Capitalism's success is a stick to beat the poor with

One of the under-lying topics of the benefits and living standards debates is about material possessions. 

Those who want to reduce the benefits bill by simply reducing benefits (as opposed to, say, getting people off poverty wages and more people into full-time work) will say that the poor can afford big tvs, smart phones, tablets etc, so they're obviously not really poor. Let's put aside the point that these possessions may have been bought when they were more affluent, and the fact that people need mobile phones if they're looking for work, and the fact that we all end up tied in to long contracts for phones, broadband etc. I'm going to concentrate on the reasons people might have such things.

Capitalism brought us materialism. Over the last 50 years, we have gradually been more and more bombarded by advertising, marketing, product placements etc and it’s still getting worse. Every celebrity endorsement, magazine cover, reality tv programme, bus, billboard, newspaper advert promotes a lifestyle we ought to seek out. We are constantly under pressure to have the latest styles, products and more and more stuff.

The hardest hit are often the poorest. People who have a good career can find status in that (and often that comes with a salary that means they can afford stuff if they want it) but those who don't might not want everyone to know their financial status. Anyone who has never been unable to afford the stuff we're told we need needs to try to understand how demoralising it is to silently display to the world that you’re too poor to buy new clothes or the latest technology.

What makes this even harder, is our children. Has Ian Duncan Smith ever tried to tell a 6-year old why the expensive trainers all his friends have are not necessary? Or why she can’t have the toy that her friends are getting for Christmas? It’s desperately sad that such young children care about such things but they do. A few months ago we had some friends over for dinner and they brought their children aged 6 and 5 with them. They hadn’t been to our flat since they were babies and they quickly set about comparing it to their house and their friends’ houses. Unfavourably (our modern-ish two bed flat could compete with their parents’ four-bed semi with a large back garden). They weren’t doing it to make us feel bad – they’re too young to realise that it’s not a nice thing to do – it’s clearly normal.

I remember vividly what it’s like to be a child at school with Mercury or Nicks trainers rather than Adidas or Nike. Or to get a new games console that’s 4 years old and inferior to the latest model that my friends had. At school, I resorted to defending myself by telling my peers that my family were poor but instead of making them feel sympathy or even pity, I suffered further and more brutal ridicule and bullying. I realise now that I wasn’t the poorest but other parents had clearly decided that by whatever means, they would buy their children the trainers and toys that their friends had. I thank my parents for what they did: it taught me not to be materialistic – in fact, I actively avoid having branded clothing and don’t see the worth in buying the latest gadgets and have been this way since my adolescence. But I completely understand parents who choose the other option and use credit cards or monthly payments (home shopping catalogues were the thing in the 80s and 90s when I was at School) and probably end up in financial difficulty as a result.

Now this government is using the participation in materialism by impoverished people as a tool to hit them with in debates about benefits or the level of poverty in the UK. The fact that this materialism is feeding the capitalism that lines the Tories’ pockets and drives their policies seems entirely lost on them.