For a long time I have been considered politically right of centre among my peers: to the extent that a hush has descended upon a room as I’ve entered it. However, I’m becoming increasingly left-leaning with age and, perhaps – and I only say perhaps – more tellingly, increase of education.
I have always supported a right of centre economic policy as I believed it led to an increase of wealth for any individual by increasing the overall wealth. I held that this was achieved by the ‘trickle down’ mechanism. To illustrate this mechanism, choose any luxury item, say a television. When the television comes out it will cost a great deal of money, say £1500, and only the very wealthy will buy one. Once everyone who is going to buy one at this price has done so the price is reduced and the product becomes available to the next socio-economic class. This process is repeated until the market is saturated and the product is terminated.
This system is not the result of technological or qualitative production potential. For while this stratification occurs amongst TVs, food and beverage products and so on, it is also prevalent amongst trainers, where the technological and qualitative factors remain essentially unchanged amongst any two instances of a given brand’s flagship output year on year.
I have long defended this system on the argument that the start up cost of production of any item is always a great deal higher than the maintenance of that production. A new product must be researched, designed, tested, marketed and so on; there is also the initial expenditure on fixed costs, such as the equipment used to make the product. Thus, I reasoned, the initial cost reflects the initial investment. Furthermore, it is only through this initial skimming of the market that it becomes possible for the poorer elements of society to have access to the products, for if the companies were only able to sell the products at the reduced price throughout the product’s entire life cycle then they would not be able to generate sufficient starter capital to make a worthwhile return on their initial investment, rendering production either unviable or undesirable.
The point is that none of this is the point. That one person’s wealth allows for another to receive hand-me-down trainer fashion when it is his turn does not equate to an overall raising of wealth. During boom years everyone annually upgrades their phone/trainers/car/TV/comp
Just because everyone in this country now has a sky dish and a replica football shirt and branded footwear does not mean that there is no working class. People, if they are lucky enough to be afforded the opportunity, work obscene numbers of hours and destroy themselves with stress to ultimately achieve nothing more than trinkets. Will that be your life’s worth: a house stuffed with old, outdated memorabilia that your grandchildren will puzzle at and your children will continually try to dispose of, just like the cluttered old messes you remember visiting in your youth? If you have children, that is. You might decide you’d rather be a careerist than a parent. Who needs reproduction when you can have the satisfaction of a job well done? Of course you work will be under-appreciated and under-compensated but children are so expensive and they’ll only turn against you in the end. You might as well devote your life’s energy to building a career only to receive enforced redundancy at the point at which it is all you have.
I’ve descended into hyperventilating hyperbole. The mixing of passion and argument can be very dangerous. It can be misleading and obscuring. It is often the case that the more passionate one gets in making one’s argument, the less of an argument one has: the passion often covering up the lack of clarity or rational justification concerning one’s position.
I will endeavour to regain some focus in my conclusion. As I said in my introduction, I have become increasing left-leaning in my outlook as I have experienced more of life and read more of others’ reflections on what they have experienced. I think I can sum up what is becoming increasingly palpable to me in one sentence:
Some values aren’t quantified.
I have always supported a right of centre economic policy as I believed it led to an increase of wealth for any individual by increasing the overall wealth. I held that this was achieved by the ‘trickle down’ mechanism. To illustrate this mechanism, choose any luxury item, say a television. When the television comes out it will cost a great deal of money, say £1500, and only the very wealthy will buy one. Once everyone who is going to buy one at this price has done so the price is reduced and the product becomes available to the next socio-economic class. This process is repeated until the market is saturated and the product is terminated.
This system is not the result of technological or qualitative production potential. For while this stratification occurs amongst TVs, food and beverage products and so on, it is also prevalent amongst trainers, where the technological and qualitative factors remain essentially unchanged amongst any two instances of a given brand’s flagship output year on year.
I have long defended this system on the argument that the start up cost of production of any item is always a great deal higher than the maintenance of that production. A new product must be researched, designed, tested, marketed and so on; there is also the initial expenditure on fixed costs, such as the equipment used to make the product. Thus, I reasoned, the initial cost reflects the initial investment. Furthermore, it is only through this initial skimming of the market that it becomes possible for the poorer elements of society to have access to the products, for if the companies were only able to sell the products at the reduced price throughout the product’s entire life cycle then they would not be able to generate sufficient starter capital to make a worthwhile return on their initial investment, rendering production either unviable or undesirable.
The point is that none of this is the point. That one person’s wealth allows for another to receive hand-me-down trainer fashion when it is his turn does not equate to an overall raising of wealth. During boom years everyone annually upgrades their phone/trainers/car/TV/comp
Just because everyone in this country now has a sky dish and a replica football shirt and branded footwear does not mean that there is no working class. People, if they are lucky enough to be afforded the opportunity, work obscene numbers of hours and destroy themselves with stress to ultimately achieve nothing more than trinkets. Will that be your life’s worth: a house stuffed with old, outdated memorabilia that your grandchildren will puzzle at and your children will continually try to dispose of, just like the cluttered old messes you remember visiting in your youth? If you have children, that is. You might decide you’d rather be a careerist than a parent. Who needs reproduction when you can have the satisfaction of a job well done? Of course you work will be under-appreciated and under-compensated but children are so expensive and they’ll only turn against you in the end. You might as well devote your life’s energy to building a career only to receive enforced redundancy at the point at which it is all you have.
I’ve descended into hyperventilating hyperbole. The mixing of passion and argument can be very dangerous. It can be misleading and obscuring. It is often the case that the more passionate one gets in making one’s argument, the less of an argument one has: the passion often covering up the lack of clarity or rational justification concerning one’s position.
I will endeavour to regain some focus in my conclusion. As I said in my introduction, I have become increasing left-leaning in my outlook as I have experienced more of life and read more of others’ reflections on what they have experienced. I think I can sum up what is becoming increasingly palpable to me in one sentence:
Some values aren’t quantified.
No comments:
Post a Comment