Hard work never hurt anyone...

But then it never did them much good either.

The news that Nigel Farage is paid so much because he has always “worked hard”. Is just the latest inn a long line of similar claims by millionaires and billionaires.

It just goes to show that if you prepare a favourable zeitgeist you have almost won the battle before it begins. Endless stories sponsored by billionaire, tax dodging media owners, means we have been told for decades that the key to riches is to work hard.

This is, of course, utter tosh. If working hard made you rich coal miners would have done the odd extra shift to buy a second luxury yacht, my road sweeper would have retired to his mansion in the South of France year’s ago and single parents holding down 3 jobs would be living in tax exile to save their billions from HMRC.

But the fable is necessary to justify Conservative economic and social policies. If hard work makes you rich, the poor must just be lazy, idle and feckless. It is the logical conclusion.

If hard work makes you rich we should reward it more and give tax cuts to those bothered to get off their arses and put in the hard hours, but not those working 60 hours a week in a warehouse. No, they are not working hard enough, because if they were they would be rich.

All of this is the necessary ground work before you can slash benefits, roll back the state, force the ill into work, and introduce trickle down economics.

People get rich because they inherit wealth or come up with a great idea, run a company, move money around the world’s economic system or find a niche in a market and exploit it. All important things and I am sure they put in the hours but they did not get rich by working hard.

They got rich by working better in an economic system that enables and rewards risk taking and entrepreneurship.

But if they want to impose their wishes on the rest of us, if they want even lower taxes and cheaper workers, they have to lie about how they got where they are.

They first have to persuade us all that we are just not working hard enough.

It is a con.

Jonty’s Jottings

Economics, trade and Brexit, not necessarily in that order but the dog always comes first.

By Jonty Bloom Media