variations on austerity

horsemouth is listening to robbie basho live at sinclair auditorium, leo kottke studies with basho then records a track called easter, it's a pretty thing basho admits, basho was revenged  in a track called variations on easter. even among the bearded writers of steel-stringed guitar soli there is envy and jealousy driving innovation.

yesterday afternoon horsemouth got that good sunlight into his flat, he read the copy of the ft left by his drop on thursday (still no stock worth picking) - the losses of 2008 have been made up (by whose labour?) and it's as if they never happened, except for the recommendation of austerity for the poor, strangely that's not over. and yet even more strangely the amount spent  by the government (out of taxation) on housing benefit to people in employment , the subsidy just to enable the workers to pay their rent, will soon stand at  5 billion a year. surely, in a 'functioning' economy,  this should be covered out of the workers wages paid by the capitalists? - and who benefits from this subsidy? the owners of the property (the rentier class) and the owners of the businesses (who get to pay less wages). of course nothing is so dangerous as being in bed with the government relying on their money and policy. it only takes some bright policy wonk to notice that a certain policy would be popular (even if actually unworkable) for it to be implemented with catastrophic results for the plebs and the low level rent seekers - take a look at the bedroom tax. 

... and then there's those zero hours contracts taking the risk out of employment (for the capitalists) - you've seen on the waterfront- pushing this risk (the need to get enough work) onto the employee. of course the new communications technologies make this easier, the  new spirit of capitalism  (being flexible and all that shit) migrates down the foodchain in a strange kind of race to the bottom as capitalism moves to shed what is unwieldy and inflexible to be a perpetual start-up,- or is it, isn't it just farming out the risk (whilst keeping a tight grip on the reward).

basho has a song based on a navaho chant  moving up a-ways about how spirit moves on up through the soil and the plants and the animals and the humans 'to the sun, we are one',but that isn't what's going on here.