Living from hand to mouth July 10, 2012
Posted by irishelectionliterature in Capitalism, Inequality.trackback
I’m an Ulster Bank customer and naturally I’ve been on the phone or in the branch over delayed wages. (Luckily the Mortgage is with them so they couldn’t take it out.)
An aspect of the Ulster Bank crisis that hasn’t garnered that much attention was how it also revealed the vast numbers of people barely surviving financially from month to month. The panic that any delay in wages caused people. The knock on effect to the direct debits for everything from Mortgage repayments to childcare. How structured many peoples finances were by necessity. How little wriggle room people have financially.
This of course is reflected in the Irish League of Credit Unions’ ‘What’s Left?’ survey
The survey is quoted in todays Irish Independent under the headline
“Harsh reality of austerity: 1.8m have less than €100 left each month” (When did the Indo start talking about Austerity?)
MORE than 1.8 million people are struggling to survive on €100 or less a month after bills are paid, a study showed.
Four out of 10 adults have borrowed to pay a household bill in the last year, with the most desperate 10pc using a moneylender, it revealed.
The Campaign Against Household and Water Charges also had an article on the survey
Where they stated that
The Irish League of Credit Unions’ ‘What’s Left?’ survey showed that 602,000 people have absolutely nothing left when they pay their bills, that half of households struggle to pay their bills on time and that 40% of households have had to borrow to pay their bills over the last 12 months.
In this context, how does the government possibly believe that it can impose property and water taxes which will amount to over €1,000 per household? People’s incomes have been slashed by a combination of austerity measures and stealth taxes. They have had enough and cannot take the imposition of any more financial pain.
The survey makes sad reading. The stress people are under is immense…. and things don’t appear to be improving.
The IT editorial frames the story as an issue of consumer spending, not one of impoverishment of workers or citizens or people, just one of problems in the naturally occuring process of business interests extracting wealth from society:
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2012/0710/1224319720563.html
Meanwhile, elsewhere in the IT, a report on how the bad weather is having a negative impact on the M&S summer sales:
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2012/0710/breaking6.html
Nice to know where the IT is coming from and that it has the best interests of society at heart.
Like that old chestnut regurgitated by IBEC/ISMSE/Chambers/ESRI ‘consumers need confidence to go out and spend’. Eh, no, they need money and that means higher wages, increased benefits, less taxes and charges. In other words, precisely the opposite direction for policy to that being followed, with resolute support from these same business organisations. The orthodoxy, while unchallenged within the media and academia, is coming under pressure in households and communities, as this Credit Union report demonstrates. 100 euro a month left over equates to 1/12 of the annual household charge. Given that property/water taxes of the order of at 300-400 euro are immeninent, the government seem prepared to cut an already paltry disposable income still further.
And on this issue, am I the only person who takes exception to SIPTU (in particular its chief economist Marie Sherlock) discussing property taxes in the abstract and with the implicit assumption that a property tax is necessarily progressive. What scope is there for any additional taxes in an economy whose domestic (i.e. real) economy is murdered by the state, and where nearly half of people have 100 euro left a month to spend.
“What scope is there for any additional taxes…”
Plenty of scope at the top end. See pages 5-7 of the WP’s pre-budget submission from last year:
http://issuu.com/wpi_meath/docs/wp_pre_budget_submission_2012
Well, we both know that that end of the income distribution spectrum is not under any threat from this government, several of whose members are either high net worth individuals or close to it. But your point remains valid.
Re CMK’s point, it’s remarkable how often economic questions are being framed in terms of what can roughly be described as New Age Goobledegook. Hence the idea that the economy will pick up if people only take a ‘positive attitude’, that consumer spending will revive if there’s a miraculous increase in ‘confidence,’ that public sector pay should be vastly reduced so that the private sector feel ‘the pain is being shared’ and that events like Obama saying Is Feidir Linn and the Irish fans singing when they’re losing may ‘kickstart’ an economic recovery. Also the pretended faith in stuff like Hireland and think-tanks involving rich Yanks. In this universe government policy doesn’t fail, the electorate fails by not looking at in the proper light. And there is no logical argument which can be made against such policies as they are only opposed by ‘cynics’ and ‘knockers.’
In the twisted world of 2012, where the lunatics have taken over the asylum,these terrible figures will be used to bring on even more austerity.We need to cut more,deregulate labour laws more,tax ordinary people(not big business) so that businesses can create more jobs which is the best way to get people out of poverty.
One thing is sure LATC this govt. isn’t going to go near the top.Taxes have decreased recently in this state VAT for tourist and leisure industry and PRSI for employers.Fine Gael and indeed Labour are wedded to trickle down economics
No argument from me there Fergal. If the recent LP noise about bumping up social insurance contributions to average EU levels makes it into the bdget we can rest assured it will mean an increase in the burden on employees rather than employers.
Interesting datapoint in the survey for the hang Richard Tol brigade:
Work Related Expenses
Child care comes in as the greatest work related expense at €520 per month on average (of those with children), this is followed by car fuel (€145) per month, daily lunches (€110) per month and public transport (€77) per month.
It was less ‘hang Richard Tol’ and more ‘hang those who are misusing the data’ to claim that welfare is too high.
For example, some people were claiming that Tol findings were too conservative because wages have dropped…