2023: Destination Dystopia

This cost-of-living crisis was a sucker punch. It was delivered by the 1% because they don’t want anyone getting above their station through proper wage increases.  We didn’t expect or deserve it. But rising prices for food, accommodation, heating, and commuting knocked the wind out of many because incomes weren’t allowed to keep pace. I am not winded by this cost-of-living crisis; I am flat out on the canvas and being counted out of the fight. I honestly don’t know if I can struggle to my feet and continue this bare-knuckle economic brawl in the fixed ring of capitalism.

I am not alone because millions are like me in a similar state of economic duress. Yet we don’t organise to demand our due and too often allow the news media to marginalise us as the unfortunate ones in a land of plenty. That in this day and age, you need to remind ordinary people that trade unionism is beneficial to their income earning potential is indication of how much the 1% influence our thinking.

At grocery stores, I find most things on offer deeper than my pocket or of such poor quality that buying them feels like exploitation because it is. Chickens raised on antibiotics and pumped full of water after death to make their anorexic flesh look plump are priced now if they were pheasants raised free ranged. It’s summer in the second largest nation in the world with arable land as far as the eye can see. But vegetables are still costly as if it was winter. Farm fresh corn in some stores is priced at a dollar a husk.

But beggars can’t be choosers. These are the deals doled out to us by the grocery store oligarchs during this cost-of-living crisis where Galen Weston’s grocery store raked in half a billion dollars in profits during the last six months of this year. Him and his family lead a “Succession lifestyle” whilst people like you and me must rake over the specked fruit rack for an affordable vitamin C ration.

But there are people who can afford $10 a jar peanut butter. Just like there were people in Vienna after the collapse of the Hapsburg Empire in 1918 who could afford coffee with whipped cream and a generous portion of cake at the Hotel Sacher. The problem is cake for some and tough luck for the many doesn’t work out well for the normal functioning of society. The army of people who Hitler later attracted in both Germany and Austria to join his 1000 year Reich of genocide, thievery, pseudo science and national chauvinism proves widespread economic collapse leads to revolutionary forces being unleashed that are best left shackled by evenly distributed prosperity.

The top 10% of income earners will get out of this long cost of living crisis which may last a decade without a scratch. But us and democracy won’t. Our era has become as intolerant as the epoch of fascism in the 1930s and 1940s. The reason for that is anyone who controls the levers of power in our society is rich. And, extreme wealth corrupts absolutely.

Today, London, Toronto, New York, Paris and even my small city are reaching dangerous levels of economic inequality. The shops for our wealthy are filled with punters with loads of undertaxed disposable income. While outside them, the homeless proliferate our streets like unburied dead on a still fresh battlefield. 

Covid normalised us to mass death. Trump and the Murdoch News Media Empire normalised us to fascism. We are now being normalised to the climate emergency. We are within a few years of total anarchy where the globe is in turmoil from hundreds of millions of people fleeing climate change in their nations and trying to find sanctuary in ours. We will not be kind. Our governments and rich citizens will be brutal in preserving the right to live lives of entitlement from one generation to the next. They perhaps will become as brutal as the Nazis. So my advice to you is learn to fight back now before it is too late because our train has already arrived at destination Dystopia.

As always, thank you for reading my sub stack posts because I really need your help this month. Rent for August is coming up and I am fighting to make sure I have it. Your subscriptions to Harry’s Last Stand keep the legacy of Harry Leslie Smith alive and me housed. So if you can join with a paid subscription which is just 3.50 a month or a yearly subscription or a gift subscription. I promise the content is good, relevant and thoughtful. Take Care, John

Photo by Mert Kahveci on Unsplash