Like a dog without a bone...

I don't know about you, but I have my own financial adviser, therapists, student loan bankers, in-house medical specialists, career advisers, child care volunteers, business consultants and educators. It is a highly effective support and advisory network but best of all I get is all free!

This may sound all very surprising but it is part of a deal I was given (I didn't even negotiate it) when I was born. I joined something called a 'family'.

At the moment, there are a lot of people suffering from economic woes and understandably so. There are a lot of people who think they have the answer to the aforementioned woes too. Usually it falls into one of two brands 'austerity' or 'growth' (for growth public borrowing). But I've got an new engine for growth. More people can sign up to the same thing I did when I was young, a 'family'.

Amazingly the burden this would lift off the state would be extraordinary. I mean think about it. Everyone could have far greater support than they do now, saving them from relying on the public purse, maintaining the standard of living while reducing everyones costs.

How do I know that this would work? Well interestingly these groups have already been rolled out across Asia and are doing a great job there of internalising problems and expanding access to various skill sets. For example, say there is a 'family' of 5 people. Statistically at least one of them is likely to be unemployed. On their own they couldn't afford to retrain, for example. However, the other 4 are likely to be employed and so if they can share their money in such a way so that the fifth retains and starts work then eventually the fifth person will return to productivity and be become a net contributor to the 'family'.

Well so far no different from the state, right? Wrong. There are additional advantages of using the 'family' paradigm. For example, where as the state doesn't know you or me personally, the 'family' will, so they will be in a reasonably good position to judge whether the training is of value or whether it is just a scam to get more money off them. This is something that would be very difficult for the state to do, but due to the small nature of these 'families' they are aware of what the course is like and whether it suits the person taking it. Amazing huh!

There is another plus too! When payment has been made and the member of the 'family' has retrained, the other members of the family often don't even demand direct repayment! How incredible is that, so it turns out that person will not be sullied by huge amounts of debt, constantly creeping up due to interest when they are just starting off in their new and (usually) not highly paid work!

The benefits just keep coming too, because fraud is reduced as the 'family' members are usually fully aware of whether their members are working or not, it makes it incredibly difficult to claim money for being unemployed or injured if they are if fact lying.

Wow, no wonder Asian economies are so efficient! What may surprise you more is that such 'families' are in fact already in use in some places in the UK, but have become over the 40 years far less popular. Individuals appear to only see the benefits of independence from 'families' despite the fact that this provides far less support and costs the tax payer way more.

Most worryingly, most politicians, instead of championing the cause of 'families' and promoting them in schools, educating those who could be future members seem very reticent in doing so. They are usually far more in favour of expanding the state instead, despite its inability to regulate fraud, its higher costs and inability to provide full support and personalised guidance.
There seems to be a belief among many politicians that if one supports the 'family paradigm' it is somehow saying that non-members are inferior or that they are selfish because they are not willing to spend more on the vastly less efficient state spending.


This is a shame, because countries don't waste time thinking that non-'family' members will feel inferior, their culture just keeps families together in the first place. I just wish we'd follow suit, rather than thinking the best way to help a dog who has lost his bone is to take the bones off all the other dogs to make sure he doesn't feel bad.