Recent Developments in Plymouth Highlights the Problems in Society

JAKE DAVIDSON - One cannot draw too many conclusions from one specific case, but no doubt the feelings of hopelessness experienced by this young man Jake Davidson that drove him to carry out a violent ‘spree killing’ can be partly understood.

All thankfully in similar circumstances will not react in the same way and we must be very careful not to conclude anything from a single very isolated and rare case. Davidson's actions should not be categorized as normal.

Currently, many young people are trapped living at home either workless or in low-paid jobs, unable to afford to move out. This can create simmering bitterness and ill-feeling between siblings and their parents. The Tory planned cuts to benefits will only make matters worse. Youth unemployment is officially around 10% however unemployment figures do not reflect the full picture, or the individual suffering that accompanies them.

House prices have been driven upwards by Quantitative Easing, printing money. The world economy was facing a massive crash in March 2020, and this could lead to deflation. Deflation is when prices fall and people withhold purchases because what they are planning to buy now, could become cheaper in the future. Modest inflation of some 2% is what economists feel is optimal.

Miraculously Covid arrived to save the day(!) economically at least. The world economy has spluttered along since the 2008 Great Recession. During the Covid crisis, governments printed money on a vast scale. In America, people on low wages found they were getting more money on the stimulus packages provided by the US government than they were in work.

If you want to change society create a crisis. In the 1980s Japan’s economy was still run as a war economy. It was a system called ‘Window Guidance’. In a war economy, the government decides what needs to be produced and will amalgamate companies to achieve optimal outputs. The government will decide the amount of profit a firm makes on its sales.

The Japanese government decided via the Ministry of Finance what industries to stimulate and directed finance and loans accordingly. The US wanted the economy to change to one of the free markets where US banks and speculators could come into the Japanese economy as investors. To initiate change a huge ‘bubble’ was created by Japan’s Central Bank flooding money into the economy.

In economics the amount of money in an economy equals the number of goods and services sold, - so if you increase the money supply but not the amount of output the value of money falls and prices rise. The US managed a fantastic trick after WW2. They had the US Dollar made the world's reserve currency at Bretton Woods. Many commodities are traded in US dollars. So, the US could increase the number of dollars in circulation without seeing a fall in the value of the currency as more money was demanded. This was called the Petrodollar system. In 1971 President Nixon disconnected the link between the value of Gold [the Gold Standard] and increased the number of dollars in circulation to fight the Vietnam War (approximately by 30%). This ultimately led to very high inflation in the 1970's. The value of money fell.

If this money (profits) in US dollars was repatriated to Japan (for argument's sake) a country that was producing cheap goods, it would be converted into yen. Buying yen to buy Japanese goods would force up the price of yen, so Japanese goods would become more expensive and less competitive. So countries producing cheap goods started keeping their $ money made from sales in UK and in Europe. This created the Eurodollar market eventually, where a pool of US dollars was kept in Europe, the City of London for example.

To create a crisis to bring about change far more money was pumped into the property market in Japan in the 1980s than was needed. The price of property skyrocketed. The Emperors Garden in Tokyo was worth more than the whole of Canada and worth more than all the land in California.

When ABC founder Simon Collyer visited Japan in 1989, he found that a pint of beer in the Giza business district cost £100 and the entrance to a nightclub the same. A flat would cost over £6,000 a month in rent.

A huge crash followed, and then major reforms. Lifetime employment working for one company was no longer guaranteed and hidden away at the recent Tokyo Olympics were Japan’s homeless. Japan has experienced a period of deflation and low economic growth since its economic bubble burst in the early 1990s
The US and the World Bank and the IMF repeated these actions in countries such as Thailand and Indonesia in 2002. Indonesia is cited as the place globalization started following a very bloody and violent civil war.

Before Covid and since 2010 and the great recession the world economy has spluttered along while the world population has continued to grow. The wealth created is having to be shared amongst a greater number of people. Information technology has made it possible for those at the top to hoover up the wealth that is being created leaving those at the bottom relatively poorer. Poorest of all in the developed world are those on state benefits such as those in the UK who are faced with their incomes being slashed by £20 a week as the Universal Credit uplift is cancelled, which will make it impossible to live.

Women have sought equal rights which is perfectly understandable. However, the benefits system has enabled women to manage without men. Bringing up children is no longer a team effort. Once inseminated, women can manage without men, and they can solicit an income from the state to live independently.

Women, it is argued by some, have all the bargaining chips.

Housing policy in the UK under the Tories has benefitted wealthy landlords. 60% of the Conservative front bench make their money from the rental income. Driving up house prices suits the banks because they need security for asset-backed loans, but for ordinary young people, a place to live they can own or even rent is a fading dream.

Unemployed and economic failures in a world that celebrates wealth, some women are showing they can manage without men. Female assertiveness has been on the rise in general. Tattoos, drunkenness, and foul language feature on our streets as part of the ‘night-time economy’ as it is called. There’s a whole generation of young men from the UK to Tokyo locked away in bedrooms seeing the world only through the lens of the Internet and they will never have the intimacy that comes from a personal relationship with a member of the opposite sex.

Jake Davidson will be cited as an oddball and a ‘loser’ and someone mentally ill, but the fact is we all come from somewhere and the society and times he was living in may have been a factor that shaped his actions.

ABC Note: If you feel unwell, seek help. Many organizations can help and there is no shame in asking. If you feel desperate the Samaritans can be contacted here: 0330 094 5717. You may feel your situation is unique, but the tragedy is there are lots of people suffering it is not only you.

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