Swings and Roundabouts.

Lately, I've been noticing all kinds of divide and rule propaganda. 

There's the usual kinds; muslim vs non muslim, women vs non women, the poorest of the poor vs the slightly less hard-up. 

But there has also been a new war, supposedly, between the young and the old. 


It is true that young people have seen the value of their wages plummet the most since 2009, 12.5%, while pensioners are told to cheer up as they're real-terms incomes have only fallen by 3.7%.

While young'uns have the spectre of chronic low pay, job insecurity and crippling graduate debt; the olds face a continuation of the inadequate state pension, a crisis in social care funding and constantly being blamed for everything.   



It's swings and roundabouts really. 

The real stinger for a lot of young people is the housing problem. Mortgages are hard to come by these days. What passes for affordable in the rental market is dubious at best and you practically have to eat your own arm to get a snip at any social housing. 
To be fair, the baby boomers (aka old folks) are an easy target. They were born into the NHS, they left school, went into secure, lifelong employment- usually unionised workplaces with rights and what-not. They all got housing and when Right to Buy came in, well, they took advantage. 




But it's a total red herring. 

They're trying to screw us all over! Which generation has it worse is just a side-show to the main event, the piecemeal destruction of the welfare state! 

There's a massive economic crisis. Even though we're allegedly experiencing some sort of recovery, the prospects for sustainable growth are not all that to put it politely. 

For capitalists, their money making options are limited. They can try and drive down wages. This works, to a point. Then they find workers can't buy as much stuff, which means they're not selling as much stuff, so they have to lend people bucket loads of money to keep buying the stuff and then complain when people can't pay it back.  



Another option is war. Wars are great for capitalists because there's always a bounty to be had. And the clean up job is usually a pretty lucrative exercise. It's become less popular in recent years, since it became clear humans now had the capacity to completely annihilate ourselves. But, when needs must, I suppose.





I suppose you could completely revolutionise technology with loads of new inventions. I suppose shaving an entire millimeter off the iPad Air IS comparable with the invention of trains...




Bingo! Sell off the family silver...and then charge people to use it! 

And so no-one realises, use all the levers of power, the news outlets, to get young people moaning about how old people don't know they're born and old people complaining about anti-social behavior and hey presto, you've privatised the NHS. 




It's a dastardly plan alright. Anyway, the jig is up. TIme for a united struggle between young and old, against cuts, privatisation and austerity. Time for a political voice for working class people, that will call bullshit on this sort of thing. Time for a vote for TUSC.