Domesticky

There’s cheap, and then there’s nasty.

Cheap is a single-ply toilet roll that tears the moment you look at it sideways. It’s no-name-brand biscuits that taste like regret. Cheap is the flimsy plastic fork that snaps mid-bite, or the hotel room where the walls are made of paper and the bed squeaks if you breathe too hard.

It’s low-rent, cut-rate, clearance-sale, bargain-bin, pound-shop, buy-one-get-one-free-if-you-can-stand-the-smell.

Cheap is what you get when someone is trying to save money.

Nasty, though? Nasty is different. Nasty is knowing there’s money and making sure you don’t get any of it. It’s telling the hungry to tighten their belts while writing blank cheques for bombs and bailouts.

It’s austerity for the poor and abundance for the war machine.

And that’s exactly the kind of government we have.

No Budget Too Big for the Military-Industrial Complex

When the arms dealers come knocking, the government doesn’t ask, How much?

They ask, How soon can you start? They don’t haggle, they don’t negotiate, they don’t ask for receipts. Need another aircraft carrier? No problem. Want more drones? Absolutely. A $100 million contract for a weapons system that doesn’t even work? Who cares, the check’s already in the mail.

Meanwhile, what do you get when you ask for enough to live on? A bureaucratic assault course. Forms, proofs, means tests, waiting periods. If they could charge you for the ink in the pen when you fill out the paperwork, they would. The people at the bottom are forced to prove, again and again, that they’re poor enough to deserve help – while the military-industrial complex gets their cash wired directly, no questions asked.

How Much Does Anything Really Cost?

Here’s a fun game: try figuring out what a missile actually costs. Not the price tag on the contract. That’s meaningless. No, try to find out how much it really costs to make. How much the materials are worth. What the labour costs. What the profit margin is. You won’t. Because the price isn’t real. It’s whatever they decide to charge, because they know the government will pay.

Now try that with your wage. Try telling your employer you’ve decided your time is now worth three times as much. See how that goes.

They Set Your Wage. They Set Their Own.

They tell you how much you’re worth. Minimum wage, welfare payments, pensions—it’s all carefully calculated. Not by the cost of living, mind you, but by how little they can give you while keeping you too busy and exhausted to fight back.

But when it’s their mates in the defence industry? No limits. No accountability. A free-for-all of state-sponsored looting.

It’s not that the government can’t afford to help people. It’s that they choose not to. Not because they’re cheap, but because they’re cruel. Because they’ve decided that some people deserve wealth without question, and others deserve nothing unless they can prove they’re suffering hard enough to earn it.

That’s not fiscal responsibility. That’s economic sadism.

And we should stop pretending it’s anything else.