Buying because we can

 

Subject: Buying, because we can.

"Money is the route of all evil" but also one of the paths to some sort of happiness.

First it was barter which then became an exchange mechanism allowing  you to sell your time and labour to someone who needed it in exchange for the equivalence of money, it was a method of exchanging your time for a token to buy food.

The word token is apt since ever since mankind started to work, there has always been a disparity in what you offer and what you get. Some people sell their labour for a pittance (the minimum wage) working long hours in unpleasant conditions for not nearly enough to live on and people scrape and save to buy some sort of security whilst others seem to hit the jackpot and get rich with apparently little effort and leave the majority behind in virtually every aspect of life.

The concept of a job for life with a reasonable wage and good conditions is from a bygone era one in which regulations governed most things relating to our economic wellbeing. Regulations were deliberately cast aside after convincing the people that they  were bad and deregulation was good. Of course the regulations were there to inhibit bad practice and protect the vulnerable, those who experienced the loan shark and the penury which awaited them as interest on their loan mounted and meant they could never pay it back. Untying the rules based economy in the Reagan/Thatcher years  in the 1970s which used to govern the finance industry, allowing it to trade it's one and only commodity, money, in what ever way it wanted, including the exotic world of the derivatives which announced all kinds of legal, yet morally illegal mechanisms which were used to disguise the norms by which society had previously lived by.

Money had become a God, a sort of idol to worship. Without it you were nothing,  cast out of the temple, unclean, unworthy to be considered. Yet those treated this way were not layabouts but ordinary people who worked 14/15 hours a day with no leave entitlement, no contractual security that the the job they did today would be there tomorrow. On the other side of the balance sheet people are still expected to enter into those 'other contracts' which people with a proper job have, such as rent for accommodation and food for the family, perhaps a simple holiday once a year, maybe even a small car to get too and from work.

This new breed of human who lives perpetually on the financial edge, not knowing if the money is in their account to pay the next demand, who's every move, every purchase is governed by the calculation of its affordability, not the affordability of a flight across the world or a new car, not even the price of entrance tickets to a show but whether they can afford groceries or clothes for their kids.

These people you pass in the street, eyes fixed on the pavement absorbed in their own personal struggle, not only to make ends meet but with the guilt of not being able to provide for their family, not being able to match up to their children's expectations or the expectations of people with money in their pockets who make up that 'so beloved' segment of our society, 'the consumer'. Instead they hesitate at each shop doorway to marvel at the brightly lit shop window, so many temptations, so many slippery slopes, so much impending debt. 

Each night the television pumps out its frothy jingle encouraging the purchase of this or that, titivating the juices of even the youngest to buy since the economy is now predicated on consumer purchases.

Of course we are all creatures of our generation and upbringing. For most of the older  generation spending is a considered act, it weighs the value of money in our pocket  against the value of the thing you wish to buy and often the decision is no. The added consideration, for some is the time and effort needed to earn sufficient money to buy something on impulse, an impulse only sparked by that jingle you heard last night on the television. 

It's a strange transaction at best, unless of course we have no value of our time and little for what we bought, other than that we can.