Irish politics discussion thread

it makes no sense for gilmore or kenny to allow a budget through tht they will be blamed for anyway. The irish political psyche does not allow for consideration beyond 'this is happening now'

regarding cowen being given the power to negotiate a bank bailout and a four year budget as a going away present, i pretty much agree with most of what fintan o'toole says.

though i'v e not heard it in any other media yet- tbf i've been away from radio etc all day- has anyone heard anything to the tune of 'ff shouldn't be allowed to do this before they go'? are people not wise to the 'it's in the national interest' line by now?

http://desmond.yfrog.com/Himg840/scaled.php?tn=0&server=840&filename=1u6d.jpg&xsize=640&ysize=640

again, pointless and diversionary from the media.

as far as i know, nobody as referred to either cowen or lenihan as 'liars' yet in a headline nor in any article.

http://bocktherobber.com/2010/11/reinventing-ireland

'those who can pay more, will pay more'

Mr cowen.

Eh, how? Where? No change to the beloved corp tax, cuts to far exceed taxes.

Dreams of the tax reforms needed fading rapidly.

Public sector pensions hit, but not unfairly imo. That likely tax hikes will include us disproportionately as opposed to high earners, well, speaks for itself.

No sign of any type of move towards taxing wealth/assets. The money made during the celtic tiger really did vanish, huh

tbh im more pissed off abt stuff like the school i went to having more prefabs than classrooms and almost no playground left. they wanted an extension when i started there abt 20 years ago and they still dont have funding. the population has like quadrupled since then. when i think about how that money got wasted when we had it. sure we have better roads, but we wasted all our money on ugly vacant commercial premises and now we.ll never have any money again.

ppl can be angry all they want abt the shifty deregulation and neoliberalism. but while ff can claim to have had the wool pulled over their eyes, they cant really claim to have invested in good infrastructure.

seems like it would have slowed the rate of growth and provided more sustainable employment in building?

like sure, shudawudacuda tho

like i guess limk was a good vantage point for this, a large prop. of ppl employed in building, a decaying urban centre. result a ton of expensive developments that nobody was moving into. felt like the admin. solution to the increasing donutification was to build more in the hope of attracting businesses, in the hope of attracting ppl back in. but the city is so unattractively empty nobody wasever gonna move in

well, where there's genuine need for public infrastructure, now's the perfect time to do it!

Except all money is ringfenced for the banks, to support the euro.

well thats what i mean?

not disagreein with you at all, just frustrated at the waste for no gain.

yah i mean we have no hope of a stimulous plan or anything. its funny to think abt that.

also

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2010/1124/breaking39.html

12% seems like an awful lot for the lowest earners

it is an awful lot.

but dont worry, they'll make it easier to take by cutting the shit out of rent supplement, dole, lone parents, whatever you want. as long as you have something worse than working for pittance, then you'll keep some mugs at it. good economics.

where the fuck are the taxes on wealth and assets.

how do you tax that tho? other than low interest rates, or an increase in local taxes for big houses etc

I may be underestimating the difficulty of getting a register of assets? Or am I? Why would that be so difficult?

There's huge asset wealth in Ireland, a lot of it rests with the very sections that have both benefited most from the boom and were disproportionately responsible for the property and banking crises. And many of them have little or no declared income now, just huge houses, mercs and golf club memberships to get through the day. Aside from the legitimacy of taxing wealth as a general measure, in our current circumstances it becomes damn near a moral imperative that assets are generating some income for the state in the recovery process.

Freely admit I'm riffing here, but I haven't seen a coherent argument as to why a wealth/asset income-generating approach would be any worse than the IMF loan-shark bailing out of the banks method.

I'm sure someone on ILX can give me one, tbh.

yeah i'd agree, but how would you go about it? i guess you could tax rental properties cuz nobody will want to sell them right now, but then ppl will just increase rent en masse

how would you tax liquid assets?

tax on rental properties already exists, the 200 quid NPPR levy. that'll rise.

How would I tax liquid assets? maybe

goal

on a transactional basis? thing about liquid assets is that they're at their most useful when easily transferable, so you'd have to keep that low.

assets like property- well, the govt are terrified to do anything with property, but the reality is that market is still fairly heavily overpriced for the most part. rents are falling all the time, and there aren't enough of us out there to fill the fucking things. the only thing that could help now is govt intervention on the purchasing side- use NAMA to clear the housing lists and get anyone with a long term need off rent supplement and into their own home. the amount of people with second homes they cant afford to keep vs the number of people without primary residences of their own will dawn on some bright spark one of these days

noonan, even when talking sense, creeps me out.

love cranky old economists. mccarthy just moaning and digging at today's uninspiring document.

Excellent work there

noonan, even when talking sense, creeps me out.

that's my mum's brother you're talking about...he is genuinely a great guy, likes good music, great to have a pint with. i'm starting to get a bit bamboozled with the sheer volume of opinions on ireland right now so can't really comment on his credentials. surprised he (or anyone) wants to be minister for finance but he does it seems.

sorry i realise my backing is utterly irrelevant to politics but hey hum...

no, look- his opinion on prime time last night was refreshing. He didnt like the plan, but for all the right reasons, was quick to agree that fg would be seeking the same level of savings, kept on topic and was more grounded than the other panellists.

But he just.... leers a bit, imo

intrigued about noonan's music taste.....

wonder if bruton wont get finance after the election tho.

he likes lots of stuff you'd expect, van morrison or whatever, but he also likes jazz a lot, he would have miles davis and stuff on a lot at christmas i remember when i was younger and we used to spend it in limerick. in my extended family that's about as good as it gets in terms of musical taste!

i think the leer thing is just kind of his manner. it's sort of sad sometimes, i feel like when it comes to being a serious politician he's never managed to also show his personality, cos he is genuinely a really funny ultra charismatic dude.

i imagine most politicians at that level are better in person in any number of ways tbh.

Except micheal ring. Srsly.

yeah of course, prob plenty of them are nice guys, can't expect it to matter really given they make the decisions they do.

good luck, ireland

― Greatest contributor: (history mayne), Wednesday, May 12, 2010 5:23 PM (6 months ago) Bookmark

we're takin ye with us imo, regardless of 8bn compensation offer for 1603

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

BACK THE FUCK UP BACK UP

6.7%

6.7%?????

fuck this imf deal, tbh. we're fucked, but we're not at the last resort yet. this is international loan-sharking that benefits fuck-all of the irish people.

hey shut up, this is no time for dissent

If you don't pay we'll send Wolverhampton and St Helens over to break your knees.

if i thought the union-organised march would be anything but baaaah-ing i'd go.

but shit, 6.7%?

85bn, 6.7%.

1/6 of whatever we draw down from this fund, every year, in repayment.

and i'm not convinced they're not going to just throw it into the banks. they're being very quiet on what this fund will be used for. i don't believe for a second that FF won't try to commit, irretrievably if possible, as much of this capital into black holes before they leave office.

this just got terrifying imo. an election tomorrow wouldn't be soon enough. i don't think anyone is stressing the damage that could be done by these guys between now and january.

Where is the 6.7% figure being reported?

I don't really see that the election will fix the major problem, though it will hopefully put some (less in-)competent people in charge. Unless some party is willing to countenance default or the idea of leaving the Euro gains serious traction, we're throwing all our money into securing the banks' debts anyway.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/26/opinion/26krugman.html?_r=1&hp

reported on rte1 news.

election of a new govt will not fix the problem, but we need new decision makers. cowen and lenihan will not countenance an new options now, they're more concerned with consistency than competency or rational weighing-up of alternatives.

ps- i want a new govt to 'countenance' any and all options, including, if not default, then the very real option of retracting the bank guarantee to the extent possible.

krugman otm otm otm ffs

cant believe the extent to which the debate is being stifled in this country, with people all to willing to repeat what they're hearing from a very small group of highly self-motivated individuals who were mainly responsible to begin with

anything higher than 4% on the fraud imf bailout is disastrous, not even taking into account that the whole imf thing is disastrous.