THE BOURGEOISIE OR THE PONZI CLASS?

For the back cover of my book, The Ponzi Class: Ponzi Economics, Globalization and Class Oppression in the 21^st Century, I wrote:

‘The rise of the Ponzi class is the dominant political phenomenon of the 21^st century. There has been the emergence of a new class structure in which the ruling Ponzi class are able to grasp ordinary peoples’ monies and spend it on themselves and their pet projects. Ordinary people are impoverished. The old class structure against which the Left railed ever since the mid-19^th century has been superseded by another. The clapped-out theories of classical Marxism and the Communist Manifesto of 1848 no longer apply as the class structure upon which such theories depend no longer exists. It is not the capitalist bourgeoisie which impoverishes the working class, it is the Ponzi class, mainly, through the tax system and the exercise of state power.’

I further quoted from the book itself: ‘Ordinary people are being needlessly deprived of their inheritance, their homes, their incomes, and their country; their whole standard of living is being relentlessly eroded.’

In a speech to the National Conservativism conference recently, the Tory deputy chairman, Lee Anderson, a former Labour Party councillor, explained his decision to join the Tories. He had become increasingly disillusioned with Labour and was at a meeting at which members of Momentum were present; Momentum being a hard-Left insurgency group who had backed Jeremy Corbyn in his leadership bid. One Momentum member challenged Lee Anderson as to whether he had ‘read the works of Karl Marx’, to which the reply was ‘no’. Lee Anderson was then told to go and join the Tories, which he declared was a good idea, and left the meeting. He proceeded to join the Tories.

The number of Labour members, certainly voters, who are Marxists or who have read the works of Karl Marx, at a guess, would be a very small minority. Although Labour is seen as being a party representing the working class, and thereby attracting a working class vote, it has always had a more middle-class leadership and one that does attach importance to Marxism. Jeremy Corbyn’s ascent to and period of leadership increased the influence of these Marxists or Marxist sympathisers.

A point made in The Ponzi Class is that Marxism is bunkum and its relevance has been overtaken by a new class structure within society. It is neither the bourgeoisie nor the capitalist system that is supposedly impoverishing the public, but the Ponzi class.

In the book, I pointed out:

‘The economic policy being served up is neither Keynesianism, nor crass Keynesianism, but Ponzi economics. The policy is one of Ponzi economics for the benefit of the Ponzi class. The British economy is being run as a Ponzi scheme and faces the ultimate outcome of any Ponzi scheme: financial ruin amidst a pile of debt and unpaid bills. The policy of Ponzi economics is part and parcel of the current manifestation of free trade – globalization; and the rise of the Ponzi class – a class, despite some internal differences, who are politically correct with a belief that they are entitled to spend public monies on themselves and encompass most of the three main political parties, the banks, multinationals, the corporate sector, the unions, most charities, the media, senior civil servants and an array of quangos. They are the ruling class.

Oppression in the 21^st century is not, contrary to clapped-out Marxist ideology from the mid-19^th century, perpetuated by the bourgeoisie but by the Ponzi class, who grab and waste public monies on themselves and their own pet projects, leaving ordinary people poorer.’

The Ponzi class make promises of future welfare and pension provisions and then take taxpayers’ monies and spend it as it suits them, blandly assuming that future taxpayers will stump up more money. However, the Ponzi class can choose not to make payments and can choose to leave bills unpaid. To say that public services are stretched to breaking point is merely another terminology for saying that bills are not being paid; the resources necessary to sustain a commitment made and to sustain services have been reallocated elsewhere.

The full cost of Ponzi economics is not merely the ever rising government debt. There is also the off balance sheet debts such as the variety of PFI contracts. Then there are the costs imposed on wider society: the cost of university tuition fees, the cost to the elderly of being in a care home, the cost of having to pay for child minders so that mother can go out to work. Then there are the incomes foregone such as the lower state pensions due to the refusal to increase them as promised, lower interest receipts on savings, and the lower wages if not unemployment due to immigration. Then there is the cost of the diminution of the quality of life such as the damage done to children by family breakdown and being brought up by state employees rather than their mothers, the deprivation of motherhood as mothers are forced out to work, the misery caused by divorce (in addition to the vast fees pocketed by lawyers), the plight of pensioners forced into care homes and forced to sell their homes to pay for care home fees, the lost inheritance, the misery caused by people not being able to afford their own homes, and the loss of social cohesion and breakdown of national community caused by mass immigration. These are all costs imposed on ordinary people by the Ponzi class.

Assets, be it pension annuities, fishing grounds, ownership of British industry, power stations, etc., are sold off, given away or simply trashed. North Sea oil has almost gone and the Royal Navy, once the largest in the world, has been run down to being capable to little more than a token gesture. Aircraft carriers do not have aircraft on them, and not enough destroyers to properly defend them.

Then there are the costs of the various pet projects pursued by the Ponzi class, whether it be the EU (upon which monies are still being spent), overseas aid, and climate change; in addition to which there is the cost of the Ponzi class itself, be it the vast bankers’ bonuses, MPs salaries and expenses, civil servant salaries, other salaries and bonuses of state sector organizations (e.g. the BBC and the NHS), the House of Lords (now stuffed with ex-MPs, chums and cronies), and a horde of lawyers, including judges, pocketing monies on an ever-increasing and damaging scale (immigration, human rights, divorce etc.).

Two main assets that people acquire during their lives are their homes, which, with the help of a mortgage, they ultimately own outright; and a pension – in the UK this is both a state pension and a private pension. In The Ponzi Class, I wrote:

‘According to the English Housing Survey, in 2003 71% of householders were owner occupiers. By 2014 it was 65.3% and falling. It has been forecast that by 2041 on present trends that only half the population will own their own homes. A record one in three men are still living with their parents. The figure for women is one in five. The increase is attributed to high house prices, low wages, high unemployment and increased numbers of university students. In 1996 there were 2.7million boomerang children who had had to return to their parents’ home. That figure increased to 3.4million by 2014. The average cost of a first home has increased from £50,000 in 1996 to £190,000 in 2014. Under Mrs Thatcher the average age of the first-time buyer fell to around 25. It has since climbed to 37 and the National Housing Federation are forecasting that it will increase to 43 in the near future. Only 3% of house sales in June 2014 were to those aged between 18 and 30 … One in ten of those given social housing in 2012 were foreign. A count by the Department of Communities and Local Government showed that foreigners made up 10% of those newly given social housing, up from 9% the previous year and 6.5% in 2008. This equates to 23,000 homes … The figures exclude those immigrants who have been given a British passport … Of the four million immigrants who entered Britain between 2001 and 2011, 469,843 had council or housing association properties. Melanie Phillips wrote: “Last week it emerged that, between 2001 and 2011, almost 500,000 immigrants were given social housing at a cost to the taxpayer of up to £8billion. And this when a record 1.8million British families are on the social housing waiting list.” Around 1.2million foreigners now live in social housing, one in eight of the total. In London the figure is about one in five.’

Regarding private pensions, in The Ponzi Class, I wrote:

‘In 1997 there were 97,900 work based-pension schemes. In 2009 that number had dropped to 53,801, of which 18,900 no longer accept new members, 4,354 are frozen, and 1,779 are being wound up. Gordon Brown and his Treasury team are responsible for the collapse of Britain’s private pensions. Brown’s budget speech in 1997, having just taken office, included an announcement that there would be an end of dividend credits on advance corporation tax. This technical-sounding change had a major impact for pension schemes as they had previously not been paying tax. £5billion was stealthily taxed in the first year and by 2009 £175billion had been taken out of the pension schemes in tax.

A report from Civitas revealed that over the last 25 years employers have cut their contributions to the pensions of their employees by two-thirds. A £100,000 pension pot that would have bought an annuity of £17,000 in 1980, would only buy an annuity of £6,700 per annum in June 2008, £6,000 in 2011, and a measly £4,800 in April 2013; this is due to longevity and lower returns on savings as well as high charges by the pensions industry. One consequence of the government Funding for Lending Scheme is that banks can get cheap money from the government and so do not have to bother to attract savers, which means that interest rates on savings remains pitiful.

The trend is clear: debts are massive and increasing whilst assets are falling. Ordinary people have fewer assets, be they houses or pensions. Living standards are falling.’

Marxism, via political correctness, is a cause and not a solution to falling living standards. It is not the bourgeoisie who are responsible for oppression and the hardship faced by the poorest in society, it is the Ponzi class who are responsible. The Ponzi class are systematically harming the lives and livelihoods of the general public and, cocooned in political correctness, they could not care less.