But the borrowing cannot just be about paying for increased costs thrown up by inflation and the Covid dislocation that still echoes through the economy. We have to move our borrowing on to something more useful. That is, borrow to reverse the low-wage, low-investment economy that the UK runs. Borrow to improve the chances for today’s young of getting better jobs, not just the jobs that their parents had or have. The poor jobs of today have meant that people are unable to absorb inflationary increases. And having so many people on social security that does not make them secure is another reason why inflation hurts so quickly and so deeply those caught in poverty.
We have wasted an enormous amount of time and money since the Second World War simply topping up the earnings of people in need, and rarely supporting their ability to get out of poverty. Poverty maintenance has been the issue that government and its opposition seem to agree on: the government giving out grudgingly small amounts of money while the opposition has concentrated on demanding less grudging amounts. That is why we have spent such wasted years and decades just keeping people in poverty, and never borrowing the reconstruction money necessary to break people through education and training out of the low-paid trap of poverty jobs.
We have yet to address the simple problem that we have so many businesses in the UK that invest to make money out of low-paid and low-skilled jobs. If you look at the digital economy, in many cases it is low-paid jobs such as delivering food or consumables. Where is the bold government strategy to build a 10-year plan, for instance, to skill the poorest away from the shite jobs that keep them hovering near disaster and vulnerability?
Possibly the greatest chance we have of greening our world is to grasp the potential of giving poorer people better skills for higher-paid green jobs. We really are missing a chance to help our neediest to get out of their vulnerable situation. By investing in greening the world and using social justice as the prism through which all these jobs pass, we hit two birds with one stone.
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I remember listening with excitement to David Cameron as he told us we were going to have a green job revolution. Alas, he got caught up in the disastrous austerity response to the bank failures of 2008, creating another generation of people in need.
You see, we have to become critical when people only campaign for more relief for people in poverty. Making them slightly more comfortable. We need to become critical because we have to create chances to steer people away from poverty. And that can only be done by investing in education and training. And supporting investors to invest in green, skilled work.
And getting our hands on turning the vast cost of poverty into money to be spent on ending poverty.
John Bird is the founder and Editor in Chief of the Big Issue. Read more of his words here.
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