Barter and Farter

Well, I'm certainly not a professional economist, or a financial expert, so (judging by the state of Western economies) this may give me an advantage of some sort. Either way, here is what the physicists might call a mind experiment.

Imagine, if you will, a situation where the UK economy has returned to a 'primitive' bartering system. The transferable debt and credit of money, has somehow disappeared, and we are left with the direct method of exchanging our products and abilities for other people's products and abilities in the marketplace. 

The first thing we might discover, is a significant imbalance between the things people abroad would actually WANT to exchange, in return for our own goods and services. There exists at the moment a considerable trade deficit between our exports and our imports, with the vast amount of energy, food and clothing we import unlikely to be exchanged for the dubious financial services and small scale boutique products we currently appear to offer. Without transferring money and having access to credit, we would simply have to do without many of our crucial imports (not to mention a mountain of plastic trash).

But now we turn to the real eye-opener - our domestic economy. While domestic goods and services could in theory be exchanged for other people's products and skills around the locality or further afield, can we really believe that a farming family offering vegetables, fruit, grain and meat would readily exchange large amounts of these things over a long period, just to see a team of expensive Premier League footballers kick a balloon about, or to listen to the tuneless warbles of a boyband, or to subsidise millions of able-bodied people opting to stay at home because they have a cold, hiccups or the fear of going out?

Perhaps the farmers would just exchange their goods with those people doing equally useful reciprocal work, leaving the rest to whistle. It is a measure of how distorted our economy has become that sportsmen, TV presenters, podcasters and other inessential workers can become millionaires while bricklayers, sole traders, energy workers and farmers can barely keep their businesses viable.

Keep the mind experiment going. Why is this farce tolerated? How did it develop? Who's paying for all the lucrative non-jobs?

Think taxes, benefits and government loans!