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1 11 mins 3 weeks

Have you ever counted up all the things in life you now have to pay for? Say, for instance if we compare it to previous generations? Let’s start with music, as most folk have a subscription to listen to music on their phone these days. Back in the day people used to own their copies of recorded music not rented them. Next, how about all your streaming service subscriptions. Yes, range of content is much better now but we are paying for it. It used to be either free to air with ads or pay TV but now companies like Amazon are milking the cow from both ends. The voracious pigs like Jeff Bezos want to make you pay and get advertising revenue. I can see the whole sector going this way.

Subscriptions On Everything In Life

Moving onto computers and all the subscriptions that you may have with companies like Microsoft, an anti-virus software firm, AI apps, maybe a video editing suite and whatever else you might want to do with software. Yes, back in the day we used to be able to buy software rather than rent it annually. The subscription model has come in for just about everything. This is why we say that we now live in a rentier economy. Businesses rent out stuff and we pay all these annual subscriptions.

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Insurance Premium Subscriptions On Living

This includes insurance, which has been around for millennia. Right now, insurance is in a boom period with premiums going through the roof. There is home insurance, car insurance, private health insurance, some folk insure their life, income, pets, travel, and even funeral arrangements. All these are subscription based either annual or by monthly payments. It is like paying a rental fee on a back up plan if stuff breaks down or goes to shit.

Residential Property Surpasses $11 Trillion

The things in life you now have to pay for every month or year are mounting up. Obviously, rents and mortgage payments remain the single biggest of these outgoings. Accommodation, having a roof over your head, is the biggest business in town for the banks and other financial lenders. Property is all about investment rather than housing people in the 21C. The financialization of this aspect of human life is worth billions and billions.

“The preliminary estimate of the total value of residential dwellings in Australia in the September quarter 2024 was $11,093.8 billion, up $156.3 billion from $10,937.6 billion in the June quarter 2024.

This is the first time that the total value of residential dwellings has surpassed $11 trillion.

Of the total value of residential dwellings, $10,657.1 billion was owned by households.”

Homelessness is up in Australia at the same time because of the number of people who can no longer afford to rent a home. Things have been so good for investors, speculators, real estate agents, bankers and the conveyancers that the working poor have been cut out of the equation. Tent cities are popping up on the fringes of cities and in parks around the place to house those who can no longer afford to pay the exorbitant rents.

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Rents On Money

Things in life you now have to pay for. Fees and bank charges on cards and digital payments are rife everywhere you go. We are charged fees every time we pay for stuff. Cash money is in short supply and the banks want to start charging for this too. Meanwhile, these banks declare $10 billion annual profits.

“Australia’s major banks remain resilient despite economic uncertainty in the full financial year results. The Australian major banks reported a combined profit after tax of $29.9 billion…”

Get the violins out for the banks after a tough year for them.

We Were Gulled

Everything you do in life costs you ever more money. The digitalisation and privatisation of everything promised us savings. I can still remember those assurances proffered by talking heads at the time. The Commonwealth Bank, Telstra, Qantas, the energy utilities and the rest, we were promised cheaper and none of them delivered that. We were gulled, scammed and ripped off. All these public assets were sold cheaply to private interests thus making oligarchs and private billionaires. It was the transfer of power from us into the hands of a few. Neoliberalism was the name of the game.

Trump 2.0

I often think about whether Americans are the most gullible people in the world. ‘Stupid is as stupid does’, as one great American character once said. Look at how they have allowed ruthless, greedy individuals and corporations to extract profits from denying people life saving medical care. Imagine voting a crook and sexual predator back into the White House after everything that has come out about Donald Trump. The rest of the world looks on in horror at what is about to unfold. It has begun already – the destruction of America.

President Trump Postlaunch Remarks (NHQ202005300080)
President Trump Postlaunch Remarks (NHQ202005300080) by NASA HQ PHOTO is licensed under CC-BY-NC-ND 2.0

The Joke Was On Us

In Queensland, a corrupt state government was complicit in a bent Police Commissioner running a payoff scheme for cops to look the other way re-prostitution, gambling etc It was called ‘the joke’ and brown paper bags stuffed with dirty money were funnelled up the chain of command to the top.

“’The Joke’ was the tightly-organised system of corruption that operated in Queensland from the 1950s to the 1980s.

Graft payments from illegal gambling and prostitution were passed on to police – and the payments went all the way up to the Commissioner’s office.”

Donald Trump and his ilk are performing macro corruption on a scale rarely seen before. It will do more than sully the name of the United States for ever more, it will bring down this once great nation.

Trump & Big Tech

Donald Trump has brought the Big Tech oligarchs on board his power cruise. All those subscriptions we now pay to go about our lives make their way into the pockets of these individuals. Google, Apple, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft and their ilk minimise their tax to ridiculously low levels. They shift profits around to avoid paying tax in the countries they do business in. Places like Ireland and the Virgin Islands facilitate this tax minimisation. Donald Trump has just pulled the US out of an OECD initiative designed to force these corporations to stop this practice and start paying their fair share of tax to the governments and countries where they generate billions.

“In 2018, Amazon clocked up sales in Australia of more than $1 billion but paid less than $20 million in tax.

Google shuffled vast amounts of its European and African earnings through Ireland which had a nominal tax rate of just 12.5 per cent. But a European Union investigation discovered it paid about 1 per cent tax on its earnings as a result of a sweetheart deal with the Irish government.

That deal has since come back to bite the tech titan with Ireland now demanding $21 billion in back tax payments.”

So, not only are these companies putting the bite on you and me they are avoiding their tax responsibilities too boot. This adversely impacts the countries we live in by reducing the tax revenue available to our governments for essential services like health and education. They are actively involved in shrinking governments to leave us with an unregulated wild west of corporate power.

a close up of a person touching a cell phone

How long is it going to be before we are paying a subscription for food and drink? Some might be already paying this for home delivered meals and produce. Imagine the power that unregulated and over-concentrated markets for essential food will have over us? We are heading in this direction fast. Do you want some Nazified oligarch like Elon Musk holding this power over you? The Twitter/X bully is supporting far right groups in the UK and Germany. Musk’s Starlink satellite internet system already holds power over vast swathes of people globally. Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta via Facebook and Instagram is another social media private group with way too much influence. It is time to rein these people in.

Do Your Bit

Consumer power has been denuded in part by the over-concentration of corporate power in sectors via mergers and takeovers. Governments have been piss weak in the face of this and complicit in the gaming of the free market system. Bought off with high paid jobs, campaign money, and favours. However, we can do something despite this by turning off their revenue streams by not doing business with them. Not advertising with Facebook or Google. Not buying stuff off Amazon. Not subscribing to Microsoft services. Writing to these companies and telling them why you are taking your business away. That they do not pay their taxes properly and do not do the right thing by our governments. Apple is a major tax minimiser in this space globally. Stop subscribing to their streaming services. Let them know why. It is worth having a go.

Robert Sudha Hamilton is the author of America Matters: Pre-apocalyptic Posts & Essays in the Shadow of Trump.

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