Prudence is futile

Laban on Labour's Weimar impression. Labour specialised in the sleight-of-hand of saying one thing while practising the complete opposite, e.g.

"Tough on crime" while being ludicrously lenient
"Tough on immigration" while having an open borders policy
"Education, education, education" while presiding over a system which became designed to do anything but educate.

This time, it is the untruth that prudence is a virtue. Of course, in the real, sane and just world prudence is not only a virtue but is essential. An economy which consumes on credit and doesn't save is one destined for disaster. For years Labour have lied blithely about how they are prudent, and on the side of prudent people, while engineering the biggest credit splurge in history.

So, what happens when you combine a large enough demographic who have effectively bankrupted themselves with their reckless financial incontinence, a democracy and the most venal group of politicians in this country's history? You get a government which tailors policy to suit the reckless, because there are more votes in it, and f*ck the prudent. They can easily be rebranded as wealthy 'kulaks' and demonised.

Laban's example of the pensioner who saved for his retirement is absolutely typical. To assume that this man gets a rate of return of 10% NET (not even gross!) of his savings is insane. To have got a return like that you would have had to invest in DodgyBank Inc. registered on an island somewhere in the Atlantic. You would have lost your money and cheerily been branded reckless by the same government which is clawing back the money you are entitled to (of course, if you were a public sector institution things would be different, but that is another story).

This is one of the one million disincentives against saving for your retirement or 'a rainy day'. The improvident get rewarded; the prudent get nothing. Some of these disincentives are explicit, like this one, others are 'signals' like the government plundering private pensions to pay Trotskyites in the public sector, or printing more money to reward the reckless. The only way this pensioner can get the money he spent 40, 50 years paying taxes to get is to blow his savings.

I have often wondered how people could have lived through the 70s, 80s, 90s, and 00s without saving a penny, even though that period saw the greatest prosperity this country has ever enjoyed. But the reality is, every signal from the government told them loudly and clearly that they would be a fool to do so.