Marx cackling in his grave?

Published by Robert Brown on July 24, 2008 under Misc

More doom and gloom on Radio 4 on the way to work last week - Centrica who own British Gas have announced that average annual gas bills could raise to £1000 a year - an increase of 60%.

As oil have risen, gas which is an immediate product of crude oil has had to walk in step. To be honest its been a long time coming - follow the money - oil and gas company shares have not historically walked in step with the price of crude for a few years, as this graph shows:

It was only a matter of time before the utility companies started putting up .

This is all happening at the same time as the credit crunch starts taking hold - there are some estimates that house could dip by 30% and stay there for 20 years! More conservative estimates talk of a four year gap until they reach 2007 levels.

Will the banks learn their lessons? Will sub-prime mortgages be consigned to the past as a silly un-prudent idea, never to be repeated?

As repossessions continue, we could see houses being sold only to the cash rich, leaving less and less people in control of more and more property - we’ll become a nation of renters and a tiny minority of landlords. If it really goes tits-up we could even see those landlords falling foul of high interest rates and rising costs, with more nationalisation of banks to prevent the economy collapsing.

I sit here working, earning more than I have ever done before, yet find myself with less and less disposable income. I work to keep myself in just enough comfort to continue working.

Why does this all sound familiar?

The
worker becomes all the poorer the more wealth he produces, the more his production
increases in power and range. The worker becomes an ever cheaper commodity the more
commodities he creates. With the increasing value of the world of things proceeds
in direct proportion to the devaluation of the world of men. Labour produces not
only commodities; it produces itself and the worker as a commodity — and does so
in the proportion in which it produces commodities generally.

Marx - Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts (1844)