Great article. I think whether this class breaks left or far right depends on how we organise. As long as the left is materially captured by the neoliberal left the far right has the advantage of appearing to offer the more radical break.
We need to educate, agitate and organise to win a renewed a commons.
In Australia and New Zealand, as in many other places, the left is sadly neoliberal. And it’s neoliberal to its bootstraps. For example, the labour movement has transitioned from its origins - as a movement with a raison d'être to fight for those who sell their labour for wages - into status quo embedded political parties populated by career managerialists who create and implement policy that embraces serving capitalism. The right, far more overt about their ‘liberal’ mission, take up the fight for capitalists per se, aka rich donors, big corporates and wealthy elites. Capitalism, capitalist….potato….po-tay-toe. Left wing, right wing, peas in a pod.
The middle gets squeezed either way. The left might not squeeze as hard but it still squeezes. Add in ping-pong short-term political - expediency - thinking and voila, society heads for the rocks as their economies suffocate and stagnate. We are living in the age of the metaphorical Titanic, and the band is close to playing its last piece of music before jumping off. Growth-growth-growth now occurs in poverty, homelessness, precarious employment, and shit lifestyles rammed into structural reverse.
Yes, the well-known trap of a system that functions precisely by exploiting the majority of individuals, who ultimately "fail," only to then shift the blame for that "failure" onto the individuals themselves. Precisely for this reason, it remains important to maintain and increasingly disseminate the capacity to analyze capitalist society, a skill that has its cornerstones in the "classic" authors. Possessing the right tools for analyzing and criticizing capitalist society allows us to better understand who the true enemies are and fight them more effectively. The challenge in this historical period is precisely to spread this awareness as widely as possible; a difficult task, but one worth working toward every day to build a more just and supportive world.
Exactly-the system works by turning structural problems into personal failures. When insecurity feels like an individual fault, it prevents collective resistance.
That’s why analysis matters: it links private struggles to shared conditions, and shifts the question from coping alone to changing things together. Slow work, but necessary for solidarity.
It is so gratifying to read someone else clearly articulating all the things that I thought had only occurred to me. At least here in the U.S. it’s all about bootstrapping and individualism.
I have two grandchildren at university now. Proud that they decided to go despite the economic cost. Not sure that I’ll live to see them earning enough to start paying back the loan. Such a bleak climate. I have three adult offspring, none of whom own their own house. There is no money lurking anywhere for support let alone bail outs. We are poor intellectuals! Much good will it do us.
Yep- the tragedy isn’t that people made the wrong choices, but that they did exactly what they were told would lead to a decent life, and the economy moved the goalposts anyway.
Thank you for this and the excellent article - the deep problems with "individualism" especially when a significant portion of the population cannot function at the presumed necessary level for that to work (if ever it can).
Thanks Grace, another eye opener! I had no idea the interest revenue on loans was that high. Let's hope all that expensive education tips people in the correct direction; left is right and right is wrong :)
Let's also add the fact that the oh-so-expensive education is a joke for many. Minimal lectures from poorly paid and overworked lecturers (do tutorials exist outside Oxbridge these days?), university education vastly expanded to let in so many students who have no passion for what they study and the need to work in all spare hours to stay afloat so no time is left to get cheaply pissed and debate ideas with students from other disciplines till 3am and rant about what a great book The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists is.
In America here, we were concerned that our children would fall into a similar debt trap so we paid for their college tuition. We weren’t some geniuses; we just couldn’t see them getting ahead with that kind of financial burden around their necks. It did have a cost for my wife and I; vacations not taken, dreams deferred, but it ensured generational transfer of wealth. Not everyone could (or would) have made the choices we made (“You know you don’t have to pay for their education.”) but it gave us peace of mind for their futures.
And they’ve choked off mobility via Brexit. My stepson got out just in time to Spain to take an MSc (taught in English) and then got a job as an economist in Barcelona. He earns probably half what he’d earn in London but at 27 he has a mortgage on a 2 bed flat in Barcelona. 5 more years to Spanish citizenship.
As you know much of the misery you point out Grace, can be overcome by proper collection of taxes.
Here is a quick snapshot of the situation:
1. Under-Taxation of Returns: A study by the University of Warwick found that if all individuals with incomes over £100,000 paid the "headline" tax rates (instead of using lower-taxed capital gains and investment structures), the UK would raise an additional £23 billion annually.
2. Offshore Evasion: While HMRC estimates offshore evasion at just £0.3 billion, the Public Accounts Committee and TaxWatch labeled this "implausibly low" given that UK residents held £849 billion in offshore accounts as of 2019.
3. Corporate Profit Shifting: The Tax Justice Network estimates that large-scale corporate tax avoidance—often benefiting the ultra-wealthy owners of these firms—costs the UK exchequer approximately £13.8 billion per year.
So just on 1 and 2, the UK could be collecting 33.8 billion pounds.
The uncollected sums are staggering. In the United States roughly 163 billion is avoided and that's again not including offshore money.
The economic cost of running the country is essentially placed on the back of middle earners. Added to that is the cost of privatization: healthcare, electricity, water and sewer, garbage collection and list goes on. People can't cope anymore. We need a seasmic political shift. In the US the concept of separation of church and state protect religious freedom and prevent government tyranny. By keeping the two distinct, the founders aimed to ensure that no single religion could use state power to persecute others, while also shielding religious institutions from political corruption. Over the past 60 years capitalism has been rebranded as a religion. It was done imperceptibly and as matter of course and the natural evolution of things. Now our governments cannot be differentiated from businesses. Every government must toe the virtues of protecting businesses and wealth as if they were sacrosanct. The market is our God. So, now the same "separation" I alluded to earlier has to be applied if our governmental institutions are to be shielded from corruption. Reviving the spirit of collectivism, as you do aptly put it, would catalyze that separation.
As always, a pleasure to read your ideas. Thanks for educating us.
"The worst affected are those pursuing a career which only provides a moderate income - in other words, the mid-career professionals earning £40–70k." Hmm. £40-70k a 'moderate' income, Grace? Methinks we inhabit different worlds. :-)
Thank you Grace… again. Each post amplifies my realization of the depth and coherence you bring in Vulture Capitalism. Now I understand why I’ve had to read it twice in quick succession. I do some work in US higher education, where your analysis of the UK situation plays out as if the system itself is on steroids.
Very interesting. From Scotland things look a bit different because we have most of the same economic woes and inequalities as England but one key policy difference is no tuition fees. Maybe this goes some way to explain why people still support SNP here? (We’ll see what happens in May but polls suggest they’re in the lead by some distance).
Coaxing/pressing half of the youth into undergraduate education (and much of the rest of us onto low paid training/processing courses of various stripes) was the "remedy" for the then scandalous levels of youth unemployment without the State having to foot too much of the bill for such machinations. Those of us who asked "the bleedin' obvious question" as to how this would lead to better nationwide employment outcomes were rebuffed with the argument that this would create a much smarter workforce which would decisively revitalise UK plc. Ergo the eviscerating effects of galloping neoliberalist economics were not really a causation: it was merely that we of the working class needed to become a bit less thick. Education - nominally A Very Good Thing of course - thus became just one more thing to be further transmogrified to meet the ideological ends of this ill-starred economic mythology.
In Australia and New Zealand, as in many other places, the left is sadly neoliberal. And it’s neoliberal to its bootstraps. For example, the labour movement has transitioned from its origins - as a movement with a raison d'être to fight for those who sell their labour for wages - into status quo embedded political parties populated by career managerialists who create and implement policy that embraces serving capitalism. The right, far more overt about their ‘liberal’ mission, take up the fight for capitalists per se, aka rich donors, big corporates and wealthy elites. Capitalism, capitalist….potato….po-tay-toe. Left wing, right wing, peas in a pod.
The middle gets squeezed either way. The left might not squeeze as hard but it still squeezes. Add in ping-pong short-term political - expediency - thinking and voila, society heads for the rocks as their economies suffocate and stagnate. We are living in the age of the metaphorical Titanic, and the band is close playing its last piece of music and jumping off. Growth-growth-growth now occurs in poverty, homelessness, precarious employment, and shit lifestyles rammed into structural reverse.
Really helpful piece as always. It seems that 99% of us are, to a first approximation, equally pissed off; then we all sort of attack the people we have time to? For a relatively well-off, time-rich-ish person like me, that might mean the press and public statements etc., which still falls pretty short of a useful mark. For someone with ten minutes' head space to themselves a day, it might simply mean the nearest stranger. It's a group effort to gather time and heft to reach capital owners and their pet politicians ... which is why these people hate groups so much, obviously - as we've seen, even legislating against them. It's a bit demoralising when it's raining too...
Great article. I think whether this class breaks left or far right depends on how we organise. As long as the left is materially captured by the neoliberal left the far right has the advantage of appearing to offer the more radical break.
We need to educate, agitate and organise to win a renewed a commons.
Absolutely!!
“Neo-liberal left:” what’s that then?
In Australia and New Zealand, as in many other places, the left is sadly neoliberal. And it’s neoliberal to its bootstraps. For example, the labour movement has transitioned from its origins - as a movement with a raison d'être to fight for those who sell their labour for wages - into status quo embedded political parties populated by career managerialists who create and implement policy that embraces serving capitalism. The right, far more overt about their ‘liberal’ mission, take up the fight for capitalists per se, aka rich donors, big corporates and wealthy elites. Capitalism, capitalist….potato….po-tay-toe. Left wing, right wing, peas in a pod.
The middle gets squeezed either way. The left might not squeeze as hard but it still squeezes. Add in ping-pong short-term political - expediency - thinking and voila, society heads for the rocks as their economies suffocate and stagnate. We are living in the age of the metaphorical Titanic, and the band is close to playing its last piece of music before jumping off. Growth-growth-growth now occurs in poverty, homelessness, precarious employment, and shit lifestyles rammed into structural reverse.
It's a set of material relations where the institutions built up by the left are reliant on managerial prerogative: https://open.substack.com/pub/godfreymoase/p/down-with-the-neoliberal-left?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=9zgik
Yeah. He's conflating "liberals" and "the left". It's a common mistake in a simple left/right dichotomy.
Yes, the well-known trap of a system that functions precisely by exploiting the majority of individuals, who ultimately "fail," only to then shift the blame for that "failure" onto the individuals themselves. Precisely for this reason, it remains important to maintain and increasingly disseminate the capacity to analyze capitalist society, a skill that has its cornerstones in the "classic" authors. Possessing the right tools for analyzing and criticizing capitalist society allows us to better understand who the true enemies are and fight them more effectively. The challenge in this historical period is precisely to spread this awareness as widely as possible; a difficult task, but one worth working toward every day to build a more just and supportive world.
Exactly-the system works by turning structural problems into personal failures. When insecurity feels like an individual fault, it prevents collective resistance.
That’s why analysis matters: it links private struggles to shared conditions, and shifts the question from coping alone to changing things together. Slow work, but necessary for solidarity.
It is so gratifying to read someone else clearly articulating all the things that I thought had only occurred to me. At least here in the U.S. it’s all about bootstrapping and individualism.
I have two grandchildren at university now. Proud that they decided to go despite the economic cost. Not sure that I’ll live to see them earning enough to start paying back the loan. Such a bleak climate. I have three adult offspring, none of whom own their own house. There is no money lurking anywhere for support let alone bail outs. We are poor intellectuals! Much good will it do us.
Yep- the tragedy isn’t that people made the wrong choices, but that they did exactly what they were told would lead to a decent life, and the economy moved the goalposts anyway.
👏
Thank you for this and the excellent article - the deep problems with "individualism" especially when a significant portion of the population cannot function at the presumed necessary level for that to work (if ever it can).
Thanks Grace, another eye opener! I had no idea the interest revenue on loans was that high. Let's hope all that expensive education tips people in the correct direction; left is right and right is wrong :)
It's crazy isn't it! Thanks as always for reading
And meanwhile most Unis are complaining of no money and on the brink of bankruptcy due to high levels of borrowing.
Let's also add the fact that the oh-so-expensive education is a joke for many. Minimal lectures from poorly paid and overworked lecturers (do tutorials exist outside Oxbridge these days?), university education vastly expanded to let in so many students who have no passion for what they study and the need to work in all spare hours to stay afloat so no time is left to get cheaply pissed and debate ideas with students from other disciplines till 3am and rant about what a great book The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists is.
In America here, we were concerned that our children would fall into a similar debt trap so we paid for their college tuition. We weren’t some geniuses; we just couldn’t see them getting ahead with that kind of financial burden around their necks. It did have a cost for my wife and I; vacations not taken, dreams deferred, but it ensured generational transfer of wealth. Not everyone could (or would) have made the choices we made (“You know you don’t have to pay for their education.”) but it gave us peace of mind for their futures.
And they’ve choked off mobility via Brexit. My stepson got out just in time to Spain to take an MSc (taught in English) and then got a job as an economist in Barcelona. He earns probably half what he’d earn in London but at 27 he has a mortgage on a 2 bed flat in Barcelona. 5 more years to Spanish citizenship.
As you know much of the misery you point out Grace, can be overcome by proper collection of taxes.
Here is a quick snapshot of the situation:
1. Under-Taxation of Returns: A study by the University of Warwick found that if all individuals with incomes over £100,000 paid the "headline" tax rates (instead of using lower-taxed capital gains and investment structures), the UK would raise an additional £23 billion annually.
2. Offshore Evasion: While HMRC estimates offshore evasion at just £0.3 billion, the Public Accounts Committee and TaxWatch labeled this "implausibly low" given that UK residents held £849 billion in offshore accounts as of 2019.
3. Corporate Profit Shifting: The Tax Justice Network estimates that large-scale corporate tax avoidance—often benefiting the ultra-wealthy owners of these firms—costs the UK exchequer approximately £13.8 billion per year.
So just on 1 and 2, the UK could be collecting 33.8 billion pounds.
The uncollected sums are staggering. In the United States roughly 163 billion is avoided and that's again not including offshore money.
The economic cost of running the country is essentially placed on the back of middle earners. Added to that is the cost of privatization: healthcare, electricity, water and sewer, garbage collection and list goes on. People can't cope anymore. We need a seasmic political shift. In the US the concept of separation of church and state protect religious freedom and prevent government tyranny. By keeping the two distinct, the founders aimed to ensure that no single religion could use state power to persecute others, while also shielding religious institutions from political corruption. Over the past 60 years capitalism has been rebranded as a religion. It was done imperceptibly and as matter of course and the natural evolution of things. Now our governments cannot be differentiated from businesses. Every government must toe the virtues of protecting businesses and wealth as if they were sacrosanct. The market is our God. So, now the same "separation" I alluded to earlier has to be applied if our governmental institutions are to be shielded from corruption. Reviving the spirit of collectivism, as you do aptly put it, would catalyze that separation.
As always, a pleasure to read your ideas. Thanks for educating us.
"The worst affected are those pursuing a career which only provides a moderate income - in other words, the mid-career professionals earning £40–70k." Hmm. £40-70k a 'moderate' income, Grace? Methinks we inhabit different worlds. :-)
Where I am about, Graeme; I see that people on those incomes are definitely struggling to stay afloat.
- The rest of us drowned a long, long time ago.
All best! 👍
Thank you Grace… again. Each post amplifies my realization of the depth and coherence you bring in Vulture Capitalism. Now I understand why I’ve had to read it twice in quick succession. I do some work in US higher education, where your analysis of the UK situation plays out as if the system itself is on steroids.
Very interesting. From Scotland things look a bit different because we have most of the same economic woes and inequalities as England but one key policy difference is no tuition fees. Maybe this goes some way to explain why people still support SNP here? (We’ll see what happens in May but polls suggest they’re in the lead by some distance).
Coaxing/pressing half of the youth into undergraduate education (and much of the rest of us onto low paid training/processing courses of various stripes) was the "remedy" for the then scandalous levels of youth unemployment without the State having to foot too much of the bill for such machinations. Those of us who asked "the bleedin' obvious question" as to how this would lead to better nationwide employment outcomes were rebuffed with the argument that this would create a much smarter workforce which would decisively revitalise UK plc. Ergo the eviscerating effects of galloping neoliberalist economics were not really a causation: it was merely that we of the working class needed to become a bit less thick. Education - nominally A Very Good Thing of course - thus became just one more thing to be further transmogrified to meet the ideological ends of this ill-starred economic mythology.
Thank you for yet another fine article, Grace.
In solidarity! ✊
Economic inequality as a driver of authoritarianism — yes.
In Australia and New Zealand, as in many other places, the left is sadly neoliberal. And it’s neoliberal to its bootstraps. For example, the labour movement has transitioned from its origins - as a movement with a raison d'être to fight for those who sell their labour for wages - into status quo embedded political parties populated by career managerialists who create and implement policy that embraces serving capitalism. The right, far more overt about their ‘liberal’ mission, take up the fight for capitalists per se, aka rich donors, big corporates and wealthy elites. Capitalism, capitalist….potato….po-tay-toe. Left wing, right wing, peas in a pod.
The middle gets squeezed either way. The left might not squeeze as hard but it still squeezes. Add in ping-pong short-term political - expediency - thinking and voila, society heads for the rocks as their economies suffocate and stagnate. We are living in the age of the metaphorical Titanic, and the band is close playing its last piece of music and jumping off. Growth-growth-growth now occurs in poverty, homelessness, precarious employment, and shit lifestyles rammed into structural reverse.
Really helpful piece as always. It seems that 99% of us are, to a first approximation, equally pissed off; then we all sort of attack the people we have time to? For a relatively well-off, time-rich-ish person like me, that might mean the press and public statements etc., which still falls pretty short of a useful mark. For someone with ten minutes' head space to themselves a day, it might simply mean the nearest stranger. It's a group effort to gather time and heft to reach capital owners and their pet politicians ... which is why these people hate groups so much, obviously - as we've seen, even legislating against them. It's a bit demoralising when it's raining too...