TINA must be challenged

There IS an alternative to blaming the poor for the woes of the economy and endless austerity.

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We all know who TINA is.

Its the unrelenting mantra of the neoliberal age – you must do as we say for There Is No Alternative.

The 2008 bank bailouts were extraordinary raids on the public purse around the world and at every turn we were told that there was no alternative.

The monetary system that none of us voted for, no-one asked us about and that very few of us profited from, had collapsed and only a huge infusion of public money could fix it – so our ‘elected representatives’ meekly handed over huge infusions of public money and that was that (for now)

TINA is everywhere.

TINA says…

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* No alternative to bank bonuses (even when the bank is owned by the tax payer!)

* No alternative to bank bailouts

* No alternative to austerity

* No alternative to lower wages, longer hours, less job security, higher house prices, higher rents, more privatisation, less rights for working people.

* No alternative to food banks, payday loan companies, galloping inequality, corporate tax evasion, tax cuts for the rich.

* No alternative to neoliberal polices from any of the major parties, no alternative to neo-classical economic theory.

* No alternative to environmental degradation, no alternative to fracking, climate change and consumerism.

* No alternative to endless growth in a finite world (until collapse is upon us)

* No alternative to the corporate capture of our institutions and democratic process.

* No alternative to plutocracy, corporate domination of the media.

* No alternative to the suppression of dissent, the mass surveillance of the people.

* No alternative to costly and / or illegal wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The list of things we are obliged to swallow in the name of TINA is staggering.

and the amazing thing is – TINA is one big pack of lies.

There ARE alternatives to all of these things and its time we stopped allowing TINA to dominate and ruin our lives.

But where to start? Its all such a mess!

Well I can help.

Because one thing connects all of these things – MONEY – and if we insist on an alternative to the existing monetary system then the Iron Curtain like solidity of  TINA will come tumbling down just as surely as the Berlin Wall did. 

TINA loves the current finger pointing and the blame game – because somehow the true architect of our economic woes  is never mentioned – the monetary system itself.

Blame government spending, blame greedy banking, blame the foolish public and their ‘addiction’ to debt. This culture of blame is unproductive and misleading, since it directs action towards things that will make no real difference.

Like the blood and plasma that sustains our bodies our economies and societies urgently need a massive blood transfusion of less poisonous money – what we urgently need is money that is NOT CREATED as interest bearing DEBT..

over 97% of all money in circulation today was created by private banks as debt.

Overdrafts, mortgages, credit cards or any other form of credit, this money is not lent, but created out of thin air. It is recorded as both an asset and a liability on the bank’s balance sheet and, hence, the banks say that they have not created any money. But we spend this digital credit every single day on everything we need.

This is not the ‘common sense’ understanding that most of us have about money .  Most of us imagine naively that for banks to loan money they have to have money to loan – but this is not true at all.

Money doesn’t lead to loans, loans leads to money.

Not only do private banks determine how much new money gets created, they also decide where it goes.

Of all the credit created by commercial banks prior to the financial crash of 2008, only 8% got invested in the productive economy, the other 92% got pumped into financial speculation and asset purchases.

Do you understand housing bubbles now?  

Oh, and the boom and bust cycles (that Gordon Brown claimed to have eliminated) are simply the consequence of the money supply expanding and contracting as debt is created and repaid. 

In boom times, banks hand out new credit far quicker than people pay off old debts, leading to an increase in the money supply. In bust times, banks are reluctant to lend and so people pay off old debt quicker than they can take on new debt, leading to a reduction in the money supply.

This highlights the paradox at the heart of a credit-based money supply. The only way we can get more money is to take on more debt, and so the seeds of its downfall are sown at inception.

and it is this monetary system that underpins all of the spectacular gains made by the richest people in the world over the rest of us.

This is why they tell us there is no alternative.

We have created a monetary system that is systemically corrupt, inefficient , stupid and devoid of any democratic control or oversight.

We have a monetary system in which endless debt cycles and crisis are inevitable – then we are told that there is no alternative to debt cycles and crisis – neat trick huh? 

It is inevitably the poorest who end up with the rawest deal with this debt based money.

Any money earned goes first to paying off debt. This removes their money from the real economy, money that they could otherwise have spent with businesses in their community and further afield, and thus we have a vicious circle.

There is a systemic funnelling of money from the poor to the rich. Indeed, you need to reach well into the 99th percentile of people as ranked by income earned before you find someone who earns more interest than they pay.

Quelle surprise aye readers!

But hey guys I have good news, really great news – THERE IS AN ALTERNATIVE!! 

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Money is a social construct. It is something we create and, thus, it is something we can create differently.

Digital money, internet banking and deregulation have allowed the banking sector to exploit a loophole in the law by creating digital money instead of printing paper money, this loophole could be easily closed by simple legislation.

In addition, there are already fully-formed proposals of alternative monetary and banking systems on the table.

Get over to my good friends at Positive Money and see a brighter future without debt money right there in front of you.

James Robertson has some fantastic proposals for seigniorage reform you can read here

These alternative monetary systems would bring money creation back under democratic control, yep OUR CONTROL – fancy that!

they would also change our very relationship with money and with each other. Instead of asking ‘how can I make money?’, the question would become ‘what can I make with my money?’.

That sounds like the recipe for a much better society to me.

If we ever hope to defeat TINA and all the bad things we seem obliged to swallow without complaint or enquiry, then we must control how our money gets created and where it gets spent.

Change the monetary system, change the world – defeat TINA

because there is an alternative! 

(The Haze is indebted to an article originally written by Michael Taylor, and commissioned by Fabrica Art Gallery, Brighton.  – it inspired me and I borrowed some loose structure from the middle of it and some text from it – you can read the article here)