The Jar of Life
A philosophy professor stood before his class with a large, empty glass jar. First, he filled it with large rocks and asked if it was full. The students said yes. He then poured in pebbles, shaking the jar so they rolled into the open spaces. He asked again if it was full. The students agreed it was. Next, he poured in sand, which filled all the remaining gaps. Once more, the students agreed the jar was completely full. The professor then produced a can of beer and poured the entire thing into the jar, effectively filling the empty space between the grains of sand. The students laughed. "Now," the professor said, "this jar represents your life. "The rocks are the critical things: family, health, and passions. The pebbles are other things that matter: your job, house, and car. The sand is everything else: the small stuff. "If you put the sand into the jar first," he warned, "there is no room for the pebbles or the rocks. Take care of the rocks first. "A student raised their hand and asked, "What does the beer represent?" The professor smiled. "It shows that no matter how full your life may seem, there is always room to have a beer with a friend."
This is an old story that has been circulating for decades and while pithy, there are a few takeaways from it in regard to what is important in life, and how many of us are failing at prioritising the right things. However, it came to mind today for a very different reason as I read through an article about monitoring incomes of people in subsidised housing to ensure they qualify. The burden would go to landlords and housing associations - the legality of this is very questionable.
But it wasn't this specifically that brought the story to mind, it was how governments tend to focus their attention and spend resources on the sand in regards to public finances. I am not saying the people are the small stuff, rather that their chief concern should be to raise human wellbeing in the community. If they need money for that and are struggling to get enough, like many governments are, they should be focusing on the rocks first. The rocks in the case of Finnish finance and taxes, would be the multinational conglomerates and corporations that are using creative accounting methods to earn locally and move it offshore so they don't pay anywhere close to their Fair share of the tax burden. Instead, their share falls on the people, who will be doubly punished firstly by having to pay more, and then by being affected by poor government finances.
The cost of all of the administration, the monitoring, the endless debates and meetings in parliament and resources spent enacting a plan that even if one hundred percent effective (which they never are) will still yield negligible gains is ludicrous. Especially since if a government were to focus their tax attention on corporations, they would reap massive gains that would allow them to reduce the burdens on citizens and have plenty to spend on things like preventative healthcare and infrastructure for wellbeing development.
This is even more important now since those same corporations, who remember have one core goal of "increasing shareholder wealth", are getting rid of people through automation to cut costs. This means that they can grab more income, pay less people a salary to spend locally, and extract a larger amount out of the country. For instance, the retail sector in Finland has "grown" by three percent in the last 12 months, yet it has shed 20,000 jobs. That means they are taking in 3% more revenue, but are not paying 20,000 local people who would spend that money in Finland. Instead those people are unemployed and are now a further burden on the taxpayers.
People are weirdly still attaching GDP growth to country success, but they have been decoupled for years. Economic growth used to mean citizen growth, because what was produced, where taxes were paid, and how people were able to spend were all tied together. Now, they are not, so a GDP can increase significantly and it can have no bearing on the finances of the average person.
For this, I like to highlight the differences between Finland and Ireland, countries of about the same population of five and a half million, and a nearly identical median salary around 44,000€. However, in terms of the GDP, Ireland is over doubling Finland's 337 billion, with 720 billion euros.
Why is Ireland's GDP so high?
Ireland’s GDP is exceptionally high due to the presence of massive global technology and pharmaceutical multinationals that route their international profits and intellectual property through Irish subsidiaries. This creates a statistical distortion—often called "leprechaun economics"—where paper wealth far exceeds the actual domestic living standards.
If we go back to the story of the jar, living standards is made up of three components, the rocks (family, health, passions), the pebbles (job, house, car), and then the sand (all the small stuff). And of course, the beer, the social aspect of life where shared experience and relationships are key. But when we look at the actions of the governments (probably globally), what are they actually doing to support and facilitate citizens to prioritise the rocks, maintain the pebbles, and take care of all the rest? If anything, their actions are counter to our wellbeing, forcing the sand to be poured into the jar first, so there isn't any room for many pebbles, let alone a rock. Sure, the beer could still go in, but when life is missing all the rest except sand, that social experience doesn't hit the same spot.
The way we organise ourselves as a society has to have a complete overhaul, because it has been tied to an economic system that hasn't been valid for nigh on fifty years, and it was only partially valid then. We do not live in a world where trade is straight, nor one where an economy is without loss across borders. We do not live in a world where production creates what we need or what is good for us, and we do not live in a world where distribution is equitable. The economic practices we are still incorporating are not only ineffectual, they are wholesale harmful to society and are only going to get worse the longer it is left to fester in the hands of politicians in a corrupted system.
We need to empty out the jar, and start again.
Taraz
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