Budget 2015

[cloudsinvenice]

Well, today was the Budget. I've been very lucky today; the changes they're making don't shaft me, though they do a hell of a lot of other people. I've got friends who aren't sure yet how they're going to be affected - we're still trying to clarify, for example, whether contribution-based ESA will behave in the same way as regular ESA under the

Comments

[j_okay]

Something I've been thinking about for the last couple of years is the fact that we're living through history, but history is often recorded in a biased way
Yes! Sometimes I get so overwhelmed thinking of how mad the world's gone that I imagine that, sometime in the future, our current times will be viewed as a period of market-obsessed delusion and inhumanity. I hope future generations will marvel at how wealthy nations blithely let vulnerable people suffer, and how so many people stayed wed to irrationality despite having good information and useful thoughts so widely available.

But yes, it's barely worth hoping unless we try to document and disseminate these experiences.

[cloudsinvenice]

I would hope so too, and certainly the indications are that they will, when they remember - we marvel at the Nazi period, at slavery... but yes, "when they remember and the culture does not engage in a wilful forgetting" is huge in relation to both these and other issues.

I thought this was an interesting take on austerity as a choice, and how countries have fared after not going down that route: http://www.theguardian.com/business/ng-interactive/2015/apr/29/the-austerity-delusion

[mrbumblepants]

Living through history sucks so much more than I thought it would when I was a kid.

[cloudsinvenice]

God, yes. :(