The pound, like all money, has no fixed value, it is changing all the time, predominantly downwards. Due to creeping inflation it is a shadow of its former self. An item costing £1 in 1973 would cost around £10.55 in today’s money. Odd, then, that pay has been ever decreasing for the last 50 years when we should be earning 9-10 times more than we earned in the 70s.
The value of the pound on a daily basis is measured in how much confidence the financial markets have in it, if confidence goes up , the value of the pound goes up and vice versa.
Money is an entirely human construct and the value of notes and coins is merely symbolic, they do not in themselves contain the value they represent. In the natural world they only have the value of the materials from which they are constructed, which in all cases is mere pence or even less, and in real terms, belief in money has more in common with religious faith than science or nature. It works because we all believe it works. We have faith *hallelujah*. A faith which we are discovering is increasing misplaced, as Germany discovered in 1923 when, through hyper inflation, the price of a loaf of bread went from 250 Marks in January 1923 to 200 billion Marks in November 1923.
Money is a really bad measure of the worth of anything, including human beings and the value of our labour and our needs for the necessities of life provided by nature, whether naturally occurring or through some process of manufacture.
Money has always been a means of oppression and workers receive pay, not based on need but on a scale of merit which has no bearing on our real value or worth. Cleaners, for example, are notoriously paid less than they need to live on and yet their value is incalculable and almost entirely taken for granted. From our streets to hospitals to CEO offices, without our vast armies of cleaners the world would descend into chaos in less than a day and the more urbanised our environment the more vulnerable it is to the never ending tsunami of filth, waste and rubbish.
What about human beings then? Like all animal life on Earth we have absolute needs without which we simply die and, no matter by what means we obtain them, the Earth, naturally, or through human ingenuity, provides everything we need for our survival. The price of a dozen eggs or a cabbage might fluctuate, but the real value of eggs and cabbages never does, because we grow or purchase them for their food value in enabling our survival.
It is astonishing that we can argue over whether we have a nationalised postal service, transport services and health services, but we never discuss nationalising food production which is as vital as the air we breath. Theresa May doesn’t even want our children to have a decent meal at school in the middle of the day. That may be because she is simply not right in the head, but if so, nor is the rest of her party of the privileged which is depriving people of the means of survival on an epic scale.
Which brings me neatly to the biggest problem we face today. The Tories have weaponised money and are using it as a tool of oppression to enforce compliance to an existence of want and brute slavery or perish.
The Tories have always had a vastly inflated of sense of their own worth and that of the privileged few and a brutal contempt for the lives of ordinary people, that is why the Labour party came into existence, to challenge the Tory orthodoxy of brutality and then, as now, the Tories have always held Labour and the lives of ordinary people in contempt. They simply don’t want us to get on in life, least of all flourish, they only want obedient worker drones
As a subjective measure of our enslavement to money, it’s imposed scarcity and means of ideological oppression, just reflect on many times and in how many ways you think about money in any one day? How much does worrying about money and your ability to manage in the 5th richest country in the world affect your life?
We have reached a stage in our human development when the old colonial attitude of conquest and domination has had its day. The Tories are a historical throwback and a terminal wrong in the world. Nothing will do other than their eradication as a political ideology. They do not mean us well and their removal from office cannot come too soon.
Money should be the servant of the people, not their master. It’s not rocket science, except to the Tories and their kind who seem incapable of any evolutionary progress.
KOG
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/jan/31/real-wages-falling-longest-period-ons-record
https://www.moneysorter.co.uk/calculator_inflation2.html
https://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/history/mwh/germany/crisis1923rev_print.shtml
https://www.labour.org.uk/pages/history-of-the-labour-party
