Every night, I empty my pockets. Coins get thrown in a bag under the bed, notes are left on a shelf; the notes get put back in my pockets the next morning. Result, over the years: a stagnant bag of metal, gathering dust, with that strange stale-sweat-and-copper smell.

I’m not sure what it says about me. I suspect Feng Shui folk would smile politely, but express grave concerns. All that redundant wealth festering in a heap in one’s home, a stagnation of resource and energy. It seems to be an unshakeable habit with me; three years ago I left an even bigger shopping bag of coins in my old flat in London, when I moved out; too heavy to bring with me, too much time to count and bag up and haul to the bank. Life is too short. Like leaving the washing up till I run out of clean plates, instead of doing it immediately after dinner. Like leaving my accounts to the last minute, instead of doing them weekly.
It’s the sort of approach that, in the end, weighs me down with guilt, the psychic “To Do” list of the soul. It’s not, in the long run, efficient, and by putting off the daily mundane tasks and chores, ignoring the reality principle, it eventually bites me in the bum. This is especially pertinent for me now, as I face my normally hideously cringe-making tax return weekend, that painful reckoning.
I viscerally object to being accountable to anyone, to open up my life for approval or disapproval. It seems that bankers have a similar instinct. However, I’m not minding anyone else’s money for them. If I go to the wall, I’m taking no one with me.
I tell myself about the two inevitables, death and taxes, and my resentment goes off the boil, but it’s still steaming noxiously on the back burner.
But, please note, it’s not the actual paying of taxes I object to; it’s the process of inspection, as a largely self-employed person. Perhaps in the not-too-distant future there could be an electronic means, by which every work-related financial transaction is automatically book-kept on the spot: expenses are categorized and claimed for, income is registered, and tax is paid. Perhaps we’ll do it with our mobile phones: just point them at each other, type in the transaction details and zap. No massive bill at the end, no scratching the head wondering what that grubby receipt was for from the September before last, no fierce auditor, real or imaginary, scorching you with shame.
The question then, is, of course, what happens to my tax, and whether I trust the government to spend it wisely on my behalf. Now that capitalism is dead, in this world-gone-mad, with the world’s banks nationalised, suddenly social conscience matters, and democratic politicians realise that no matter how dogmatically free-market they are, they would be out of their jobs if they let the market run its course and let the banks go bankrupt.
Left to its own devices, capitalism devours everything. It’s a pleasant surprise that Britain’s Labour party has remembered its roots and produced for the world a sensible antidote to the tyranny of the free market. Nationalisation is an especially painful medicine for Americans to swallow, who have been brought up with a dread of the word socialism, well tutored by the business elite of the land. Watching the argument between McCain and Obama in their last debate together, at least the choice for voters was made explicit.
“Joe the Plumber” and the Republican right use an argument that cleverly taps into the aspirational nature of the American Dream - I may be poor now, but when I’m rich I’ll want to keep all my money and do with it what I wish, I want to be free. It’s why Republicans have done so well in keeping the rich rich - because they sell the dream that everyone can be rich, and so even the poor defend that right. It’s not based on reality, but what dream is?
This fear of what lies ahead is something to be taken very seriously, politically and economically. Whatever about defending our aspirational self from attacks by the tax man, there is another fear which is far more real: we will all get old and die - if we’re lucky.
I’m incensed at the moment over the scrapping of the over-70s entitlement to the medical card, like so many others. If €100m is what is needed, then I’m sure that if every taxpayer was asked to pay €2 a week to give their elderly parents and everyone else of their generation peace of mind, it would be enthusiastically received.
But of course it’s not the money, it’s the right-wing PD principle, and there seems to be a collective wringing of governmental hands in horror at the prospect of the cost of universal health care for the old mounting in future years, as well as embarrassment that the doctors managed to extract such an exorbitant rate for providing such a service to the elderly in the first place. And yet because of the ideological straitjacket that seems to imprison this government, they are blinkered to considering other options.
A truly well managed and creative implementation of universal health care for the elderly could be established that is focused more on preventative models of care - doctors getting paid for the number of elderly patients they keep healthy, rather than how many times their patients come to visit them. If the elderly want free medical health care, let them be required to get regular health checkups in designated clinics - spot the ailments before they take root and spread. By definition, all elderly patients will die - but the last thing any government would want, I imagine, is to add to the stress of an old person, worried about the future and getting ill. Will they lose their home if they get seriously sick, and don’t qualify for a medical card?
Do they have to count all the coins in that bag under the bed to prove that they are poor enough?
Life is too short. We are not that poor, as a country, nor as a people.