Freecycle, the GDP subversives

As I’m sure you know, Freecycle is an email listing service whereby you offer or request goods for free.  No payment or swapping allowed; the etiquette is that your first post should be an offer rather than a request.

We are about to move to a smaller place and are taking the opportunity to reduce our clutter.  We took two Tesco delivery crates worth of books to Oxfam.  Some things have gone on Amazon and sold very quickly, some things have gone on Freecycle and have also gone quickly – everything had been claimed within 1 hour, and only one of the items was even in full working order.

I’m feeling a bit subversive about the financial system at the moment – fiat money, wasted taxes, the works – perhaps I’m reading the tinfoil-hatters too much; so Freecycle appeals to me.  I like the fact that people’s needs are met, but it doesn’t show up in the statistics – no GDP growth, no jobs growth, no whatever.  But surely it is our patriotic duty to go out and spend, to “create jobs”?  It is not.  Your duty, to you and your dependants if you have them, is to make sure your needs are met (without breaking the law, obviously), and that is it.  If you can do that for free, so much the better.  Jobs are a cost of production, not a benefit.  Beware a government “creating jobs”, they can only do this by taking money from the bits of the economy that were already creating jobs, thank you very much.

But if we get more things for free, and use fewer people to make the things we DO buy, won’t that “cost jobs”?  No, it won’t. Consider the Industrial Revolution.  In one sense you could look on this as one long succession of inventions of labour-saving (that is, job destroying) devices.  Surely after all that there must be no jobs left by now?  In round numbers, the industrial revolution started in the UK in 1750.  At this time, the population of England was around 6 million. It is now around 50 million.  Lots of jobs then, lots of jobs now.

Saving money and riding bikes

Whilst I’m hardly in penury, I’m trying to save a bit of money now that I am only working four days a week. This got me thinking – it is more tax efficient to cut down on your spending than increase your income.  The other bonus is that spending less subtly unplugs you from a system you may not be all that happy with.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m a dyed-in-the-wool free market capitalist, but that concept extends to declining to participate in transactions you don’t want to be a part of.

But back to the tax efficiency.  My marginal rate of tax is 40% or thereabouts – 20% income tax, 11% national insurance, 9% student loan repayments.  I am soon to cancel my monthly bus pass, which costs £42 a month.  That is £42 a month that will be available to me to spend on other things.  If I were to increase my take home pay by that much, I would have to earn an extra £70 a month before deductions.  Can’t be bothered.  Also, every time you decline to earn more and spend more you are depriving the great beast of Government of funds, which is always a bonus in my book.

We have a strange idea of personal success.  We measure the success of a business by profit, not revenue; yet we don’t do the same for people.  If a high earner has a high cost of living (as in boring stuff like rent, transport etc) then their profit is low and they may not actually be that successful.  Earning just enough and living frugally can be just as good.

So, I’ll be saving £42 a month, or £504 a year.  I can do this because I have recently bought a bike.  Well that will have paid for itself financially after about 8 months or so of saved bus fares, which is a good pay back time.  I will also still have a bike at the end of it, rather than a small pile of expired bus passes.  I am also moving closer to work, so on the days when I don’t want to ride in I can walk, rather than get the bus (rent in new place is cheaper too).

Best of all though, I love riding in to work!  I realised how much I hate the bus.  Waiting for it to turn up, being stuck in traffic, having to listen to some selfish arse play hip hop all the way, and still a 15 minute walk at the end.  Door to desk (i.e. including showering and changing once at work) is the same if I ride or get the bus.  My endorphin-stimulated good mood wears off pretty quickly once I am at work though.  Still, you can’t have everything.