Dependency culture versus bonus culture
Posted on Friday 21 August, 2009
Filed Under Society
APPARENTLY there are at least 164 definitions of the word ‘culture’, according to one 1950s tome on anthropology that was well-known in its day. But in current popular British usage, the term conjurs up a notion of an internally coherent set of beliefs that justify given social arrangements to participants within a particular social structure.
That must be why the systematic trend to towards paying astronomical rewards to selected players in the financial services sector has become elevated into something called ‘bonus culture’. The suggestion here is of some kind of permanence, regularity and legitimation.
By elevating current City practice to the status of a bona fide culture, we are implicitly saying we should leave well alone . It’s a banker thing, baby, you wouldn’t understand.
The logic works in the same direction as when applied to ethnic minorities, giving rise to occasions when many on the left find themselves – uneasily or otherwise – defending practices they would regard as sexist or homophobic in other contexts.
On the other hand, the concept of ‘dependency culture’ has for several decades now been a mainstay of rightwing attacks on the welfare state as conceived by social democracy.
The idea here is that living on benefits destroys any desire to escape from poverty or to seek work, with claimants becoming accustomed to the state providing for them. This concept can usefully be augmented with the argument that the rest of us are footing the bill through taxation. Put the two together and you have a potent ideological weapon in the hands of the right.
The idea that the real underlying problem is the poverty of the unemployed, single parents and benefit-dependent pensioners, and that such poverty is generated by capitalism as a system and not the welfare state, is a hard sell in the face of the constant propaganda barrage in the other direction.
Some magical alloy of legerdemain and chutzpah allows many of the biggest critics of dependency culture simultaneously to get away with boosterism and apologies for bonus culture.
Banks have to attract the best people, don’t they? That bloke over there only looks like a parasite; the reality is that he is a wealth creator, and you should be thoroughly ashamed of your lack of gratitude.
Total bonuses to those in financial services reached £7.6bn in the five-month period between December 2008 and April 2009, which is regarded as the peak season. But in back of an envelope terms, you can double that figure for the full year, and you come to a total considerably higher than the annual £11bn cost of jobseekers’ allowance.
This, after the insane risks undertaken by financial services professionals provided the catalyst for the worst economic crisis since the 1930s. Suddenly, the textbook concept of moral hazard looks very real. What possible incentive do they have not to do it all over again? But let’s not be too critical; it is their culture, after all.
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8 Responses to “Dependency culture versus bonus culture”
What has been totally mystifying to me has been the lack of a Left response to the bankers obscene and disasterous destructiopn of the economy and subsequent recession, job losses,etc, instead for example, they get 2000 people chasing 200 members of a party who are basically a benefactor of the above recession around a field in Codnor, wrong end of the telescope?
Frenetic is talking bollocks. The left have been all over these bankers bonuses.
And if he thinks we will ignore fascists he is sadly mistaken, Codnor and Birmingham are just a taste of what that scum can expect.
THAT IS A PROMISE.
I’ve worked from 1966 until 1990 when one day I went to work, woke up in hospital with a nurse telling me we might have to remove your legs.
The doctor came in and I said although I do not remember this, take my legs doctor and I’ll kill you. Mind you at the time I just broke through into top of the football in my area.
I woke up three days later after they kept me sleeping to see if my legs had to come off.
Now I joined in with Labours New Deal because Labour party office wanted to use me in some sort of advert, but my local jobs center and I failed to find a single job, the Labour party office phoned me called me a few ripe names and told me it would be best if I left the party which I did.
Since then I played father Christmas out side our Tesco, picked up litter, and did six weeks work for a large firm, in which I did nothing at all, I saw nobody, nobody spoke to me , when I left they asked did you enjoy that, once I finished telling them the security guard saw me off the place.
I’m not the only one, not to long ago I had a chance of finding work, now companies are worried that if things go wrong they cannot sack me, cannot get rid of me, all these laws have made impossible for a company to employ me for a year or two.
The DDA has made my life hell. labour has basically called me scrounger, work shy, you name it, all because if they can place me onto JSA they will save millions in benefits and I’ll be one step closer to abject poverty
James are you a member of that failing sect the SWP, have you read ythe replies to your leaders piece in the guardian, quite a laugh and while you are at it, read Kieron Gillans piece in Red Pepper: ‘give up anti-fascism’
“Depedency Culture”. This bollocks has been swallowed wholesale by just about every fucking pundit and mainstream party in this country. I have NEVER EVER met someone who enjoyed depending on the Social for anything and I personally shudder at the thought that I may have to one day.
And for all these bleating fuckfaces in the right wing tosspapers that bang on about ‘dependency culture’ ad nauseam I can only say: a)fuck off! and b)why not create an economy which provides work for all that’s actually worth getting out of bed for?
I’ll be waiting for their reply with baited breath.
Not.
The word ‘dependency’ raises all sorts of questions. Who depends on whom exactly? Who exists truly independent of anyone else? Most ordinary people depend on the weekly or monthly pay packet. They often resent this situation that subordinates them to the will of someone else. The boss depends on his workers turning up on time and getting on with the job. Resentment sets in. The common dream involves winning the lottery so that you don’t need to be dependent in this fashion.
” they get 2000 people chasing 200 members of a party who are basically a benefactor of the above recession around a field in Codnor ..”
To the average Joe, a working definition of fascism is the suppression of dissent by violence – I know the lefties can come up with a booklist of 100 European philosophers etc they feel we should read before we glibly use the ‘fascism’ (unless we’re just doing what we’re told), but that in itself is an indicator as to why the BNP has MEPs and the ‘left’ doesn’t. YAWN. Let’s just say that there is more of a democratic mandate (i.e.none) for 2000 BNP chasing 200 Anti-nazis round a field than vice versa, and some (yes, me!) might draw conclusions about who are the most dangerous fascists.
But yes, Frenetic was wrong about the rest.
Good post, Dave, by the way.
Easier said than done.