BaKhabar, April 2012, Page-7

... by Shakeel Ahmad <shakeeluae@gmail.com>

Adam works in his two acre farm the whole day, from dawn to dusk literally, without caring much for his leisure, food, or health. His wife takes good care of the household and the two children, sends both to school ready with their lunch-boxes, water bottle, and the increasingly-getting-heavier school-bags. The next thing she would do is to cook the breakfast for Adam, and deliver it to him in his farms. From dawn to dusk, she is also engaged in the daily chores without much of a change, except when she goes to her parental village for a few days when the children have their school closed for some vacation. Her effort is not even valued for adding to the GDP numbers or the national income. She may ask why? That may be left for the country’s economists to answer. But, Adam and his wife’s efforts can most likely help them survive, unless some natural calamity destroys the crops; and this is not as uncommon as we believe – hailstorms, floods, and drought – the calamities strike in many ways. All of Adam’s thinking faculties have to be concentrated on earning, none on spending. Spending comes as naturally as the calamities, and he has to use his earnings to meet the demands of these notices of spending, like the EMI (Equated Monthly Installment of bank-loan), school fees, shopping for daily needs, for the medicines, ever-rising electricity bills, and so on … While festivals are supposed to bring joy to us, Adam gets frightened at the thought of an impending festival when he has to manage more cash to make his wife, children, and parents happy.

Farm Worker

Kamal does not need to work at all. His efforts are focused on enjoying his time as much as possible in as many different ways as conceivable. He needs to apply his thinking faculties to find out innovative means to spend his money for quenching his thirst for more and more amusements. He has to continuously think of something different every week because the same avenues of enjoyment do not bring delight for long, and he gets bored. He does not need to use his intellectual abilities to think about how to earn, because his income is guaranteed almost forever, at least he feels that way. His ancestral wealth lying idle in his bank account in the form of paper money earns for him interest which is more than enough for his needs, and it goes on accumulating more and more because the interest money he is not able to use gets him more interest every consecutive month. No tax needs to be effectively paid by him because of the tax-saving mechanisms cleverly built in by his wealth management consultant gifted to him by his late father.
The equation gets perfectly balanced with some people like Adam who must continue to work and others like Kamal who must continue to spend. Is this balance perfect?
Money makes more money; and only money can make more money – if we could understand capitalism in as simple terms as this; we may be accused of being too simplistic; but are we really far from the truth? Although humans have also been proposed as an important component of the “capital”, have you ever seen human capital included in the balance sheets of companies? While Return of Investment (ROI) carries the maximum value as parameter of success, as if investments alone bring “returns” and the humans play no role, even a later variant - ROA (return on assets) – which considers all assets as the source of success does not consider humans as a component of “Assets” in the balance sheets. Is it due to ignorance,

that is, lack of knowledge in the field of valuing the human assets? It is not, because many models of valuing the human assets are available. Is it harmful to the balance sheet in any way? Hardly! On the contrary, it is beneficial; it raises the networth of the company. Further, no depreciation occurs to this asset; instead, it appreciates every year with added knowledge, skills, and expertise. If “goodwill” can be considered as an important component on the asset-side, why not human capital? We do hear that humans are the greatest assets to any ongoing business, but why are they ignored as a measure of success? The answer to this question validates the simplistic definition of capitalism beyond any doubt.
Ignoring the humans has great many incentives for the capitalists; and capitalism cannot succeed without incentives. If you pay the employees less, they cannot accumulate wealth, so cannot enter into business to compete with you. If they have enough money, why should they work for you? Why should they work at all when in the interest-based economy, their money brings them easy money without doing any work? So, if you want employees in sufficient numbers, you should do everything to keep the people in penury. A working class must exist forever, and in sufficient numbers, to serve those who must enjoy being the masters of masses.

Masses