Pain and Pensions: the rich, or at least higher level public sector employees, truly are different. September 24, 2009
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Economy, Irish Politics.11 comments
Excuse me my moment of populist irritation, but really, isn’t it striking the distinction we see in the treatment of Rody Molloy and er… others in the current economic straits… at least as regards pensions…
The Government approved a package for former Fás director general Rody Molloy because he threatened legal action to get a €1 million pension, it was revealed today.
And…
Mr Molloy stood down last November at the height of controversy surrounding lavish expenses by top officials at the State agency, including spending of €643,000 by Fás officials over four years on transatlantic travel.
And…
“It was made very clear that if the individual felt he wasn’t being treated reasonably he was reserving his right to take court action,” he said. “That was made very clear.”
And…
Mr Molloy left the agency with a pension worth €111,000 a year, a tax-free lump sum of €333,732, and a taxable ex-gratia payment of €111,243.50. The capital sum on his pension amounted to about €1 million, the committee heard. Mr Molloy also had four and a half years added to his pension entitlement.
Hard to disagree with the following comment…
Committee chairman Bernard Allen strongly criticised the Department, claiming Mr Molloy was being appeased with a sweetheart deal rewarding failure.
“Why was the value equivalent to winning the Lotto, transferred to the former DG (Director General) for his pension, when the man spent and oversaw spending on travel, on a lifestyle more equivalent to a rock star than a public servant,” Mr Allen said.
“I don’t think we should be appeasing people who make mistakes for fear of litigation and certainly to my knowledge, and of the evidence before me, there has been appeasement here because of the threat of court action.”
Things Can Change in order to Remain the Same – Article by Eamonn Smullen, Workers Party journal Class Politics, 1983 September 24, 2009
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Irish History, Irish Politics, The Left.76 comments
Guest post from Brian Hanley…
This article by Eamonn Smullen was published in first (and only) issue of the Workers Party journal Class Politics in Autumn 1983. It is significant because it is an attempt to provide a theoretical basis for the WP’s labeling of the Provisional IRA, and Sinn Fein, as fascist. That term was used extensively by the WP to describe the Provisionals, but it was rarely explained in political terms. There are two contexts for Smullen’s argument. One was the worsening recession with the Fine Gael/Labour coalition in government and denounced by the WP for trying to make workers pay for the cost of the crisis. The second was the post-hunger strike period in the north where Sinn Fein were making electoral breakthroughs, with Gerry Adams becoming an MP in June 1983, with increasing speculation that the party would make gains south of the border as well.
Smullen argues that the depression of the 1930s and the rise of the Nazis in Germany held ‘many lessons for us at the present time.’ He explains the rise of fascism as a consequence of the slaughter of the First World War. His general analysis of 1930s Germany is fairly unremarkable in terms of conventional communist historiography, noting the counter-revolutionary role of the Social Democrats while acknowledging some of the mistakes of the German communists. More perceptive are his comments on the practical impact of recession; ‘poverty- especially a fall from reasonable comfort to poverty- means desperation and such desperation can be harnessed not only against the establishment but also against the organized working class.’ Smullen notes how unemployment affects expectations; ‘unemployed persons who are forced to live on small doles are very sensitive…much more is expected from those regarded as champions of the working class than is the case in normal times.’ He notes ‘that some trade union officials get over £20,000 a year or nearly that amount. It can be argued that no person is worth that sort of money at the present time- especially from members’ subscriptions.’ Smullen argues that the Nazis were able to suggest in 1930s Germany that ‘union officials did not share the sufferings of their members or ex-members’ and that ‘at that time of acute depression the trade unions failed to offer any real hope of a better future to the young.’ Whatever about the analogy with Weimar Germany, the argument about the gap between the salaries of top union leaders and those of their membership, and the problems it poses, is certainly still relevant. Smullen then identifies the Nazis success as their being able to position themselves as a ‘phony left revolutionary party’ and harness the anger of ordinary Germans to reaction.
Turing back to Ireland Smullen notes growing cynicism about conventional political parties and the various efforts by the self-employed and private firms to undermine state companies. Perhaps over optimistically he claims that trade union organization has helped undermine the ‘snobbery’ that divided blue-collar from white-collar in the past, but notes again that a hard-core of lower middle class people could be attracted to a movement that appealed to ‘traditional values.’ He warns that the condition of the unemployed on one hand and the fears of the lower middle classes on the other could then produce in Ireland a new fascist movement; ‘if the unemployed young people cannot see a place for themselves…in our society there is a danger that street politics of the Brownshirt, SA variety many seem attractive…the country is littered with phony “left organizations” which could grow into Nazi type gangster politics. These groupings, one and all, now appear in the streets with those who belong to semi-armed groups who propagate the greenest of green nationalism. One group feeds off the other- the phoney rhetoric of “worker politics” is grated onto unadulterated nationalism…’
And then the punch line; because Smullen is clear where this fascist movement will come from. The ‘main organisation’ that had harnessed the ‘energies and frustrations’ of the Catholic youth in Northern Ireland had been the Provisionals; ‘the stone throwers and the petrol-bomb throwers have now been disciplined into serious viciousness…the Nazi street gangs made a hero out of a young criminal and a song in praise of this individual, the Horst Wessel song, became the anthem of the SA…the several SAs now plaguing Ireland have their anthems to Bobby Sands-Nicky Kelly.’ Just as German big business had funded the Nazis, the Provos were ‘established and financed by the Fianna Fail Party.’ Smullen then argues that the Provisionals were attempting to infiltrate trade union struggles in the south, aided by unnamed ‘ultra-left’ journalists and groups. He claims that both the mainstream media and some journalists had deliberately downplayed and even justified the brutality of the Provisionals campaign; ‘establishment and ultra-left – it usually means the same thing- journalists continually glorify the people responsible for the terrorism and for the many murders of innocent people. They justify the torturers, the knee-cappers and the droppers of concrete blocks on the limbs of men and women. When captured these people are “always innocent” – the foul deeds are always committed by someone else.’
Smullen concludes that the ‘terrible lesson’ of Germany was that the ‘Social Democrats and the Ultra Left opened the door for reaction to march through’ and that ‘serious class politics’ means ‘seeking out issues which unite rather than divide’. Therefore ‘fashionable, trendy issues that divide the working class should be avoided like the plague.’ For Smullen the ‘essential element in making revolutionary change’ was the building of a ‘disciplined, politically educated Party of The Working Class.’
There is no doubt that Smullen’s polemic would appeal at a gut level to many WP members, especially those who had first hand experience of conflict with the Provos in Belfast and elsewhere. The rhetoric also appealed to a southern constituency, some of whom were represented within the WP by the 1980s, who were appalled by the on-going violence in the north, which they blamed exclusively on the paramilitaries (usually the nationalist paramilitaries). But what did Smullen’s argument mean in practical terms?
In the article there is no hint that anyone other than the paramilitaries had responsibility for violence in the north, and no suggestion that the British government was in any way culpable. The Irish state however, through Fianna Fail, was blamed for setting up the Provisionals. Smullen’s assertion, that the Provos were simply the creation of Fianna Fail, was one repeated on many occasions by the WP. It is an inadequate explanation for the origins of the Provisonals and one which in my view became completely discredited by the WP’s overuse of it. It also meant having to avoid any other explanation as to why the Provisionals had not only managed to stay in existence, but were winning electoral support by the early 1980s.
Smullen’s ‘Horst Wessel’ dig at Bobby Sands and Nicky Kelly was no doubt emotionally satisfying to some of his readership. But it was simply political name-calling (as well as being insulting to both men, neither of whom were Nazis). And it was ironic that Smullen himself after all, had been a member of the IRA in the 1940s, when the organization had no electoral mandate of any kind, and when it’s leadership had sought an alliance with the actual Nazis. Smullen had been convicted of shooting a young man the IRA accused of giving information to the Gardai and was jailed in Portlaoise as a result. There he refused to wear prison uniform and spent several years ‘on the blanket’ to use 1970s terminology. Smullen of course changed his views considerably during the 1950s, though he would be back in jail (in England) for attempting to buy arms during 1969. It could be argued that these experiences had made Smullen acutely aware of the dangers of such activity, but perhaps they should also have suggested to him that denunciation and imprisonment do not seem to have much of an impact on the willingness of young people to become involved in republican paramilitary politics.
Similarly the language Smullen used to decry paramilitary violence was problematic, especially coming from a senior member of the Official IRA. The Communist Party’s Irish Socialist (December 1983) while agreeing that the WP’s rejection of armed struggle was ‘honest and in our view, correct’ noted that what it called ‘the moralising holier-than-thou spirit with which they attack the Provisionals…is hard to bear when one knows the details of their own history.’ And that was a view that had currency well beyond the CPI. It was not simply a historical matter. In 1983 the Official IRA were still very much in the kneecapping and leg breaking business. A WP activist might be able to explain why the Provos kneecapping of someone made them fascists, while OIRA punishment beatings were completely different, but the average person was likely to be confused. This certainly had an impact on the WP’s image in nationalist areas of the north. One of the interviewees in Fionnuala O’Connor’s In Search of a State (published in 1993) would claim that ‘ten to fifteen years ago I would have voted for the WP, but not now. Not only because of the hand-washing of the most useless kind they do but also when you run up against them at ground level in west Belfast, when you see how they behave- how they can preach to anyone else gets to me…’ In effect the WP’s condemnation of violence was simply not accepted by many northern nationalists, because they knew the party was being economical, to put it mildly, with the truth.
Smullen’s dismissal of what he called ‘trendy issues’ that ‘divide’ the working class is also interesting. He does not specify what issues he means but there is perhaps a hint in his assertion that when paramilitaries were arrested ‘these people are “always innocent” – the foul deeds are always committed by someone else.’ This fed into a view that focusing on cases of injustice like that of the Birmingham Six, or Nicky Kelly, bolstered the Provos and should therefore be avoided. Using the term ‘trendy’ also served to trivialize such campaigns, as something working class socialists should not be associated with. (My memory is that while there was often widespread sympathy for the Birmingham Six and others, their cause was hardly trendy). Smullen’s suggestion that the ‘establishment’ media was dominated by sneaking regarders for the Provos seems to have been a widespread one within the WP. During October 1983 Des O’Hagan would claim in Workers Life that there had been support for the H-Block hunger strikers across the ‘entire southern mass media, with one or two honourable individual exceptions.’ These assertions would not, I think, withstand any objective study of the media at the time, but what’s important is that some people in the WP believed them and they contributed to a feeling that the party alone was holding the line against ‘fascism.’ (This Provophobia also affected attitudes to the drugs crisis in Dublin).
Class Politics was aimed at party cadre, rather than supporters or voters. How much of the views expressed here percolated further than the WP is hard to quantify. In the late 1980s, for example, opinion polls on attitudes to extradition showed a majority of WP voters opposed it, in contrast to the party’s stated policy of support for extradition, with legal safeguards. Smullen’s article then is a snapshot of an argument that had some impact on the WP’s practice, on how they were viewed by others on the left, and in some of the communities in which they operated. How much of an impact is obviously open to discussion.
Irish Left Open History Project – some links and further thoughts September 24, 2009
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Irish Left Open History Project.4 comments
One of the inspirations for this project was an article which appeared in Gralton in 1983 by John Goodwillie and an accompanying diagram. The article, A GLOSSARY OF THE LEFT IN IRELAND, 1960 TO 1983, and the diagram or chart, A FAMILY TREE OF THE IRISH LEFT, were recently posted up by Conor McCabe on Dublin Opinion.
As Goodwillie wrote in 1983:
These notes attempt to record the leftwing organisation which have existed in Ireland since 1960. No attempt has been made to record purely local organisations outside Dublin and Belfast, or microscopic groups which have never reached double figures. The larger organisations have been presented in more detail. This should be regarded as something of a working document: any corrections or clarifications will be welcome and printed in a future issue.
Of course part of the interest in this is seeing not merely the changes, but where groups have stayed much the same. A good quarter of a century has passed since then with all the attendant activity and the appearance and disappearance of groups and formations. So it seems worthwhile to update this for the 21st century using an appropriate medium.
Economy and ideology: Slate’s Big Money podcast… September 24, 2009
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Economy, US Politics.add a comment
Listening to the Slate “Big Money” podcast is becoming an increasingly concerning exercise in terms of getting to grips with the financial situation in the US. Because, as noted in a piece on Slate late last month there is now a number of disparate groups in the US who are keen on the failure of the Obama economic policies, policies which are – so far – working as well, or as minimally, as one might expect. And by the way, what of the better economic news that we see from around the world, news that sadly appears to be passing us by.
Anyhow, on the Big Money podcast, Daniel Gross senior editor of Newsweek, Chadwick Matlin staff writer for the Big Money and Jim Ledbetter of Slate and the Big Money chewed over some of the issues of the day… First up, the one year anniversary of the financial melt-down.
Daniel Gross: Well, this time 2008 the worse had yet to happen…
Chadwick Matlin: It was blissful…
Gross: Things were going poorly but it was still two weeks before Lehman Bros and the world went into meltdown… it was primarily a US problem.
Jim Ledbetter: [What then of] ..the Obama failure caucus, the loose coalition of people and institutions who have a vested interest in Obama’s programmes not working…
Gross: I was at a dinner recently with a group of conservative people, who you’d generally think would be in favour of wealth and growth and markets doing well, and yet seemed horribly exercised at the fact that things had been improving and refused to believe that any of this recovery was real in any sense because of what had preceded it, namely the big expansion of the Fed's balance sheet and the stimulus package.
There are a fair chunk of people, politicians, economists, op-ed writers, who intuitively know that know stimulus doesn’t work, government intervention is bad, that expansionary Fed policy inevitably leads to inflation.
These are matters of faith, the evidence doesn’t mean anything to them. They put down a market when any of this happens no it can't work because of what I know about how the economy works. Every bit of evidence that comes in that shows something may be working is a rebuke to that worldview.
Matlin:Two things, one you said what they know abiout the economy, what they think is true about the economy is true… We’re dealing with two different sorts of truth… we’re dealing with…
Ledbetter:I think it’s called ideology.
Matlin: This all seems to me to be a high-brow couch of the Limbaugh thesis. Which is that… Limbaugh got into trouble because he said he wanted Obama to fail. This is similar because it says… I want the country to be on the right track, and if that means the economy has to fail first in order to kick out these policies then we’ll bring in…
Gross: But say you work at CNBC… and your work is selling prosperity…the version of the prosperity gospel [The greatest story never told] it puts that person in a conflicted position. Because they do want all the market data to do well, but in doing so it’s a rebuke of their record…
Matlin: Jim don’t you have a theory about the Fed and the Republicans that the Republicans are rooting…
Ledbetter: I’ve been amused and confused by some of the Republicans attacks on the federal government, excuse me the Fed, in the following sense.
For so long the cheerleader, drum major of deregulation was the head of the Fed, whether it was Alan Greenspan or through the Bernankie period… and the people who wanted small government, low interest rates, they were an important of part of the Reagan coalition, along with the religious right, and to see them now turning on Bernanke, to see them wanting to dismantle the Fed strikes me as political suicide because it’s taking out a key component of that traditional coalition. I’m sort of baffled by this Obama fail caucus…
Gross: Obviously the Republican House caucus which voted en masse against the stimulus… but it’s not only a phenomenon of the right, because it’s not so much that they think that the stimulus will fail [...] there’s a group of people who think that the bail-out package and the rescue of the banks was sort of conceived in sin and therefore it will bear poisonous fruit.. since we haven’t come to grips with the sheer awfulness of the financial sector, since we haven’t punished people, since many of the same people are staying in charge, and since we are trying to engineer a recovery in part by reflating and illegitimately propping up these failed businesses, to them seeing Wall Street and the banks make profits when they’re borrowing at zero % and lending at 5 and 6 [%] that is also a rebuke to their world view.
Ledbetter: It’s sort of funny the number of people on the left who have now picked up the cause of moral hazard… it was not really a concern of the left…
Matlin: We should remember the bank bailouts were not an Obama initiative, they were a Bush initiative. Everyone… is trying to take things on ideology, rather than actual facts on the ground.
Ledbetter: Well that’s what so confusing. It’s pure negativity, there really isn’t a coherent programme they’re offering as an alternative. It’s just refusal to accept.
McCarthy Report Proposals. “Many make no sense”…Tánaiste. “Key”…Minister of Finance. September 23, 2009
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Economy, Irish Politics.add a comment
In response, the Minister for Finance said the McCarthy report was “key” to the budgetary process was key to the budgetary process.
Hmmmm… let’s see them square this circle.
Irish Left Open History Project September 23, 2009
Posted by Conor McCabe in Irish Left Open History Project.21 comments
Conor McCabe of Dublin Opinion and WBS at the CLR (and hopefully many more as this develops) have joined forces to attempt to put some shape on the current up-welling of material in terms of publications and oral and written histories of the Irish Left.
The idea is to try to generate clear histories of the individual political parties, groups and formations that have characterised the Irish left during the 20th century and on into the 21st. There’s never been a better time for this with a renewed interest in the area and a new willingness on the part of participants to discuss debate and contribute.
To that end on a very regular basis (we hope weekly) we’ll be posting a document from a specific party/organisation/formation and a piece that draws together what we know about them in general terms. We hope that people might add their thoughts on where that knowledge is incorrect, partial or requires extension. Think of it as an encyclopedia or a wiki page, one that will develop and evolve as more people contribute.
The sort of information necessary to build this project is structure, organisation, policy and history. And those each come with a range of questions… how was an organisation established? Who were the key personalities? Where did it organise? How did it organise? What were the key documents it publicised? How did it differ from other similar or different groups operating in Ireland at the time? What were its objectives and how did it go about achieving them?
We’re hoping that this will be a participatory process, in a way somewhat like the Left Archive (which will continue in its current form as well, but the purpose of which is more directed towards discussing the policy positions and suchlike), but positioned both in the history, ideology and development of each formation. We’re hoping to avoid argument and dissension over – say – the validity of a specific policy or ideological position assumed by a formation – again that’s more for the Archive. But we do intend that there will be debate and discussion over – say – the importance or weight a grouping might give to a specific policy or ideological position and other matters.
It’s not going to be a rapid process but we hope that at the end of it we’ll be in a position to produce usable accessible information about the Irish left online, and perhaps ultimately in printed format, that will link directly into the DCTV programmes, the Left Archive and other resources and become a further resource in and of itself.
If you want to participate contributions are welcome and will be acknowledged and the comments will be open. If you have particular formations you were involved in and know about please contact us – you can use the usual email addresses for WBS or Conor for the moment (and please cc to both of us).
John Sullivan once wrote that: In sum, political sects provide a refuge which many people need, either permanently or temporarily. They are the heart of a heartless world, and will disappear only when that world begins to change.
We’d disagree with the term ‘sects’, but the overall sentiment is one we strongly share and one which we hope will inform this project. There’s a lot individually we don’t know, but collectively many of us who do, and collectively working together it should be possible to put shape on this history.
A smack on the head is just what you get: Cóir, Youth Defence and the Catholic Right September 22, 2009
Posted by smiffy in Lisbon Treaty.35 comments
Whatever your views on the Lisbon Treaty, pro or anti, I think everyone on here who is both honest and sane would agree that its ratification won’t bring about the introduction of abortion in Ireland. This post is about neither the Treaty itself nor abortion.
With that in mind, I’d suggest that this week’s ‘Lisbon Treaty Sheer Brass Neck’ award should go to Niamh Uí Bhriain of Cóir. Responding to Bishop Noel Treanor’s statement that there is no religious reason for a Catholic to oppose the Treaty, she said
“Bishop Treanor’s intervention was quite extraordinary,” she said. “He threw himself into political campaigning because of his support for the treaty.
“But, worst of all, he felt free to misrepresent and attack No campaigners. I would remind the Bishop that the days of belting Irish citizens with the crozier are thankfully long gone,” she said.
The irony of Cóir accusing others of misrepresentation, and of Uí Bhriain seemingly celebrating the declining influence of the Catholic Church is funny enough, but not enough to clinch the prize. Instead, she gets it from the crozier remark. Those of us who know Niamh Uí Bhriain as Niamh Nic Mhathúna, founder of Youth Defence, and who remember the tactics of her and her buddies in the early 1990s might be allowed a raised eyebrow at her new-found aversion to belting people with sticks.
More seriously, those commentators and letter-writers who consider the Bishop’s statement (and today’s from the Conference of Bishops) to represent a refutation of Cóir, or who find it odd that fundamentalist Catholics would position themselves in opposition to the Church hierarchy completely fail to understand the nature of Cóir (or, more correctly, the Cóir-Youth Defence-Family and Life collective of organisations, operating out of Life House on Capel Street) and what has happened to the Catholic right in Ireland over the last 15 years. In fact, the emergence of Cóir in the second referendum (and in the absence of Libertas) as arguably the most visible organisation campaigning against the Treaty, and possibly the most influential group on the Catholic right is one of the most intriguing developments in Irish politics in recent years.
It should come as no surprise that Cóir and the Bishops find themselves on opposing sides, as its earlier incarnation, Youth Defence, was established as a direct rival to the mainstream, respectable Catholic organisations – the likes of SPUC, Pro-Life Campaign, Family Solidarity – which dominated the ‘liberal agenda’ battles of the 1980s. The founding myth of Youth Defence is that they originated a group of young people, worried about babies in the weeks after the ‘X’ case first came to light, who spontaneously came togehter and went onto Michael Cleary’s (thank you, historical irony) radio show seeking support. The story’s here on the Youth Defence website, which is actually pretty good.
The truth is somewhat different. The founding members were closely associated with – in some cases the children of – individuals like Una Bean “Wife-Swapping-Sodomites” Mhic Mathuna, and Mena Bean Uí Chribín (of Santry Woods Post Office cum Marian Shrine). These people had been involved in the abortion and divorce campaigns in the 1980s, but by the early 1990s were considered so extreme by the more respectable Catholic right (William Binchy, John O’Reilly, Des Hanafin et al) that they were seen as a liability in an Ireland which had elected Mary Robinson. While the crazies certainly attracted the support of individual clergy, the Catholic hierarchy shared the reservations of their lay-colleagues, and tended to give them a wide berth. In return, the Youth Defence crew never showed any great deference to the bishops, or any particular respect to the right-wing great and good.
While they were still a relatively marginal force in the 1992 abortion referendum, they grew in significance over the next decade. Unlike the Pro-Life Campaign, they remained extremely active between referenda, including a direct, distasteful involvement in the C case, and violent action occupation of IFPA and Marie Stopes clinics. They grew in influence in the 1995 divorce referendum as in the form of the No Divorce Campaign (responsible for the infamous ‘Hello Divorce, Bye Bye Daddy’ posters) they made a significant impact on public opinion in the course of the campaign, arguably overtaking the Anti-Divorce Campaign in influence. The 2002 abortion referendum represented a significant turning point, as unlike in 1992, they stood in direct opposition to the Pro-Life Campaign, which advocated a Yes vote. While, of course, Youth Defence can’t claim credit for the defeat of that referendum, they were certainly a major factor in getting an anti-choice No vote out, without which the amendment would most likely have passed.
None of this is going to come as news to anyone on here. However, what I find so fascinating about Cóir is that at a time when the popular influence of the Catholic Church is ebbing, and the mainstream lay-Catholic pressure groups are becoming more and more marginal, this far-right fundamentalist organisation has managed to maintain its position as a significant political player in the State. Interestingly, despite its consistent street presence, and ability to push its message so vociferously during referendum campaigns, its electoral ambitions remain modest. Apart from the odd misjudged adventure such as Justin Barrett’s European campaign, or its links with Libertas over the summer, it’s never shown much ambition to engage in parliamentary politics. This may be due to a reluctance to open its finances to the kind of increased attention such a move would involve, but one wonders what the prospects of a Cóir Dáil candidate would be if they put their minds to it.
To the best of my knowledge (and I’d love to be corrected on this), the growth of Youth Defence has never been the subject of a sustained work of political analysis. Emily O’Reilly’s ‘Masterminds of the Right’, while slim, was a good account of the role of the Catholic right in the 1970s and 1980s. However, it was published in 1992, just before the emergence of Youth Defence, and the political context has changed immeasurably since then. As, like most of the readership of this site, I work my way through ‘The Lost Revolution’, it strikes me that there’s a very important untold story – perhaps a book – in the development of the wider Youth Defence movement, and what it means for the future of Catholic political activism in Ireland.
Expense and revenue… September 22, 2009
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Economy, Irish Politics.35 comments
And further to the latest pronouncements:
Mr Cowen said the budget would result in cuts “right across the board”, including public-sector pay and pensions. He also all but ruled out any major new taxes in December’s budget except for a carbon tax.
Imagine, if you will, that you have expenses. Considerable expenses. You have to pay the costs of where you live. You have to purchase food. You have to pay for schoolbooks for the children. You have to cover ongoing medical costs. Now imagine that you have an income stream, but that income stream doesn’t – all of a sudden – match up your outgoings. You’ve taken out a loan, or two, to bridge you to a point where your income will be greater. (What? What’s that you say? That’s precisely your position.) Okay…
Well, let’s take this further. Imagine that you could increase that income stream, or even take a second job and add a new income stream, perhaps not sufficiently large to cover all outgoings at this point in time, but substantially so and in such a way as to construct a sustainable base for the future so that if your parts of your income stream dip again you will not be entirely dependent upon them.
But, you’ve decided that instead of doing that you’re going to cut the schoolbooks, you’ll forgo the medical costs (not for yourself personally, you’ve got private medical insurance, but your partner will have to make do), you’ll give up eating (well, your partner and the kids will). And the rent? Let’s not talk about the rent. That cardboard box in the garden is looking mighty fine. Well not for you, naturally, but the kids aren’t in any position to complain. Or the lodgers. Or your cousin who lives with you.
You’ve decided that the expenditure side is more important than the revenue side. Indeed is so important that all else must be ignored.
There’s something of that wrongheadedness in the comments of Brian Cowen as reported in the Irish Times. For we learn (and let’s add to this the Farmleigh cosmetic love in and the importance accorded to it) that:
THE RECOMMENDATIONS of the Commission on Taxation report will be implemented in the long term rather than the short term, Taoiseach Brian Cowen has indicated.
And…
Mr Cowen said the immediate issue was the “unsustainable” nature of the public finances. He was responding to a claim in a newspaper yesterday that the report, which was published two weeks ago, would be shelved.
“We do have to recognise that this is about setting out over the coming years. There’s a long-term focus, if you like, to how you would redesign our tax system,” he said.
But here’s an oddity. It’s not all that long ago that Garret FitzGerald was arguing that we didn’t have an expenditure problem, but a revenue problem. He may have turned apostate on this issue, but his original analysis was correct.
And Cowen explicitly recognises this when he notes;
The Commission on Taxation’s 550-page report had 230 recommendations covering a range of areas. Mr Cowen said the proposed redesign of the tax system would reward enterprise and result in equity, fairness and transparency. He said the system must provide a sustainable level of income to the exchequer for the provision of public and other necessary services. The Taoiseach said Ireland needed to position itself so it could compete when an economic upturn came.
A sustainable level of income for the provision of public and other necessary services… from the system… The tax system.
There’s no getting around that. I can argue for borrowing to see us through the next three years and for stimulus. But it is clear that that can only be on the foot of sustainability in other areas. I’ve also noted that that might indeed necessitate wage cuts (although that too is a deceitful little trope, a wage cut is of course a de facto tax increase, at least for the person who is taking the cut and indeed in terms of its revenue effect), not for their own sake, not for some notional ‘pain’ infliction, but for generating funds towards a stimulus package.
But that’s not what is being discussed.
And note what else is not being discussed…
He said there would be more emphasis on expenditure rather than taxation in the next budget. Two budgets in the course of this fiscal year had seen impositions of personal taxation and pension levies on workers and on taxpayers generally, he said. “At a time when the economy is fragile, we need to be mindful of the impact a raise in the taxation burden on labour will have . . .”
No doubt. A further income tax increase at this point in time would be unwise. But there are many other ways to increase taxes which do not impinge directly or overly much on the taxation burden on labour. There’s a word for such taxes… popery, propellory…nah… it’s gone.
Unfortunately, because we’re wedded, explicitly so in the terms of reference to the Commission on Taxation Report, to a low tax model our political class simply do not appear to be able to engage with a basic truth.
If we want high quality public provision (a good in and of itself if we consider the economic track record of those countries which place that at the front and centre of their societal goals) we have to pay for it, and – to add to that and counter the trope that appears to now be embedded in the public discourse that somehow there’s something unheimlich about the vast bulk of current expenditure being in the form of wages – there’s no way around the fact that for public provision we have to pay salaries because public provision requires teachers, doctors, nurses and yea verily even clerical staff.
There’s no advanced economy that can do without that, no advanced economy where ‘efficiencies’ make up any serious quantum of public expenditure in the way that some of those who are most enthusiastic about them propose. Indeed what we see in the advanced capitalist economies with the best level of social protection and public provision is sustained investment in those services across decades. Not the stop start approach taken in this state.
And that requires higher taxation. Not in the medium term, but in the short term and with as broad a base as can be constructed. As I said earlier, this isn’t to say that tomorrow income taxes should rise – perish the thought. The effect of that could be disastrous. But instead that a clear programme of increases should be introduced, a programme that will span x number of years. That will consider efficiencies in a joined up sense, that will also consider social cost of cutting programmes and do all that is possible – including using taxation – to sustain them. And a programme that will include property taxes and other means of ensuring that we have a broad, and yes… sustainable.. tax base.
Truth is we have an ‘unsustainable’ tax system. And we have had since the late 1990s. And the sooner that central truth is dealt with the better. And yes, were it done so and seen to be done so the chances of enthusing, or at least getting the grudging acceptance of others to shoulder more again would be slightly more likely.
But somehow grasping that particular nettle, the one which, to my mind, is largely the cause of our current problems, is an action the government does not wish to take. No surprise there. And so the problem is perpetuated.
Civil service pay… September 22, 2009
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Economy, Irish Politics.70 comments
It seems only appropriate on the day that’s in it to offer an anecdote. But let’s very briefly, since I was reading the latest ESRI report on Public Sector Pay at an ungodly hour last night and therefore the full import may have eluded me. Some thoughts… The report suggests that:
According to the ESRI, public-sector employees earned in excess of 25 per cent more than those in the private sector in 2006, when pensions were taken into account.
That’s not all, but there’s only so much time to deal with it. However, there’s an interesting phrase in the conclusion which is, I believe, well worth parsing out further:
The approach adopted in this study differs fundamentally from that of the
Benchmarking review body which relied on job evaluation techniques.
Arguably the process of job evaluation is open to question regarding the extent
to which public sector workers can be effectively benchmarked with private
sector equivalents on the basis of job content. Furthermore, there is little
theoretical or empirical grounding to the apparent assumption that wages will
be primarily determined by job characteristics. However, the approach
adopted here largely ignores job content and compares the earnings of public
sector workers with their private sector counterparts that are equipped with
the same human capital characteristics. Within economics it is widely
accepted that accumulated human capital is the principal factor determining
an individual’s productivity and, hence, their earnings. As such, we believe
that the methodology adopted here, which is standard within the international
literature, is the most appropriate means of assessing the magnitude of the
public sector wage premium.
Hmmm… well, there is that, and the small fact as noted by the Irish Times that:
The research, however, does not reflect the effect the economic downturn or pension levy may have on the gap.
So, undigested data presented with headline figures. Nice.
And what of?
In particular, public sector pensions are index-linked to earnings growth in the public sector whereas private sector pensions are generally substantially less favourable.
Now, to me, being a private sector employee for most of my working life that suggests that perhaps, just perhaps, given the most profitable time that sector enjoyed during the past decade and a half the fault might lie (particularly given the appalling lack of pensions cover in that sector for most workers) with private sector employees, and rather than being used as a yardstick to beat the public sector, might actually be seen as an indictment of private sector provision.
Oh yeah, that anecdote?
A government department last week had an email circulated by HR about Family Income Support and specifically mentioned financial support to those on low pay. I won’t say which Department, but I’ve seen the email and it’s genuine.
What level does one have to be to get FIS? Well, the limits are here.
From January 2009, And your family income
if you have: is less than [net]:One child €500
Two children €590
Three children €685
Four children €800
Five children €920
Six children €1,030
Seven children €1,160
Eight children €1,250
Trickle Down Lies and Northern Ireland September 21, 2009
Posted by Garibaldy in Economy, Northern Ireland, Workers' Party.add a comment
The Irish Left Review has a short article by the Research Section of The Workers’ Party analysing the failure of trickle down economics in Northern Ireland, in light of Peter Robinson’s declared faith in trickle down economics. Here is its conclusion, pointing to the twin failures of the current set up:
Just as the current Stormont regime has sectarianism built into its DNA, it seems as if any social democratic policy urges will be severely constrained by the privatising agenda of the UK Treasury. And nothing will trickle down to the working class.
