The World Owes You a Living. Part 1.

I remember being told as a kid: ‘The world doesn’t owe you a living.’ It’s one of the oldest clichés in the book, and I used to believe it. I don’t any longer, and I’ll tell you why.

The developed world has changed immeasurably over the last fifty years. It’s done so in many ways, but three of the major ones are these.

Number one: Social cohesion has loosened considerably as people have become more dispersed. Today’s older folks remember what it was like when they were growing up in the sort of industrial town where I was born. Several generations of extended families lived in the same street or within a few streets of each other. Neighbours all knew each other as close friends. Everybody drank in the same pub on the corner of the street, and they all shopped in the same shop on the opposite corner. The men worked in the factories or the mines that were just a few minutes walk away. It was essentially the same in the rural villages, of course, and one of the advantages was that it produced a close-knit support system when times were tough. That’s how people had lived for thousands of years.

Those times have gone. Most people’s families are now scattered around the city, or in different parts of the country, or even in other countries. The local pubs have almost disappeared, and everybody drives to out-of-town supermarkets to shop. We rarely see anybody we know when we go to a supermarket. Like so many other things, it’s an experience rooted in social isolation.

Number two: The technological revolution has come along to do a lot of the work that used to be done by people. In the 1960s the pundits were forecasting a coming Utopia. They said the machines and computers would create all the wealth, and the need to work long hours would be gone. We would all be working twenty-hour weeks, they said, and be paid even more in real terms for doing it because the technology would be working quietly away creating the wealth for us all to live a leisurely life. The first part of the prediction was spot on; the second part fell miserably short.

Why? Because in the late seventies Mrs Thatcher came to power in Britain and set about changing the traditional British mixed economy into an aggressive free market one. In short, we converted to the American Way. Social concern was replaced by support for the new heroes: the entrepreneurs, the merchant bankers and the city whiz kids. And that’s where the vast majority of the wealth went, into the pockets of people like Richard Branson and Bill Gates. The technology took over the work as predicted, but the money disappeared into the hands of the privileged few.

Number three: The technological revolution also transformed the domestic scene. I spent most of my childhood in a street with about sixty dwellings. Only three of them had cars, about half of them had a TV set, and as far as I know, none of them had a phone. My parents’ generation didn’t even have TVs when they were young. They lived in houses equipped with basic furniture essentials, plus a tub to wash clothes in and some means to cook food. That was it, and they were perfectly happy because people don’t miss what hasn’t been invented yet. Compare that with today’s situation.

If you want a job, nearly all the major employers take applications online only, so you have to have a computer or at least access to one – and you have to know how to use it. Benefit rules require the unemployed to seek work up to thirty miles or one hour’s travelling distance away. Many of the workplaces are dispersed in out-of-the way places, so you’ve virtually got to have a car. People in shops don’t ask ‘are you on the telephone?’ any more. They say ‘give me your phone number, your mobile number and your e-mail address.’ People expect to watch DVDs and listen to MP3s, because everybody else does. And so on and so forth... The fact is, we have developed a living system which requires people to have a very large number of facilities on hand in order to function in what is considered an acceptable way. And they all have to be paid for.

Now, I’ve made it clear in earlier posts that I don’t think it’s either right or sustainable to live this way, but we aren’t going to change it until something forces us to do so. In the meantime, we have to live with what those in power give us; and what they give us in the developed world is not only the promise of a highly materialistic lifestyle, but also the demands it makes on us. The problem is, the means to meet those demands in comfort are confined to a few rich people. The majority still work long hours just to keep up with the back edge of the game. And there are plenty who genuinely try to get work but can’t do so because the jobs just aren’t there. Technology is doing them. What’s more, I doubt there has ever been as much stress in the minds of the majority as there is now, because you have to have so much just to belong. This brings illnesses of all sorts in its train, including unprecedented levels of mental illness. The NHS in Britain is bigger than it’s ever been, but it’s having trouble coping with demand.

So, if the ‘system’ insists on producing this situation, the system must also accept responsibility to take care of those who find it difficult or impossible to keep up with the back edge of the game. It must do so willingly and adequately, not just grudgingly hand out a pittance and then denounce the recipients as ‘welfare scroungers.’ It can’t have it both ways. It isn’t just and it isn’t decent. It has created a world of unprecedented demand and, in the process, effectively destroyed the social support mechanisms that people in difficulty traditionally relied on.

I now firmly believe, therefore, that if you think ‘system’ when you look at the word ‘world,’ then the modern world most certainly does owe everybody a living. It carries that weight on the back of its own creation. It’s dripping with wealth and can easily afford it, if only the will is there.

So what should we do about it? I can see two possibilities that are both achievable and sustainable. But this post is too long already. I’ll leave that one for another time.