‘Don’t just do something – stand there!’
Occasionally, as a practicing Buddhist, I visit a Zen Buddhist temple in Northumbria for a few days. And when I visit I, like all visitors and monks, do my part of the daily work in the monastery: cleaning; helping in the kitchen; outdoor work; sewing. The most busy time is after meals, when volunteers are asked for to do kitchen clean-up. As you can imagine, people are keen to muck in, so quite often more people turn up than there are jobs to be done.
At first, when I found myself surplus to requirements I would just leave the kitchen. Later on, I realised that if I just stood to one side for a few minutes, pretty soon there would be another wave of busy-ness, and others would be glad I was there, ready to help. I was reminded of this when I discussed furlough with a friend the other day. Although we have mutual friends who have been furloughed, they nevertheless felt uneasy about the idea, as if paying people to stay at home is somehow unnatural or dangerous.
But actually, furloughed workers are an essential part of the response to the pandemic – that is to say, they’re not only receivers of an essential payment – they are also performing an essential role in society. First, by staying at home, they are staying safe and keeping others safe from the virus. Second, by accepting the payment, they are looking after themselves and their families, at a time when the welfare system cannot cope with the consequences of individual financial ruin. Third, by spending money they are helping other workers and businesses to stay in business. And finally, by remaining available to return to work in the same jobs, they are safeguarding the hard-won productivity that comes from their experience in their roles. Because one of the most destructive aspects of an economic crisis is the human potential for usefulness that is wasted when people are forced to leave jobs they are good at.
The affordability question
It’s been suggested that the furlough payments, especially during the first lockdown, were too generous and that we can’t afford it. Perhaps they could have been slightly lower – certainly not a great deal, or furloughed workers would have been forced to leave their jobs, defeating the point of the scheme. But the affordability of all this debt is a tricky question. I know very little about macroeconomics (the large-scale economics of the entire country, as opposed to the small-scale economics of an individual or firm), and feel that the more I learn, the less I know. But both the government and the opposition, and quite a few commenters, seem to believe that the national debt is at least affordable, in the sense that repayments (or future taxes) won’t ruin us. This doesn’t necessarily mean spending that money is a good idea. But I think it’s necessary, and like any good investment, will pay for itself many times over in the long run.
But there is one little piece of insight that I find useful – or perhaps ‘anti-insight’ would be better, because it’s not an insight about what the national finances are, rather about what they are not. The national finances are not anything like a household’s finances, and the consequences of a country spending money, are nothing like the consequences of an individual or a family spending money. But that’s a thread to unravel in a different post.