herself as free, so that she shall not notice the chains. And in many cases we are taken in. No one tells us what has happened, and we are puzzled that we find ourselves enslaved. As the Mrs Patterson (whose story is told above) said afterwards, when she had slaved all her life and lost everything including the house:

“But I don’t blame anyone. It was my decision to make that investment. I still remember the day Mrs Thatcher came to tea. I am still committed to right-to-buy.“She was an icon to me. She was a lovely guest. I gave her a guided tour and she said, 'This is not just a house – it’s a home’. I was so proud. She had Downing Street and Chequers but No39 was just as special to me.”

The reason for the feudal effect is because you take a loan from a private bank or credit institution whose purpose is to rake in money by lending money for interest, and the interest payments are going not to the state (as the social housing rents were) but to the bankers. So they do not then return in infrastructure and funding for civilised projects like museums and libraries and care for the elderly. The profits from the loans go to the bankers and their share holders. Private funding in the form of loans draws away the wealth from the poor, who can only work but never have the money, and it benefits the rich, who need not work but can draw the interest on money loaned, because the poor are working. And the same goes for private rents on privately owned property. And yet, because the poor have no money to spend, in this system, and there is not enough money coming into the state in taxes or rents, none of the important features of a civilised society can be afforded. And no one spends any money on the good things in life. So no businesses can thrive, and no income can be generated from private enterprise. So the middle classes get squeezed too, and more money ends up in the hands of those who take interest on loans.

Now this, roughly speaking, is also the situation that has been set up in Europe to manipulate the Eurozone. By running the Eurozone as a system of loans from one country to another, of from a central bank run not for but against the interests of the borrowers, with compound interest to repay, you can also enslave a whole country, and the more you dole out loans to "help" it, always for repayment with interest, the more you can enslave it. This is not a way of helping the country in question. It is a way of exerting power over it without declaring a physical war and without an invasion. This is the modern way of doing warfare in Europe: it is done by exercising financial control, imposing sanctions and conditions in return for "investment" or loans, and effectively by starving the people into submission and removing their will to resist, on account of the punitive destruction of their entire infrastructure. All this is done on the basis of apparent agreements and voluntary commitments, just as the mortgages seem to be taken voluntarily—only that when you are starving you sometimes sign for loans that you know you can't afford to repay or even pay the interest on. Anyone can sell themselves into slavery if they are led to believe that it is a kind of freedom, or if they are too hungry to care.  

Setting someone free from slavery is normally a noble and just thing to do. You don't expect the slave to pay the ransom. In fact, you expect the person who held them enslaved to pay them compensation, and let them off free, and return the property extorted from them, and preferably house them and give them enough to start back up in life. Nothing less than that is reasonable. And that is true even if, when they first entered the deal, they thought they were doing what was best for them. For getting you to sign your rights away is typical of the corrupt manipulator, and it is no defence to say that the person entered voluntarily into the enslavement, under the illusion that it was going to be for the best. Indeed you often need a certain level of intelligence to realise who is your friend and who is your enemy. 

You also need to be confident in your economic analysis. 

Getting our heads round the economics of ANTI-Austerity.

Several recent media events have featured aggressive debates where some of the pro-austerity parties have tried to attack or rubbish the policies of the Green Party of England and Wales. This in itself is a good sign (because it is a sign that people are beginning to find the popularity of these policies alarming, and to see that they are winning support both here and in other parts of Europe, as most famously in Greece).

The scare tactics deployed by the aggressive interviewer typically include finding bogeys in the Green Party's policies on immigration, religious extremism and drug control. But the one that I want to consider today is the typical response to the anti-austerity policies, such as fully funding the NHS, raising the minimum wage, renationalising the railways, no tuition fees, and providing a welfare system that will enable everyone to live without fear of poverty or destitution.

The standard question is "But how will you fund this?", and the questioner then doesn't wait for an explanation of how the economics of a modern state works, but assumes that it works like a family budget in which there is a set income, and you decide what your priorities are for spending it. Responsible budgeting, they suppose (or they want their viewers to suppose), is like responsible budgeting at home. If you haven't got much money, and you've borrowed some money already, then you need to spend only that and no more. In fact, you should spend less, so as to repay some of your debts. This is the very muddled economic thinking that has encouraged people to vote for austerity, against their own interests and against the interests of the economy. This is what is now being questioned across Europe. And rightly so, because it is stupid.

That muddled economic thinking is what the politics of anti-austerity parties like the Greens is challenging. So the answer to the question "How will you fund this?" need not have an answer of the kind the aggressive interviewer is expecting (e.g. "we shall raise taxes", or "we shall abolish the armed forces", or even "we shall increase the national debt"). Because, actually it is austerity that leads to increased debt, and cuts to the armed forces, and ill-equipped armies, and a shortfall of income in relation to costs for health and welfare and housing. That is the problem, not the solution, so you should not expect an answer in that form to explain how the better welfare system and subsidised transport, and full public health service and education, will be paid for by the Green Party.

For sure, the Green Party does have a few ideas of things that are wasted expenditure, or immoral expenditure, but the reason for making savings there is not really because one must make cuts to cover the costs of the other good things that need money thrown at them. I mean, for sure, it will help not to be spending billions on out of date nuclear weaponry that is about as useful as the crown jewels but more expensive. But if we needed such things, we shouldn't do that instead of having a good railway infrastructure or accident and emergency treatment in hospitals. We should, in that case, have to do it as well.

So how are these things to be funded? How is the new government in Greece going to fund its new anti-austerity policies. How has it been able to restore free health care and give the cleaners a job again? The answer to this question requires you to stop thinking the way the austerity parties have taught you to think. They want you to think it is like a family with a fixed income to spend. But actually it is not like that. It is more like a business which makes an income by engaging in income generating activities, and inviting its citizens to invest their money in those activities and to make things happen. It's when things happen that money flows into the coffers of the state.

In fact there are two ways this happens. One is that when people (especially the poor) have some money they will spend it, often in local businesses such as the pub at the corner, or the betting shop or the hairdressers. The pub is less likely to go out of business, and instead will be paying rates, taxes and duty on the beer sold, and the people in the pub will be socialising and sharing ideas for things to do to, making connections for their businesses (You need a builder? I know one!) and looking after each other's mental health and welfare. The community is better off, there is less strain on the resources of the doctors and social workers, and the money gets back to the government in taxes to be sent out to the poor again. Similarly, if you give the students an income so that they don't have to work to live, they will spend the money they have on many things. The jobs they currently take will go to ordinary working families instead, who will need less support from the state and will pay income tax, council tax and all the rest. All this money goes round and round, because as business gets better (because there is money in the system) every business can afford to employ someone, or do renovations, or send out produce that employs delivery firms and other distribution methods. And every time the money is spent, tax comes in to the state coffers to be used in support of the welfare state. The system is like investing to get a return, not like spending a fixed income. The income is not fixed. It will go down if there is no productive activity going on. Which is what happens if you cut benefits and cut employment in public services, and cut wages and cut research budgets. You end up with nothing.

Where do you get the money to start this virtuous circle, if you have the situation that will be left by this government where the debt has gone up and no one has money to spend (except the very rich who have siphoned it off to tax havens or loopholes and are not spending it here)? Well, the answer is that you invite those who have some savings, and want to invest their savings in a secure scheme and for interest, to invest it in the government's own savings bonds. So the wealthy pop their money into your coffers, and you promise to pay them interest, or the money back when they need to withdraw it. That's fine. They need a place to keep their money, and you, the government, then put it to use on generating this active, healthy, well educated society. In due course, this will pay its dividends, in fuel duty, alcohol duty, income tax, council tax, business rates, VAT and so on. The private individuals' savings will have helped the state to get back onto the ladder of prosperity that can deliver a fully funded welfare state. And the fully funded welfare state is actually what prosperity depends on. Because you need educated healthy citizens, with an appetite for enterprise and a good environment in which they can expect their business to thrive, with a purchasing power sufficient to allow things to happen.

It is no good helping people to start a business by lending them money. Because if no one has any money to spend, the business will fail and you will never recover the investment. That's the wrong way round. Start with the people who need the services, give them money to spend, and then others will be able to start the businesses they need and make a living from them. Then you will get back all the money that went out to them, because it comes back in taxes and profits and increased spending power at every level of society.

The answer then? It should not really be "We plan to make savings here and here to fund this proposal" but rather "You don't understand: we are talking about making money, not spending it. This is the way you make money. Don't believe what they've told you in the past. That was a way of screwing money out of you to give to the rich. We don't do that. We give it to you so that it will come back to us, seven times over for every pound we spend on the poor and the sick and the aged and the disabled and the unemployed."