Who are the forgotten victims of the economic malaise that has beset the West?
Martin Vander Weyer’s business column in a recent issue of the
Spectator is a lament for the middle classes. The modest fruits of their honest labour are being quietly obliterated by forces they cannot hope to resist. The piece is infused both with
empathy and no small measure of anger at those responsible. Here is an extract:
‘What horrors. As I write, the FTSE 100 index has dived below 5,000 for the first time since last July, the mood of the London investment community darkened by the sense that civilisation is breaking down. There’s no glimmer of goodness or optimism in the morning’s news: everything — not only the economic outlook but also human nature itself — looks nastier and more incorrigible than it did a fortnight ago.
But the combination of mass criminal damage with the destruction of many months’ gains in investment values (unless you’re a gold bug or a holder of Swiss franc bonds) at least reminds us who it is that deserves a proper portion of sympathy. The shopkeeper picking disconsolately through the charred remains of a family business built up over decades of hard work and prudence is the true symbol of our times.
He stands for everyone who is a non-¬rioter and non-thief; for the citizen who pays his taxes on time and complies with every regulation; for the borrower who is not maxed out on his credit cards and never fails to meet his repayments; for the saver who thought he had put enough aside for a modestly comfortable old age; for the parent who aspires to pass on a steady business or a decent nest-egg to his offspring.
He’s not a greedy banker or an opportunist offshore investor. He doesn’t exploit the benefits system or abuse the police. He’s not a self-serving, truth-denying politician or an incompetent, overpaid public servant. He’s just a law-abiding middle-class bloke. He’s self-employed or owns a small business that provides half a dozen steady jobs — or he’s a middle manager in a larger business, in which case he hasn’t had a real pay rise for three years, his pension rights have shrunk and he’ll probably be redundant by Christmas. He and his hard-working wife — active volunteers in community life — are the backbone of British society. And right now, pretty well everything that contributes to their material wellbeing is in ruins.
Far too little has been said about the huge erosion of personal equity and self-sufficiency that is being caused by negative real returns on savings, falling house values, dismal stock markets, rampant inflation, squeezed pay and profits, and multiple tax grabs — the price being paid by the bloke-in-a-burned-out-shop for a crisis that is not in any sense of his own making.
He seems at least to have been spotted by George Osborne, writing in the Telegraph about the need for lower corporate taxes and less regulation. But you’ll have to go further, Chancellor, if you want to restore any sense of fairness to the Prime Minister’s slogan about us all being ‘in this together’. The 50p income tax rate must certainly go, and why not double the inheritance tax threshold while you’re at it? As for Vince Cable and his ‘mansion tax’, words fail me. I hope he gets reshuffled to the Home Office and put on front-line riot-control duty.’
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