Money makes the world go round. We all need it and most of us spend the majority of our lives working hard to earn enough to keep ourselves and our families in as much comfort as we can achieve. Money is a fundamental part of our lives and so important that its current skewed distribution has created significant political unrest due to the increasing inequality in society.

It is also fair to say that the economic argument dominated the IndieRef, with fear of perhaps losing some of their hard-earned cash pushing many people towards a No vote. This obsession with money is understandable and few of us are immune to it. If you’ve ever been in a position where you are not sure whether you will be able to afford to pay your next heating bill or be able to buy enough food to feed your family, you’ll know all about the need for money.

One of the main problems with this obsession is that, when the political system is such that the wealthy are able to acquire wealth at the expense of the poor, and businesses are deemed to be more important than the people they employ or serve, society drifts inexorably into a culture of Haves and Have Nots, and everything is judged by monetary value rather than social value. For example, you often hear the UK Government talking about the cost of providing Welfare Benefits but you rarely hear them mention the reasons people need those Benefits. Isn’t it odd that, while the UK Government are happy to proclaim how much aid Britain donates to foreign countries to alleviate the consequences of natural disasters, they never display the same pride about keeping the less well off citizens of Britain free from destitution? In fact, they adopt precisely the opposite attitude, blaming the poor, unemployed and disabled for the country’s economic problems.

We seem to be living in a deeply flawed society where the acquisition of wealth is prized above all other attributes. That is not to say that wealth creation and generation should not be valued because they are essential if we are to be able to pay for all the public services and social support a civilised society should aspire to. The problem is that things have become so skewed in favour of business at the expense of everything else.

Let’s try to put things into some sort of perspective. It is true that only by generating services and goods can any country establish a decent economy. We need to provide for our citizens and we need to export goods or services to pay for the goods and services we import. However, the current UK model does not do this effectively, as the continuing Deficit and soaring National Debt confirm. The problem is that, in an effort to boost business profits, Government legislates a very low Minimum Wage which employers view as their base line. This means that workers earning this minimum wage rely on the state to top up their earnings in order to provide even a minimal standard of living. This puts a strain on the State economy which politicians insist must be cut while, at the same time, it boosts the profits of big business and allows their shareholders to increase their personal wealth from the dividends paid by those Companies.

Over the past decades we have heard much about "Trickle Down Economics", where the wealth accrued by the rich filters through society, creating wealth for all. This is, of course, nonsense. Yes, there is some effect because people with lots of money do create demand for goods and services and this, in turn, creates a measure of employment for the providers of those goods and services. But think about it for a moment. The average annual income is alleged to be around £26,500. A great many people earn considerably less than this but let’s say that we regard a wealthy individual as earning, say, £265,000 per annum, that is ten times the average. Does that person create ten times the demand? OK, they may eat out ten times more frequently than the average citizen but do they purchase ten times the number of cars, washing machines, cookers? Do they really have ten holidays every year? Do they buy ten times as many newspapers or pairs of spectacles? Of course they don’t. There may be some items they do purchase ten times more frequently than the average person but, in general, their greater income allows them to simply accrue more wealth either by hoarding cash in bank accounts, purchasing larger houses which increase in value, and/or investing in big businesses which provide them with even more wealth. And when you reach the lofty levels of a person earning, say, £2,650,000 each year, how can you imagine that they purchase one hundred times more items than the average person? Yes, they’ll spend a lot more on expensive items but that’s not the same as creating one hundred times the demand for basic goods and services. You can’t get your hair cut one hundred times more than the average person unless you shave your head every other day.

The net result is that, far from trickling down, wealth drifts upward and stays there. The politicians, rich men (yes, it’s usually men) themselves, are quite happy with this and will do just enough to trickle down sufficient wealth to the middle classes to ensure they are voted back into power at the next election.

The money obsession goes deeper into society than this, though. Nearly every item you hear on TV or Radio during News programmes mentions the cost of whatever they are discussing. Even when companies make profits that are so large as to be mind-boggling for most of us, this is often portrayed as a disaster if those profits fall. An example of this was Morrison’s Supermarkets who recently announced an annual loss of £792 million. This, they declared, would lead to job cuts and, horror of horrors, a reduced dividend payout for shareholders.

Now, it’s no secret that the retail industry is highly competitive but there’s more to the figures than meets the eye. The actual trading business still made a profit of £345 million during the year. That’s half of the previous year but in light of the harsh economic realities facing most shoppers, many supermarkets are losing business to the discount retailers. There is not much inherently wrong with Morrison’s business, it’s just that far too many people can no longer afford to shop there. Despite this, they still made a trading profit of £345 million.

Wait a minute, though. They made a loss of £792 million while earning trading profits of £345 million? That’s because they revalued their properties and decided they were significantly overvalued. The loss was therefore a Balance Sheet adjustment, not actual money. That’s not to say the value of their properties hasn’t fallen but, again, that’s a feature of the current economic slump caused by continuing austerity measures. And it’s only a real problem if they want to sell the properties, just as home owners who technically have negative equity in their homes don’t actually have a problem unless they want, or need, to sell their house. The property still exists and carries out its functions. It just won’t attract as high a sale price as it would have done a year or so ago.

This is not to deny that al is plain sailing at Morrison’s. It’s clearly not, but it’s not a disaster either, except for the poor staff members who will be made redundant. That’s because, just like Tesco, Morrison’s are adopting the usual course of action when faced with disappointing profits. They close stores and / or lay people off. What we rarely learn is whether the stores being closed are unprofitable or simply not as profitable as other stores in the chain. You can quite understand a business shutting down a store which consistently trades at a loss but why close down something that earns a profit? The answer, of course, is the drive for money. Making a profit is not enough. You need to make a larger profit than you did last year because that’s what the money markets and rich investors demand.

This is not unique to supermarkets. You see it in every line of business where large companies are concerned. Profits falling is reported as bad news, and it’s the workers, most of whom will be on low wages, who lose their livelihoods when the Board of Directors takes what they deem "Decisive action".

The impact on society is therefore disproportionate and it is exacerbated by the tax regime. Richard Murphy of Tax Research UK has pointed out that tax receipts from corporate entities have been falling for decades. You can read his article at:

http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2015/03/18/ten-reasons-to-defend-the-corporate-income-tax/

The net result of lower taxes and enforced lower wages is to boost corporate profits exponentially. This, in turn, boosts the incomes of the senior Executives and the shareholders, most of whom are either wealthy individuals already or are institutional investors such as Pension Funds, whose senior Executives will be awarding themselves very handsomely for making such good investments.

So the rich get richer and the poor stay poor. With corporate tax take diminishing, Governments are forced to impose more taxes on individuals or cut public spending, mostly on services used by the poorest people in society. This is unregulated capitalism gone too far. There is nothing wrong with businessmen making money but we need a measure of fairness in society so that everyone benefits, not just a few.

But is there any solution to this emphasis on the bottom line dictating everything? Not an easy one, that’s for sure because the drive for money is so deeply ingrained in our society. What we need is a fundamental Mindshift. Yes, the economy is an essential part of any nation’s wellbeing but so, too, are democracy and fairness within society. It’s about time that these essential planks were given more respect and attention. We can’t ignore business because, as mentioned earlier, this is the lifeblood of any nation, but surely we can do something to prevent it strangling the life from our society and perpetuating a cycle of poverty for the least well off. That was one of the fundamental arguments in favour of Scottish independence and, sadly, it lost out to the economic argument because of people’s obsession with money as the overriding factor in every decision.

The cry of protest you will hear from Unionists is that this is a Utopian pipe dream. Scotland, they claim, is too poor to survive. This is patently nonsense, since 190 other countries survive. What they are really saying is that Scotland would be poorer than it is now and, thanks to the ingrained conviction that having slightly less money than you have now is a bad thing, they deride the move for independence, probably citing the Government Expenditure & Revenue Scotland statistics, also known as gERS.

To put it bluntly, GERS can be ignored. The figures are so inappropriate to an independent Scotland it’s a wonder the Scottish Government continues to produce them. The expenditure side of the Balance Sheet is exaggerated thanks to allocated costs which bear little resemblance to the costs an independent Scotland would incur, and the income is grossly understated because taxes raised in scotland but attributable to an English-based Company are allocated to England, as are export duties on such large components of Scotland’s economy as whisky, beef and fish to name but a few.

So, forget GERS as a guide to what an independent Scotland would look like. The truth is that nobody knows what the finances would be. It is entirely possible that the country may struggle for a year or two but aren’t we struggling now as part of the UK? Poverty levels are shocking and low wages are predominant, with no end to austerity in sight. On the other hand, there is actually plenty of evidence that Scotland would be better off if it were an independent country, with Deutsche Bank being only the latest to confirm this in their recent report on the economies of regions seeking independence. It is, though, a bit of a coin-tossing exercise when trying to decide whether Scotland would be worse or better off financially in the immediate post-independence future.

Needless to say, this does not prevent Unionists raising objections on economic grounds. In their obsession with money, they will place all other considerations aside. Jobs would be lost, we are assured. We were told this before the Referendum but anyone who has paid even the remotest attention to the News must know that hundreds of jobs in Scotland have been lost in the months since then in areas such as construction, finance, transport, retail, engineering and North Sea oil. That’s not to say these jobs would have been saved if we’d voted for independence but it should banish the myth that jobs are safe because we are part of the UK. Every country faces job losses in a variety of industries and independence in itself does not contribute hugely to this except perhaps in a very short term. The whole point is that independence would give the Scottish Government the tools to regenerate our economy, creating better paid work and increasing the tax income to the State by attracting more businesses and moving more people into work.

But then we’ll hear the cry about the currency. OK, that was an Achilles’ Heel for the Yes movement. The decision to stick with sterling was wrong but understandable given the fear factor among the No voters. Put simply, an independent Scotland would need its own currency and we’ve discussed that before now. This currency would probably be pegged to sterling initially but would then need to go its own way. With Scotland being a net exporter, the currency would probably soon establish itself as stable and viable and would likely outperform sterling within a few years.

The initial years may well be difficult but only if you are obsessed with the economic factors. Being slightly worse off financially is bearable if you have a better quality of life, as just about everyone who has retired from work will confirm. The same would apply to a country.

The other argument you’ll hear is about the flight of capital if Scotland looked to be about to become independent. This one can’t be denied although how much of a problem it would be is debatable. RBS (the other one, not this website) and Standard Life threatened to move anyway but that doesn’t mean they’ll shut down their businesses in Scotland. Relocation of Head Office is not the same as shutting up shop. Some private capital might go but what value money sitting in a bank account gives is a matter of debate. Yes, it adds to the Bank’s Balance Sheet but as most post-indie Scottish Banks would be subsidiaries of English Banks who would presumably still hold the capital, it’s not clear how much of a problem this would be.

Major landowners might seek to sell up and move away but, to a large extent, that would suit the current Scottish Government anyway since far too much of Scotland’s land is owned by far too few people. If some of that land could be taken into public ownership, far better use could be made of it for the greater needs of society as a whole. There would be an initial cost to acquiring the land but the return on investment would soon recoup this if proper use could be made of the land to provide housing space, business space, more arable farmland, etc.

The greatest risk is the loss of capital investment from overseas but, as we’ve mentioned several times before, this would probably not be too serious. Scotland already attracts a lot of overseas investment and one thing you can be certain of is that money men like to make more money. If pro-Union businesses are short-sighted enough to quit Scotland, others will soon move in to fill the vacuum, just as investors are putting money into Iceland’s economy despite its collapse a few years ago.

When it boils down to it, then, money should not be regarded as the be all and end all to any argument. It’s an essential factor but it is not the only factor. One thing economists have consistently demonstrated is that they can’t predict anything accurately so we shouldn’t pay too much attention to their dire warnings, just as we shouldn’t get too carried away if they back our point of view.

The road travelled by an independent Scotland would not be smooth, certainly not in the first few months or even years but it must surely be better than the road we are on now, with our industry decimated and too many people in poverty even if they do have jobs. The aim must be a fairer society, with democracy at its heart, designed to benefit all as much as possible. To achieve this, we need to break the obsession with money as the only factor in decision making. It won’t be easy because this obsession is deep rooted. The Chinese philosopher, Confucius, knew this when he said, "The superior person knows what is right; the inferior person knows what is profitable".

It’s time we adjusted the balance. Let’s move away from this fixation with acquiring wealth, let’s move to a society where people are proud to pay their taxes because they know it contributes to the overall wellbeing, rather than trying to find ways to avoid paying tax.

It’s a cultural thing, you see, not a financial one. Change the culture and you change society. It can’t be done overnight but the first steps have already been taken by the Yes movement which awakened a social conscience in 1.6 million of us. Now that we’ve taken those steps, let’s see if we can’t start running and encourage others to join us on the way.