Kipling revisited by Alun Rees‏

If you can vote yourself enormous pay~offs
while shutting factories down and sacking staff;
If you can ignore the human cost of lay-offs
and go skipping blithely bankwards with a laugh;
if you can raid a pension fund for profit and claim you're well entitled, being boss,
advising those objecting to come off it
for chaps like you must never take a loss;

If you can urge the jobless to rely on
market forces to get them back on track;
If while war's waged you keep a beady eye on
large profits to be stolen from Iraq;
If you can fix the game to boost your fortune

while those you've robbed are left to beg for bread
and tell them it's a temporary distortion
and better times are waiting up ahead;

If you can snatch a public service (via
a PFI (which means the public pay):
If you can hoist your income even higher
and when the services crash walk away;
if you can count your gold without a flicker
of conscience or one moment of self doubt
and go on looting, looting ever quicker
in case the stream of money should run out;

if you can shout that working folk are greedy,
expecting job security and such;
If you can blame the undeserving needy
for problems, for they're asking far too much;
If you can fall asleep inside a minute
after a day of thieving just for fun,
yours is the earth and everything that's in it,
-and - more - you'll be a capitalist, my son.

www.redpoets.org/alun-rees.html