SIMPLY PERPLEXED AND DUMFOUNDED
Mature student, Ted, arrives at Adult Education craft class but appears to be somewhat subdued. This is unusual because Ted, fortyseven years of age, is most enthusiastic when relating how, after death, the soul flies around the vastness of the universe to (incredibly) return to Earth and enter into the unborn form of another creature (a worm, an insect, a bird, a reptile, a mammal or even another human) and to reside there until that life also ends and the cycle is repeated yet again and, what is even more remarkable, this cycle is never ending!
Tutor - "You seem a bit quiet tonight, Ted. Are you tired?"
Ted - "Not tired - retired! I was sacked this morning."
Tutor - "I'm sorry to hear that, Ted. But I thought you'd been promised months of work installing plumbing and central heating systems in 200 houses on a new housing estate?"
Ted - "Yes, I was, but the contract has fallen through and those houses won't be built now."
Tutor - "That's very unfortunate because it's a bad time for that to happen; there aren't many jobs to be had at the moment even for qualified gas engineers such as yourself."
Ted - "I know. There are no vacancies at all round here. The problem is there are too many people chasing too few jobs because there's not enough work on the books."
Tutor - "I don't agree with that, Ted. There's plenty of work that needs to be done - look at the state of the roads and the footpaths in the local area for a start."
Ted, huffily - "Oh, so you'd have me digging up the roads and laying paving, would you?"
Tutor - "Only if that's the sort of work you wanted to do, Ted. In my society, skilled people such as yourself would be fully employed working on hundreds of thousands of new houses and apartments constructed to accomodate working people. You'd have guaranteed fulltime employment for the rest of your working life. And these properties would be in great demand because the rent would never be greater than three percent of their earnings; this would make all exploiting private landlords redundant and leave them owning properties that nobody wanted to rent or to buy."
Ted, sneering - "Working people could only rent, then. They could never buy their own house or flat."
Tutor - "In our society today, Ted, people saddle themselves with a huge loan to 'buy' their own home simply to avoid being ripped off by an unscrupulous landlord. In my society, however, they could take out a mortagage on a private property if that's what they desired. They'd spend perhaps thirty to forty years paying off the interest on the mortgage before they began to reduce the actual price of the property and, in the meantime, they'd have been responsible for paying for the maintainance of that property and for any necessary repairs. And throughout that time, they'd see their neighbours enjoying their earnings by spending them, not on a mortagage, but on material things - thus boosting the economy - and on leisure and cultural activities."
Ted, informatively - "People buy a house as an investment, not just as a home."
Tutor - "In my society, nobody would be prepared to pay the inflated price of a private property when they could rent so reasonably, so your investors would be left with a white elephant that was costing them a fortune and which they couldn't sell in order to get back just a small bit of the money they'd paid in loan interest. Anyone who wanted to lumber themselves with a huge debt under those circumstances would have to be a real mug, wouldn't they?"
Ted, thoughtfully regards his project on the wheel. "I think I need a bit of help with this...'
Tutor thinks 'Gosh, a breakthrough! Does he really want to know a bit about socialism?' "Right, Ted," enthusiastically, "what can I help you with?"
"This pot isn't quite centred so I'm having trouble with the rim."
The above is a true account but the name of the student is fictitous. How do I know? I was the tutor.
