I'm all right Jack — what if this is as good as it gets?

ONE of my most memorable movie moments features Jack Nicholson in As Good as it Gets. Jack's character, the obsessive-compulsive curmudgeon Melvin Udall, turns to a group of neurotics in a therapist's waiting room and maliciously asks, 'What if this is as good as it gets?' Given that all of them are there in the hope of being cured of whatever ails them (Carl Jung maintained neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering), the fallout couldn't have been greater had Melvin lobbed in a hand grenade among them. The thought of their neurosis being permanent, not a temporary condition to be fixed by a few happy pills and a well-remunerated ear, escalates their anxiety to a whole different level.[private] And right now Joe Public bears more than a passing similarity to Jack's shell-shocked companions. We're sitting, waiting, eyeing up our fellow patients and wondering if their condition is acute, chronic or benign. We can endure the treatment as long as the man behind the desk tells us we're improving. As long as there's hope. But what if this is as good as it gets? We've been fed all the turned-the-corner and light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel twaddle; have been repeatedly told that the 'heavy lifting' is done. Growth will return and we will get back to normal, in the world according to Noonan. But what's normal? Can we be honest enough to admit that the normal we're yearning for was never normal? â€â€ It was a crazy aberration. Normal is not an economy so out of control that those who should have been dampening it down instead threw petrol on the flames and hoped the fire would flame forever. Normal is not the cutting of the link between income and spending for those who work for a living. Cheap and free-flowing credit was the scalpel used to perform the operation, which was a spectacular but short-lived success, because the patient died. Normal? Would we know it if we saw it? Our Government is busy peddling the myth that if we put up with austerity for a few more years, the boom will return. It's an inconvenient little truth, however, that our prosperity wasn't based on this nation of brave, lovable little leprechauns taking on the business world. All credit to the many outstanding entrepreneurs among us, but this little island was never going to be the next Hong Kong. The latest international survey of our much-vaunted education system exposes the lie of Ireland having the best-educated workforce in the solar system. According to a report last Sunday, we're not even close and we're dropping like a stone. Our multinationals â€â€ inhabited by those kingpins the Government kept happy in last week's Budget by refusing to impose a heftier USC on earnings over €100k, instead giving the carers and Child Benefit a whack â€â€ say they are getting fed up of having to cope with the semi-literates churned out by our colleges. They're even stating that their offshore operations here may have to import their workers in the future, which says something about the gratitude of such companies for the favourable tax and investment breaks they've received from the Irish taxpayer, but just as much about an education system that siphons off over 80 per cent of the education budget to featherbed those working in it and expects the detritus to fund everything in between, from Montessori for infants to research PhDs. I wonder what the ratio is in India, China or even Germany? Where do we think the next generation of multinationals will be based? But let's continue fooling ourselves because to paraphrase Jack Nicholson as Colonel Nathan R Jessup in another great movie, A Few Good Men â€â€ we can't handle the truth. Despite our Great Crash, society seems such a quaint, out-dated term nowadays. It smacks of socialism and that old-fashioned notion of 'the common good'. Margaret Thatcher saved us from all that meitheal nonsense in the 80s when she told us there was 'no such thing as society', just individual men, women and families. Even before the www age the concept went viral. It was every man and woman for themselves and those who couldn't make the party could make do with the scraps. This utterly failed experiment has brought the world to its knees, yet we're still dancing to the same tune. Our economy was built on a foundation of dirt-cheap credit, which was laid in the US after WWII and exported to Europe via the Marshall Plan and the original EEC. And while some countries regulated the flow of cash, we dug in. We didn't create an economic miracle; we didn't even create a working economy. We just borrowed more money than just about any other country had ever done before. And that's the truth. And if we don't face up to that and really start tackling the issues standing in the way of building a real economy this time, we'll be a long time standing in the dunce's corner. â€Â¢ â€Â¢ â€Â¢ Finding the lost generation WE hear a lot about the 'lost generation', with those under the age of 30 bearing the brunt of job losses and severely curtailed expectations. But this downturn is squeezing everyone â€â€ isn't it? Or is that just another of those myths that stalk our land? What about the 'I'm all right Jack' sector of our society? Yes, €1 on the bottle of Bordeaux might be irritating â€â€ but pull on the green jersey, and all that. You see those inside the fence have a strong vested interest in maintaining the status quo. The last thing they want is that the growing numbers of disenfranchised might cop on to the 'con job' being done on them. These insiders dominate politics, the public service, the law, the media and almost any job or profession worth having. They have most to lose if the masses discover the Emperor has no clothes and no answers for them. But they do have answers for themselves, mostly along the lines of keep the show on the road and hog the cake for as long as possible. Why on earth should they be inconvenienced by a further 3 per cent USC or a cut to a boom-time salary? They're already in the lifeboat; those left in the water can swim â€â€ or sink. They'll just have to show some initiative (in Australia, most likely) think outside the box (plenty of room for that in Canada), find a plank to cling to (at the dole office) and woe betide those with any ideas of climbing into the lifeboat and putting the officers at risk. But somewhere at the back of the insiders' minds, there's the faint echo of an alarm bell ringing. Maybe it's the slowly dawning realisation that if too many continue to be denied a sustainable future, they may decide to radically change the present. We've allowed â€â€ encouraged â€â€ a lop-sided economy and society to evolve in which comfortably off middle-aged and older people, those in work or on cushy pensions and those with their mortgages paid, now inhabit a different world to so many younger people struggling to get a foothold on life's ladder and to older generations who are just struggling. We should be viewing the 20-somethings with envy for all the opportunities and experiences they have before them, their fledgling careers, the excitement of buying their first home, the great blank sheet of life. Instead they're talked about as the 'lost generation'. Maybe our leaders are right and all will be well after a few more austerity budgets. But if, as the psychologists say, past behaviour is the best predictor of future performance, I wouldn't give their assurances much credence. Maybe the truth is that the guarantee that economic growth and prosperity will return is simply a lie propagated by the leaders on one side of the great divide to keep the other side compliant and docile. In Britain the Chancellor is talking of five more years of austerity in a country far less of a basket case than ours. Japan has been in economic limbo for two decades now. The US is one big Ponzi scheme. But we're going to outgrow the German economy, avoid a second bailout and be back on the road to prosperity by 2016. Right. When I was young we clung to the ideas outlined in EF Schumacher's wonderful book Small is Beautiful, the inherent British decency of Keynes or even the impenetrable, ideological muddle that is Marxism. We were searching for a better way back then. We had hope, naive in many respects, for sure, but hope nonetheless. And we got it, or at least my crowd did â€â€ if things had to change, we had to change them. When the penny finally drops that the illusion of growth is the great delusion of our time, that maybe this really is as good as it's ever going to get for many and that The Shopping Channel and twitter aren't the apex of our ideological evolution â€â€ then we'll really be in at the start of something big. â€Â¢ â€Â¢ â€Â¢ Quote of the Week 'Isn't it just like Jesus to be born on Christmas morning.' â€â€ Spike Milligan[/private]