Guardian trash: who are the real 99 percent?

Found in a bin behind the offices of The Guardian with a handwritten comment on it reading “we can’t run this Dave; try something else”.

WHAT KIND OF ECONOMIST ARE YOU? - A QUICK SURVEY

Politicians don’t seem to know the answers to our economic malaise. So what do you think? Find out what system you’d like with our quick survey.  Which answers do you most agree with? Pick A, B or C from the options below.

1.  The Banking system isn’t working. How can we change things?

a) Abolish Private banks and have one State institution which gives interest-free loans to ordinary people.

b) Impose punitive taxes, abolish incentive schemes, name and shame.

c) Is the ATM still working? Yes? Then get on with it ffs, I’m busy.

2. We live in an age of austerity. What do you understand by this?

a) Austerity is a concept dreamt up by the owners of Capital to grind the workers into the dust.

b) Savage cuts mean ordinary hard-working families cannot afford a plasma TV in every room or a second holiday. It’s an outrage.

c) Austerity? Where are the ration books? Where’s the 3-day week? Where are the power cuts? When was the last time you saw a queue at the bakers?

3. How can we get the unemployed into work?

a) The State should provide jobs for all and there should be a national wage so everyone is paid the same.

b) The Government should create millions of jobs in the public sector; it’ll pay for itself.

c) Beats me. Why don’t you ask one of those Engineering firms that can’t find any job applicants; or maybe ask one of those 600,000 employed Poles? They seem to have cracked it.

4) The previous Government bailed out the banks. Was this wise?

a) They gave our money to the corporate pigs. It could have been spent on yurts for the workers and outreach. Anyway wasn’t it the Tories that did that?

b) Of course it was but having been partly nationalised the day-to-day banking operations should have been taken over by a Quango.

c) Well Granny still has her savings, the ATM still gives me my money and if I work hard enough I’ll still have my small business at the end of the year. So, yes.

5) How can we decrease inequality?

a) Get onto the streets, protest, interact, network, devise new ways of thinking, commune, hug.

b) By a root and branch upheaval of the tax and benefit system. Increase taxes on the rich, increase benefits for the poor.

c) See what you want and then work hard to get it. Can I go now? I’ve got work to do.

How did you do?

Mostly As – you’re currently occupying something; you haven’t had this much fun since you left Charterhouse; you probably have an Ipad and something fungal.

Mostly Bs – you have two homes, one of which you inherited; you have a 6 figure salary; you holiday in Tuscany; you work within 5 miles of Westminster; you’re looking forward to meeting a worker one day.

Mostly Cs – you are the 99%. 

Adrian Moss is an award-winning screenwriter and a chapter-contributor to "Prime Minister Boris and Other Things Which Never Happened..."  He Tweets at @akmoss

*This article is, of course, a spoof - and a rather good one at that!