Not Getting Richer

STOP PRESS, CHICKEN LICKEN! The sky is falling! Oh my God, we're not getting richer! Forget about floods in Vietnam, child-stealing in China, the dodginess of local council services - this is important!!!

For too long we have allowed ourselves to be distracted from what's really important by piddling little issues like party politics, international humanitarianism, and illegal wars over the oil supply. Now comes the reckoning. We've been getting richer year on year since the 1950s, and now WE'RE NOT. What a chastening thought. Just because we have too many cars in the cities to find space to park them, too many waste computing and electronics items to dispose of without shipping them to the other side of the world, and children who totter to school jingling with mobiles, MP3s, iPods, assorted silver chains and Playboy Bunny charms like so many Christmas trees put out in a stiff breeze, does not suggest by any stretch of a wild imagination that we might damn well have ENOUGH. Hell no.

If we don't carry on getting richer, what will become of us? Will children have to pay attention at school because they can no longer text their paramours in neighbouring classrooms? Might we start looking favourably on flower-growing and vegetable cultivation, in our tragic desperation? Might we have a greater inclination to hold conversations than vast vats of beer chugging contests? Could the housing market realign itself with incomes, so that nurses and firemen could afford to buy a roof over their hardworking heads? Maybe people would begin to eat vegetables and home cooking instead of Ready Meals and die later and with a lower amount of obesity and farting. Oh it is all too horrible to contemplate. Quick, how can we solve the problem?