The British Mirage

The British economy is largely a mirage. If you look too close it will disappear. Behind every loan there is another loan. A three-month rent or mortgage strike by half of Britain's poor would bring down all the banks and almost everything else with it. 

Everything else? What else is left after the big Tory divvy-up? 

When there is more money to be made by ripping out machines and voting yourself a bonus than by putting men to work; and when that money is invested either in luxury flats or commercial real estate rack-rented to fashion brand outlets and all of it leveraged to the rafters you are heading for a nation not of shopkeepers but one divided between loan-strapped landlords looking for renters and the homeless unemployed who can't afford to rent. 

Any government, left or right, will have to come to the rescue of the former by coming to the rescue of the latter, in order to rescue the banks who are hostages to the former. 

Hope that makes sense. 

Because it clearly doesn't. 

The former will be doubly gratified because with the rent money received they can lend to the government at interest (to help pay their own loans) so the govt can afford the social programs which include helping the poor with the rent. 

This hollowing out of the economy can only accelerate with AI and robotics replacing productive labour. 

Two of my friends here in France, whose job and only skill is sexing newly hatched chicks, have been put on notice that their job can now be done by a machine. It might even be an app. 

Some investor made a bomb on that and is spending it in a tropical paradise. 

I won't try to paint Corbyn as a saviour because I think the time for saving England has passed, but if he can walk back some of the damage done to England by Reaganomics and Thatcherism, then hats off to the man. 

Milton Friedman, the Iron Lady's guru, was also adviser to Augusto Pinochet - lest we forget.