Speaking to the BBC, Dr Swati Dhingra, who sits on the Bank of England’s rate-setting ‘Monetary Policy Committee’, admitted that high interest rates would hit young workers and people on low incomes hardest.
High interest rates are already impacting people trying to find somewhere they can live and not pay sky-high rents. When businesses go under as they no longer have access to cheap credit, who pays the price? Wilko’s owners paid shareholders millions of pounds of dividends despite making losses and running into financial difficulties. Now thousands of shop workers are out of a job, something that will be repeated as other so-called ‘zombie companies’ fail.
And the problem that interest rate rises are supposed to ‘fix’ – inflation – hits workers hardest as prices go up and, unless we fight back, our pay packets shrink in comparison.
Capitalism, built on the exploitation of workers, will always try to make us pay for its crises, not the bosses. That’s why we need to take the banks and big businesses into our hands to run society democratically for the good of us all, not for the bosses!
