Right (wrong) wing view…

There’s a certain sort of analysis of  the left which isn’t really an analysis at all but more a stream of consciousness. Worse again it is based on little or no actual knowledge of that being described. Now, in fairness this applies to some of the right from the left and so on. But I think it’s more typical in the other direction because of the tilt of our society politically and economically. Therefore it is little or no surprise to find Feargal Quinn, former Senator and business person, waxing lyrical in the SBP at the weekend on the Irish left.

He starts unpromisingly..

Imagine having to live off $200-300 every month and then imagine having to use that meagre income to feed family as well as yourself and having to pay bills and make ends meet…. this is the reality that millions face in several former Soviet republics. The ailing economise the they have to endure meant the these people exist rather than live.

Given these are post-Soviet and we’re now talking about the best part of thirty odd years of the benefits or otherwise of free market capitalism it’s difficult to discern a point until he pivots neatly to…

Our own breed of socialist Trostkyite politicians would do well to remember this as they queue for their skinny lattes is Starbucks. Even better if each of them were tot trek off to Ukraine or Belarus or the Stans and then come back and tell us that economies which are driven by socialist-communist policies are the way of the future.

Ukraine – eh? The ‘Stans’ – eh? Belarus is a somewhat different creature but note how everything is crushed into a single homogenous political economic category.

On again to ‘our own’ who are ‘expert at cynically devising campaigns which seek to channel the anger of certain sectors of the electorate. They feed this anger through a ‘them and us’ dynamic’. We saw this in action around the water charges issues where the myth that water is free was peddled as  crass response to the need to fund the costs of the development and improvement of our ageing water services infrastructure.

Keep in mind the ‘them and us’ dynamic as he races on to ‘politicians who do not hold office, they can never be truly held to account’ and then to criticise, though oddly softly Trump, and much more stringently Bernie Sanders (sample ‘I question whether he would have been much better than Trump’) who has the temerity to suggest that factories where new technology supplants workers should retain those workers. I’d like to hear a lot more on that idea, but for Quinn it is too much.

Meanwhile Quinn knows what he likes…

Taoiseach Varadkar’s pledge to work or the people who get up early in the morning resonated with many people. the so-called squeezed middle carried Ireland through its economic recession. the same squeezed middle pays taxes to fund those who are either unable to work, or refuse to work.

The squeezed middle plays for everything and expects little in return. And when they earn anything above the average industrial wage they are said to be wealthy and when they work so hard that they earn €100,000 (oh Feargal, bless, if only it were hard work that was the reason many people were on €100k salaries – wbs) they are scorned.

Oblivious to his earlier pleas for them and us ‘dynamics’ he slides effortless into one. Moreover those ingrates – people on lower incomes… ‘are paying comparatively less in income tax than those with similar earnings in other countries. This inconvenient truth runs counter to the populist rhetoric’. Does it, does it indeed? Even taking the assertion at face value (though what other countries, what level of tax, etc?) how about the manner in which indirect taxes which are not progressive in the technical sense of the term impact?

Cue a plea to Paschal Donohoe as Minister for Finance who ‘should be mindful of the squeezed middle who quietly work day in day out to keep the show on the road’.

You could make a drinking game out of it, with words like Trotskyite, populist, squeezed middle etc worth a slug, but I can’t recommend it. Neither fun nor good for the liver.