To: letters@guardian.co.uk
Re: For some, money really does grow on trees
Date: Thu 23 October 2003

Dear Sir/Madam,

How often was I told as a child that "money does not grow on trees"? 

It was a truism I grew up with and even now, in middle age, despite having seen so much evidence to the contrary, I still find it hard not to believe.

For my parents, as for most people, money certainly did not grow on trees, but had to be earned through hard work - every last penny of it. 

But for some people, of course, money - at least a large proportion of it - does effectively grow on trees. They plant, i.e. invest or have invested for them, a sum of money  which grows and produces fruit (e.g. dividends, interest, rent, etc). 

There is not just one kind of money tree, but hundreds, and countless money shrubs, bushes and all kinds of other money plants to go with them, some producing vast yields of fruit (money), others just a few paltry berries (pence or cents.) Even my parents, it now turns out, possessed a modest money tree - their house (The richest homeowners are now ripe for plucking; 23 October 2003). Not that it has produced any fruit for them to enjoy personally. As long as they need somewhere to live and are determined to enrich their own children rather than a credit institute, the fruits of their money tree remain inaccessible to them.

My father has already passed on and when my mother follows, I and my two brothers and sister, stand to inherit about 1/4 million pounds - for which none of us has ever lifted a finger. I am not about to refuse my share, but neither am I blind to the injustice and insanity of it. It is quite a modest house by London standards, with many others being worth 2, 3 and more times as much, and not seldom it is a lone child who inherits it. For doing absolutely nothing a person can come into as much money as it takes someone on an average wage 20 years or more to earn. 

Why the injustice and insanity of this is not acknowledged and corrected should be a matter great and urgent concern. The reason it is not, of course, is because there are so many fat fingers - including those of everyone who is anyone - in the pie.

There are those who simply take their good fortune for granted, as a birth right. For others it is like discovering Aladdin's cave, a chest of gold in the garden. It is what we all dream of at some time or another: coming into lots of money (the more the better) without having to work for it. It is the realisation of an infantile dream which is actually granted to the privileged or lucky few.

Why? Because it has been built into the system during the course of our history by those who stood to profit from it. A prime concern of the aristocracy, which once ruled supreme,  was the acquisition, retention and cultivation of money trees (their estates) to ensure that they could live their privileged aristocratic lives. Nowadays everyone is free (theoretically, at least) to find or grow and harvest their own money tree. The rules have been relaxed, but the game is just the same. And most people, no matter where they stand, want to play for their own advantage.

Most money trees do not yield only money, of course, but another fruit or fruits as well, many of which are vital commodities. Many others, however, are not so vital, and some are positively harmful. Cigarettes are a salient example of the latter, but because they also produce a rich yield of money they continue to be eagerly cultivated.

In modern times a new genus of money tree has has arisen: the celebrity, someone, who thanks to their talents, contacts, good fortune etc. and to the media, of course, becomes known to millions of people, from whom, carefully managed, they are able to extract very large sums of money (just a little from each, but it soon mount up).

Most celebrities, of course, supported by whose who live off them, claim to be working hard for their money and deserving of it. As hard and deserving as 10, 20 or 100 nurses? I ask myself.

The fact of the matter is that our whole social and economic order is hopelessly corrupt. The reason we fail to see just how corrupt, is that we are all totally immersed in it and have never known anything different. It is the normal state of affairs, which we have all grown up with and been taught to accept, perhaps not as perfect, but certainly not as something to get too worked up about, particularly if it works in one's own favour, with it does the higher we are up the socio-economic ladder. Thus, the more power and influence one has, the less inclined one is to want to change anything. There is nothing wicked or sinister about it. It is simply human nature.

At which point it is usual to agree and accept that radical socio-economic change is impossible and that we might as well get on with our lives as best we can. If we have a social conscience, as all writers and readers of the Guardian do, of course, we can persist in or renew our efforts to persuade the government to diverted more funds from the wealthy to the less well off.

However, in order to achieve sustainability and avoid extinction (or something unpleasantly close to it) not just radical, but revolutionary (i.e. rapid radical) socio-economic change is imperative.

How is this to be brought about? Voluntarily, from the grass roots, through the creation of an alternative, humane, fair, and above all sustainable socio-economic order, by those of us who recognise the necessity and are prepared to put their hearts and souls - and money (how they earn, spend and invest it) - into it.