Business As Usual

I couldn't sleep (as usual - at least late night radio is somewhat interesting) and on the radio was Labour's latest proposal: double the duration for paid paternity leave to 4 weeks. Innocuous enough, you might think, but of course the voice of Big Business would not be silent. The BBC (for it was they) were ready with a quote from tedious toad faced free market apologist Mark Littlewood (he's another non entity from another capitalist think tank). His cry of wolf was that the cost would have to be passed on to someone somewhere, either cutting the workforce or dumping on to the consumer. This is despite Labour qualifying the idea explaining that it is paid centrally, from government.

Well so fucking what? Going along with Capital's straw man, as set out by Littlewood, if your profit has to take a hit in order to meet the needs of a human being in your employ: so what? It's an extra two weeks, this is not gonig to be something that happens 365 days a year for all time for everyone. 

Oh but won't someone please think of the profit line? Why? Profit is supposed to be that which a business makes on top of its costs. Turnover minus costs = profit; isn't that correct? So why is profit so important. As far as I can tell it's so you can ultimately sell your business in an act of loyalty - the kind you demand from your workfroce - so you can spend your days sitting pretty in the sun. No social good at all. 

Someone will claim that, through this convoluted nonsense, people's pensions are funded. But that is only because that's the way the market has been rigged. That's how the rich and powerful that run capitalist societies (like HSBC for instance - who will doubtless get away with their tax evasion crimes) stack the deck. In ohter words, it doesn't have to be that way and thus it is unfair to deflect valid criticism accordingly.

The only argument left is the special pleading from small business. The problem here is that, yes, a case can be made in favour of small business in such cases; it's an easy example to make because it sets up capital as the underdog. The reality is that these entities, while they might technically be businesses, are really no different than the people I'm defending: the workers, the poor, those who do not have the capacity or the resource to fight their corner in the market (never mind the rigged market that is capitalism). To regard Mr Smith who runs the Local Business Shop as a fully paid up member of UK PLC - as someone who has a voice among the ruling classes or any real authority - is a mistake. He is no better off and suffers the same economic and systemic depredations as the working man in the labour market. Just because he runs a Local Business Shop is immaterial.

So clearly the message is: if you're working class, you shouldn't breed.