The current focus on the nation’s economic woes conjures up for me images of what was known as Structural Adjustment Programme and the deadly touch of the IMF in regions such as the Caribbean, South America and Africa. I can just imagine the millions who are daily experiencing the “grind” of poverty, as a result of an economic system that continue to impoverish whole nations and peoples, more than bemused at our anxieties about pensions, cutbacks, redundancies and loss of benefits. These people have been living in a perpetual state of “cutbacks” and impoverishment and may soon come to our help with insights of how to survive our present demise. I doubt they would be so calloused as to mockingly point out that we are reaping what we have sowed. The Eldorado bubble we have been living in has been punctured. Lies, greed and the insatiable desire for more which have all become first nature, mean that the urgency to change our bad habits will be a long and sacrificial haul.
At this time, it is also sad to hear how politics and politicians have degenerated to a very low level of discourse with their multiple excuses of why the cutbacks. The default mode is that of “scapegoating”. The Con-Libs continue to lay all the blame on Labour for their spending spree and at no point are assuming responsibility for the tough choices they have to make and the decisions they are taking. Some labour politicians, on the other hand, are blaming the banking crisis for the over-spending and debts. No one is accepting that all have bankrolled their policies on an unrealistic economic model and have encouraged unsustainable life styles. In spite of all the present talk and moves around cuts - the fundamental point about changing lifestyles and making different choices will most likely impinge on one set of people - the already vulnerable.
Is this just? Well, we are hearing lots of talk about “fairness” and a new understanding of and conversation on this suddenly elevated virtue. The question, however, is just what is fair, and fairness for whom? How about equality and justice and in what ways would these challenge PM Cameron’s privileged take on fairness. Only a person from a privileged position of power (such as his) can speak of fairness in words as these: “Fairness means giving people what they deserve, and what people deserve depends on how they behave. If you really can’t work, we’ll look after you. But if you can work but refuse to work, we will not let you live off the hard work of others.”
Indeed, depending on what rung of the social ladder you are located on, fairness may have a different meaning. One cannot help but sense a default mode in operation here: that of the “deserving” and “undeserving” poor. It would certainly be fair to let the bankers, banks and corpocrats carry the cost for the crisis they have largely engineered, while asking the people to “tighten their belts”. Fairness that is just will want to question the £500 billion bailout of banks as a result of their greed and their continuing piling up of profits and paying out of astronomical bonuses to their executives.
From a Christian [and faith perspective] fairness doesn’t happen by chance. It has to be intentional through just governance and policies and a commitment to the well-being of all (especially the vulnerable). It needs a moral basis which should not be justified in economic terms (as the new interpretation point to) but along the lines of justice and compassion. This is quite a challenge in view of the modern tendency to reduce moral values to economic worth.
copyright © October 19,2010
