Following on from yesterday’s
post, blind acceptance of the Thatcherite view of debt and the household
analogy for government finances aren’t the only way in which the media aid and
abet mainstream politicians in preventing the discussion of alternative economic
viewpoints. They also do it in their choice of words, a choice which embeds a
particular economic and political viewpoint into any discussion before it even
starts. Here are a few of the more common ones:
All the money in the
government’s coffers is, apparently, “tax-payers’ money”. Leaving aside
the fact that it isn’t even true (taxes are just one way in which the
government raises revenue), it manages to imply that anyone who pays no taxes
(such as children, people living on the state pension, or people unable to work
due to disability or sickness) have no stake – and by implication, no right to
a say – in the government’s expenditure plans. We could see it instead as money
which the government manages on behalf of society as a whole, a very different
proposition.
Taxation is always, according
to politicians and the media, a “burden”. In truth, it’s the price we
pay for living in a civilised society which provides services and support to
its citizens. It’s no more of a ‘burden’ than any other expenditure undertaken
by individuals, but calling it such encourages the view that it is somehow an
unnecessary and additional expenditure which should always be minimised.
Things paid for out of that
common fund collected by the government, such as the NHS, are invariably
referred to as being “free”, with the implication that people are
getting something for nothing. But it isn’t the only way of seeing things. In
truth, few things are ever really ‘free’, there’s always a cost; it’s about how
we decide to meet that cost. An alternative view is to see things simply as
being purchased collectively rather than individually, with contributions varying
according to ability to pay.
And that last point about
collectively rather than individually goes to the heart of the ideological
basis for the use of those terms. Those using them – and I include in that the
Tories, the Labour Party leadership, and the Lib Dems as well as the media –
are deliberately promoting an ideology under which individual action is always
to be preferred to collective action. Whether it is ‘better’ to act
individually rather than collectively is a valid matter for political debate,
of course. But it’s not a debate which the individualists are willing even to
countenance, which is why they choose words which close out the alternative
from the outset. The result is Tory austerity now whilst the opposition
attempts to argue, without ever actually saying it in so many words, that
future Labour austerity would have a kinder face. The question we should always
be asking ourselves, though, is “Cui Bono?”. By an amazing coincidence, it
emerges that it will always be the most well-off who benefit from a more individualistic
approach. Who’d have thought it?
Posts
