This is a story about the rich:poor divide...

Theresa May, the British prime minister, had the gall to lecture the poor on living within their means. In actual fact, the poor are working hard and just trying to keep up with the wealthy, who are racing ahead.

If you look at the Instagram account called Rich Kids of Instagram you will see that it is extremely popular. 'Reality' TV shows that have followed mega-rich people like Ozzy Osborne and family, the Kardashians and the cast of Made in Chelsea, are some of the most viewed and talked about things on television. Wealth worship is everywhere, and is it wrong for people to feel that they deserve a little of the life that is rammed down their throats by the media?

When we are talking about living within our means, this is coming from politicians who spend 6-figure sums of money each year on expenses alone, while also pocketing salaries that are many many times more than the average wage. The problem comes right from the top. The more that rich public figures splash their cash, the more the hypocrisy is insulting when they tell the poor to tighten their belts.

How many people on council estates are driving Ferraris that they can't afford the repayments on? How many hardworking families have ordered yachts that they now can't afford to pay the remaining balance on?

When we talk about living within our means, we are talking about people who are quite familiar with budgeting, make do and mending, and the general attitudes of postwar austerity. Really, when talking about living within our means, we should be talking to the banks, who recklessly endangered their financial stability by not living within their means in terms of their ability to maintain solvency. It's the banks that are insufficiently capitalised and are excessively over-leveraged. It's the banks that have lent many, many, many times more money than their reserves allow, in the pursuit of endless effortless profits.

When a person borrows money, they intend to repay that money using hard work. The borrower will go to their job every day, and be productive. In return for a person's hard work - productivity - they will receive their salary, with which they will buy the things that they need and repay their debts.

When a banker lends money, they intend to profit for no labour at all. Through interest slavery, the banker will make money, simply because they already have money. Using the money multiplier - fractional reserve banking - the banker will in fact be able to lend the same money, over and over and over again, multiplying the amount of effortless interest that is earned each time.

It is the banks who are not living within their means, nor being hardworking or productive in any way. It is the banks who have decimated global finances, and are now demanding that the hardworking people accept austerity, pay freezes, job insecurity, unemployment and low growth, simply because they overstretched themselves in pursuit of yet more effortless and labour free income for doing absolutely nothing.

Let's imagine that a banker, with zero money of his own, is paying a generous interest rate of 0.25% on deposits - exactly the same as the Bank of England. Using a fractional reserve of 5%, which is the minimum requirement for today's stress-tests of banks, to make sure they're adequately capitalised in the event of another credit crunch, that means the banker can multiply a £1,000 deposit into nearly £19,000 worth of loans. Obviously, the loans carry a hefty interest rate. Let's imagine that the banker lends out the £19k as overdrafts, which often carry a 20% APR on the high street. In a year, the banker will now net nearly £4,000 of profit, for doing absolutely nothing, out of just a £1,000 deposit. That's a 4 to 1 ratio! For every £1 deposited with Utter Bastard Bank Plc, they're going to make nearly £4!!

So, while the poor toil and tighten their belts, buying the cheapest groceries they can and cutting back on every expense, the banks are getting fat for doing absolutely nothing at all. Interest slavery is a con and a crime, and the perpetuation of this situation is the only reason why ordinary hardworking people are having to suffer NHS cuts, crowded public transport, packed classrooms, pay cuts, redundancies and every other economic penalty for the bankers' failure to live within their means.

Yes, we'd all like to make money while we sleep. Yes, we'd all like money for nothing. However, a bank is just utter bullshit. A bank is supposed to be an instrument to grease the wheels of commerce, not a massive leech, sucking so many pounds out of people's pockets, for every penny they leave in their bank accounts.

And, when you're richer, the things that go wrong in your life are mere pocket change. Let's look at a person who earns £20k, versus a banker who earns £200k, i.e. a 10 to 1 ratio:

• Parking fine £50... costs the banker £5
• Car breakdown £500... costs the banker £50
• Need a new central heating boiler £3,000... costs the banker £300
• Private school fees £12,000... costs the banker £1,200
• Food £300... costs the banker £30
• Holiday £700... costs the banker £70

Imagine if your budget used the values that the banker pays. They're a much smaller percentage of your income, aren't they? Life would be a lot easier if everything cost 1/10th of what it does. Well, guess what, the banker pays exactly what you pay, except they earn 10 times as much, so the two things are equivalent.

Everybody's car breaks down from time to time. It's a fact of life. In fact the shitty old unreliable banger that the poor family bought, is much more likely to break down than the brand new BMW that has a warranty, that the banker bought.

Once you've got money, you can keep it and you can make some more. If you haven't got any, no amount of living within your means is going to improve your situtation. It's a con. It's utter bullshit. It's a swindle.

When the banks in Italy start to fail, and cause a domino-like collapse of all the banks across the world in a re-run of the 2007/08 financial crisis, except much, much worse, it will become apparent that all of the suffering that ordinary people have gone through in order to rescue a deeply flawed banking system, was for nothing.

I think people are going to be pretty angry when they realise that patronising idiots like Theresa May arrived in their positions of power by luck not good judgement. I think people are going to be pretty angry when they find out that the good times never stopped in the City of London, and pay rises and bonuses are just as big as they ever were, while all the hardworking ordinary people suffer the consequences of propping up a broken and corrupt system.

It's time to smash the system, and rip it out of the hands of a psychopathic elite who would have us starving and dirty, living on the streets, if it meant they could maintain their ill-gotten position of wealth, power and domination.

What's the difference between a successful banker and a struggling worker? Absolutely fuck all, apart from pure dumb luck, but those arrogant fucks don't even realise how fucking hypocritical and patronising they are when they accuse other people of being underachievers, having been profligate and poorly mismanaged their finances, and having not worked hard enough.

It incenses me, that a tiny handful have such unimaginable wealth, when so many billions live in abject poverty. Just 62 people have as much money as 3.6 billion others. There is so much that is wrong with that. Off with their fucking heads!

Tags: #banking #capitalism #politics