How to be poor

economy refused
to work. We must be all fed up hearing about monetarism and other isms, and
even more fed up of listening to politicians who advocate the right remedies in
opposition, after mucking up all their chances when they were in power. They
advocate old and discredited methods and people, amazingly, believe them. The
truth is that in a bad run we must have either unemployment, or
inflation, or a feeble currency, or very high interest rates — in other words
we may get rid of one evil to introduce another and usually worse, one.

    But all this changes when things are
going well. And the end of recession is coming soon. It is not in sight yet but
it is coming. What are the proofs of it? There are no other proofs except that
everything comes to an end some time and that includes recessions.
    My stepfather was a very busy doctor
in Budapest, with a vast private practice. He was a devoted and caring man and
quite a few patients swore that he was a miracle-healer. Once I asked him if he
really was a miracle-healer, a wonder-doctor?
    “Nonsense,” he replied. “I try my
best, I can say that much with a good conscience. But, you see, one of two
things happens to all sick people, whether they are treated by a doctor or not.
The patient will either die or get better. There are a large number of people —
among those who do not die — who rush from one doctor to another. They leave
ten doctors in disgust and get better when in the care of the eleventh. They
would get better even without any medical care at all, but they don’t know
that. If I happen to be that eleventh doctor who looks after them when they get
better, I am a miracle-healer; if I am the fifth or the eighth, then I am an
incompetent fool like the rest.”
    It is exactly the same with the
economy. It will get better one day, with the help of — or in spite of — monetarism.
The economy is a patient who cannot afford to die, so it will survive. If it
survives it will improve. Whatever government will be in power at that crucial
moment, will claim full credit; that government will be the miracle-healer,
however incompetent it may be. And due credit will be given.
    No cycle lasts forever, so that day
is coming. And it will be a dangerous day. When the State ceases to be poor,
the attraction of poverty will fade. That will be the time when the noble, idle
poor must stand steadfast, must summon up their courage to continue despising
riches, must really work at the enduring pleasures which come from being something,
not from having something.

Inflation

     
    A friend of
mine picked up a 1 2 ½p stamp from the lawn at Hurlingham
Club, examined it and noticed that it was unused.
     “It must
be my lucky day,” he remarked.
    “Indeed,” I said. “It’s half a
crown.”
    We both agreed that when one speaks
of “half a crown” it sounds like an awful lot of money. Soon we were talking of
the good old days, of the era of the half-crown. I recalled that on my very
first day in London I met a Hungarian Captain of the Hussars in my boarding
house who, without much ado, borrowed half a crown from me. He told me to
accompany him to the fishmonger’s where he bought a dozen oysters for the
money. “A dozen oysters for half a crown!” I emphasised the point.
    My friend was not impressed. His
father, he told me, was born in 1882, so he was a young man at the turn of the
century. In 1900 he used to go to a restaurant, eat a dozen oysters for
sixpence, drink a glass of stout for 2d and then go to a music hall for a shilling.
A wonderful evening, and he took home tenpence change from half a crown. (For
younger readers to whom this is all double-Dutch, I should explain that the
whole evening, oysters, stout and music hall, cost less than 9p).
    To a man who lived in London in the days of the Napoleonic wars, this would probably have looked like mad
extravagance. In those days, I am sure, you could travel to Manchester and back
for ninepence. This is an endless story and, no doubt, will remain an endless
story.

    A hundred years from now, people will
tell nostalgic tales about the cheapness of living in the nineteen-eighties.
“Believe it or not, in 1983 you could get quite a good dinner for £25....” —
“In those days people were complaining — actually complaining! — when their
quarterly electricity bill went up to £600.”
    Inflation is a menace and economists
are helpless to deal with it. It is only the poor who know how to deal with
inflation.