Jobsworths and meaningless growth

What's not coming out in political debate - because far too much attention is being given to the pasty pastel parties and the 'past-times parties' (UKIP and BNP) - is that we are heading for disaster because of a toxic addiction to a version of 'economic growth' that doesn't understand what 'the economy' actually is, and doesn't understand the difference between 'good growth' and 'bad growth'. I mean, cancer's a growth.

They all think that 'the economy' is about money and jobs. No, the economy is about the distribution and sharing of resources to maintain and enhance quality of life for all.

Money can help that happen, but the worship of the golden calf, which The System has forcibly recruited most people into, has now brought the inevitable curse. Except for its high priests, that is.

A 'job' is work that you do when you help some employing organisation fulfil its own objectives. Some jobs are economically valuable (in the true sense) and rewarding. But many people hate their jobs and don't care tuppence about their employer's objectives which often entail producing pointless products and services, or (in Gordon Brown's constituency) weaponry, or (in the dangerous Disneyworld of finance) making money out of borrowed money out of borrowed money. Many live for the precious time they can grab with their families and doing the things they really love. Which often involve hard work!

Many people - I'm thinking of carers - are doing immensely valuable work which could actually be life-enhancing for them as well as the loved-ones they care for, if they weren't isolated and punished by The System because they don't have jobs. And in the 'leaders debate' the pastel parties agreed that they're scared of this issue - quite rightly, because their model of money-economy and jobs doesn't know how to handle it without immense and wasteful complexity.

The Green Party, on the other hand, with its Citizens' Income proposals inextricably linked with a whole lot of stuff about health care, transport and access, exchange of goods and services independently of the money system and so on have a handle on it because we're not blinded by The System and its insatiable appetite for meaningless 'growth'.

It's the difference between managerialism and practical vision.