Hung out to dry -Latest D Mc Williams offering

dodgyme

I have to agree with alot

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Hung out to dry, but the Jugglers must survive

Indo Wednesday May 20 2009

Two years ago, in the book and accompanying TV series 'The Generation Game' I suggested that the imminent recession would be severe and would affect the generations differently.

The most exposed generation, who were termed the "Juggling Generation", were the young workers who had just been cajoled onto the property ladder and who were largely living in commuter towns outside our major cities and urban areas. These were the people who would lose their jobs, sink under debts and be mired in negative equity.

The Irish "Baby Belt", that huge swathe of the country where the population exploded in the boom, would slump from the vibrancy of young families and the positive dynamic of expectations of a better life to dejection and anger as the dream evaporated.

At the time, this dystopia was regarded as extreme. Many commentators dismissed these predictions as the work of an idiosyncratic crank making outlandish pronouncements in order to sell books.

Well now it is happening as forecast and the implications for politics and the nature of our society are enormous.

Things do fall apart and sometimes we need to "think the unthinkable". A familiarity with the rudiments of economics might help too.

If a generation with young families is abandoned in the suburbs with no jobs and negative equity, they face three choices. First, they can emigrate if they can face the upheaval and find a place that might accept them. Second, they can stay here and snarl on the dole, possibly waiting for a political messiah to deliver them out of this darkness.

Third, they can rely on themselves, take things by the scruff of the neck and try to work their way out.

Over the coming years, I hope that they will do the latter.

There are many reasons to be optimistic but it will take time to (a) get over the shock and (b) figure out what to do next.

As you read this, all over the country there are people in desperation who don't know what to do next or where to turn. As unemployment rises, these private kitchen crises will become more widespread.

The ramifications in terms of family breakdown, psychological problems and social chaos are self-evident. Last weekend, I listened to a GP from one such town, Gorey in Wexford, which has seen its population rocket since 2000.

He explained that the recession was not prompting a surge in attendance of the poor and the old, who are the "normal" visitors to his clinic.

He spoke of young fathers in their 30s, men who had never been to a doctor before, arriving into the clinic depressed, anxious and in need of counselling. They simply can't cope.

In order to see what's happening and where, let's take a drive out from the centre of any of our cities with their cafes, shops, bars, immigrants, students, young workers and foreigners who live in the thousands of apartments built over the past 10 years.

There are still some old inner city residents, but the big demographic change has been the influx of young people, born in the suburbs, back into town swapping the box room in Mammy's for the box room in town. They are mainly renting, young and single. The recession is biting here but in different ways.

Let's continue out past the inner suburbs, the original 1940s and 1950s council estates. These houses are built to last and these areas have seen a huge surge in wealth and stability since the 1980s. Gone are the Hiace vans on blocks in gardens, Hallowe'en bonfires and chippers; these have been replaced by black SUVs, holiday homes in Alicante, steady incomes and careers.

If we drive on to the older professional suburbs, we see nothing but red-brick solidity. These people, the ultimate insiders in the Irish parlour game, have done very well indeed. You can see it in their bodies. They weigh less than they did at the start of the boom. Some are over-extended in two-bit syndicates that old college mates in red cords duped them into. As a result, there will be spectacular crashes, which will dominate their dinner party gossip, but ultimately they'll be ok. They always are. At worst they will become poor versions of the European middle class.

Let's keeping driving over the ring road, past the toll bridges and the Giraffe Early Learning Centre and creche, past the Woodies DIY, Borders and the chrome and glass VW sales garage. Keep to the left beyond the TK Maxx, Curries and Tescos, the Indian takeaway and the Costa coffee shop. Keep going, you're nearly here.

Take a right. Into the new estate -- yes that's the one, Knightsbridge Wood. You are in the home of the Jugglers. Here is the carnage. These houses, built in 2003, are all in negative equity. Unemployment is rising rapidly. Unemployment has tripled in counties Kildare, Meath and Laois since 'The Generation Game' was published. This is where we are going to see the greatest social problems in the coming years and expect to see the same pattern in the areas surrounding Cork, Galway and Limerick.

(If you want to see the hard numbers underlying this article check www.ronanlyons.word-press.com or visit www.irisheconomy.ie)

At the moment this is a creeping geographical phenomenon but it will soon become the single biggest issue in Irish politics.

The Jugglers are Ireland's outsiders -- yet they are our brothers and sisters, our sons and daughters, our cousins, nieces, and nephews. They have been hung out to dry and as the most potentially productive generation in the country, if they don't recover, we won't recover.

www.davidmcwilliams.ie dmcwilliams@independent.ie

- David McWilliams

P. Breathnach

It's a piece of colour writing, not a lot more.

pwd

ronanlyons.wordpress.com

InFront

I'm not a huge fan of David McWilliams . I would take issue with his dismissing as 'safe' what he calls red brick solidarity in the professional suburbs and his doom-saying of those in the satellite housing estates. Anybody who generalises and speaks as vaguely about economic forecasts as DMcW deserves to be judged with some degree of scepticism.

I will say on thing about him, he caricatures exceptionally well.

mathie

dodgyme wrote: »

I have to agree with alot

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>

Hung out to dry, but the Jugglers must survive

Indo Wednesday May 20 2009

Two years ago, in the book and accompanying TV series 'The Generation Game' I suggested that the imminent recession would be severe and would affect the generations differently.

The most exposed generation, who were termed the "Juggling Generation", were the young workers who had just been cajoled onto the property ladder and who were largely living in commuter towns outside our major cities and urban areas. These were the people who would lose their jobs, sink under debts and be mired in negative equity.

The Irish "Baby Belt", that huge swathe of the country where the population exploded in the boom, would slump from the vibrancy of young families and the positive dynamic of expectations of a better life to dejection and anger as the dream evaporated.

At the time, this dystopia was regarded as extreme. Many commentators dismissed these predictions as the work of an idiosyncratic crank making outlandish pronouncements in order to sell books.

In summation 'I was right, everyone else was wrong. Now everything I ever say is 100% going to happen'.

silverside

Saw him lastnight at the "Leviathan" gig in the Button Factory - he compered a cabaret/debate with some greens and some capitalist types.

Anyway he's entertaining and writes good colour pieces, but the more I read and see of him, the less substance I think he has - OK his main point (that we have overborrowed and that a lot of people are living in expensive poorly-serviced homes) is fair - but he's not saying anything new or particularly insightful.

jmayo

P. Breathnach wrote: »

It's a piece of colour writing, not a lot more.

IMHO the scary thing is it is a lot closer to the truth then many people care to admit.
We may not like the guy or the way he writes, but does anybody seriously think that this country is not, for want of the better word, f***ed, ?

Gorey is a prime example of one of the commuter towns inhabited by FTBs who needed to buy, or felt they had to buy, but couldn't afford anything closer to Dublin.
How has infrastructure improved in Gorey over last 10 years to meet the huge influx of new arrivals.
AFAIK one of their secondary schools had the highest enrollment in the country a couple of years ago.
Did they get new facilities or were they promised them as elsewhere ?
If there is, as expected, huge unemplyment rises, what amount of social issues are there going to be in some of these ill equiped satelite towns ?

P. Breathnach

jmayo wrote: »

IMHO the scary thing is it is a lot closer to the truth then many people care to admit.
We may not like the guy or the way he writes, but does anybody seriously think that this country is not, for want of the better word, f***ed, ?

Frankly, I don't think he is bringing forward truths that large numbers of people have failed to recognise. All that he is adding is "breakfast-roll man" imagery.

I don't dislike the guy or the way he writes, but I think we should not treat his words with more seriousness than they deserve: as I said, it is colour writing.

And no, I don't think the country is f***ed. We have big challenges that we need to take seriously, and a certain amount of disunity on the team. But things will get better, mainly because the international situation will eventually improve, and our boat will float on the rising tide -- and whatever parties are in government at the time will claim the credit.

cabinteelytom

It's a striking bit of writing, adding psychology and emotion to the bald facts of economics. Thanks for posting David McWilliam's article.

Belfast

He speaks about it on Mooney goes wild today on rte1 radio about 34 minutes into the show.
http://dynamic.rte.ie/quickaxs/209-rte-mooney-Wednesday.smil

He makes some good points about the bad bank and how it is being financed in the radio interview.

johnnyskeleton

P. Breathnach wrote: »

And no, I don't think the country is f***ed. We have big challenges that we need to take seriously, and a certain amount of disunity on the team. But things will get better, mainly because the international situation will eventually improve, and our boat will float on the rising tide -- and whatever parties are in government at the time will claim the credit.

Just on this point, I don't think things will get better until people realise how things actually are now, what was going wrong and how to avoid such things in the future. I am not saying things won't get better, but I am wary of saying things will get better because people will believe that the economy will suddenly improve on its own, which it won't. It's only when some harsh truths are brought home will we stand any chance of real recovery. Until then, I am sceptical of anyone taking about upturns, greenshoots etc as they will only encourage other more naieve people to try to get ahead of a falling economy.

P. Breathnach

johnnyskeleton wrote: »

Just on this point, I don't think things will get better until people realise how things actually are now, what was going wrong and how to avoid such things in the future. I am not saying things won't get better, but I am wary of saying things will get better because people will believe that the economy will suddenly improve on its own, which it won't. It's only when some harsh truths are brought home will we stand any chance of real recovery. Until then, I am sceptical of anyone taking about upturns, greenshoots etc as they will only encourage other more naieve people to try to get ahead of a falling economy.

I'm not sure whether, on balance, I agree with you more than I disagree. Or the other way about.

The property bubble has burst, and that's pretty well the end of that. There has been a great deal of damage done to individuals and institutions. But I think we have just about enough capacity to recover from that, albeit set back considerably. Idiocy can be very persistent: there are still people trying to find angles for making quick turns on trades in similar ways to those used in the past few years. I think, however, that most people are learning the lesson.

Over the next couple of years I think people will adjust to a new set of realities, those of higher unemployment, higher taxes, lower earnings, lower prices, more modest expectations. Those of us who were economically active in the 1970s know it is survivable. It won't be fun, and it bothers me greatly that we will not all share the pain anything like equally. But we will survive, simply because there is nothing else for us to do.

The other important circumstance, the international environment, is simply too big for us to have any noticeable influence on affairs. Which is just as well, because I think we don't have the right talent in the right places to do much good. I feel a little spark of optimism about the international response because there seems to be some will in the international polity to work co-operatively on it (in parallel with the self-interested policies which they are also adopting -- political life is messy). Given how open our economy is, and how trade-dependent, any recovery in the international situation will benefit us greatly.

In sum, my view is that we should tighten our belts and hang in there; things will eventually get better.

Dr Galen

You can look at McWilliams 2 ways. Yes he can be lightweight in his writing and gives some quite wide examples and generalisations bbut you have to look at his audience.

If your a reader of this forum, then you at least have a passing interest in political and economic matters, and then you work up from there to those who have an in-depth knowledge of the subjects. So thus, to varying degrees, we here, will find him lightweight when he writes like this.

For your average newspaper reader though, his style of writing with all the analogies etc, is easy to follow and understand.

To give an example, my wife had no clue 4 years ago about anything political, economic or otherwise. An occasional news-watcher or newspaper reader. She read his books, which outlined things for her, read more of his articles etc and now has developed wuite a keen interest in things, and is pretty knowledgeable too and not just in an Irish sense. I practically had heart failure when this time last year she started to debate over a Chinese the rights and wrongs of the American political system

P. Breathnach

I am an enthusiastic reader of "popular science". By that I mean writings of proper scientists who set out to make things accessible to the non-specialist reader. There is a place for a similar treatment of economics, and McWilliams should be qualified to help fill it. But I think he does not do it as well as he might.

First, he he writes complex sentences and uses a wide vocabulary. Yes, he does it very well: he can write. But not all readers are attuned to such writing, and I am sure that many are put off.

Second, he gives priority to form over substance. He seems to have become obsessed with his caricature stereotypes like breakfast roll man. The images are mildly amusing when he introduces them, but in pursuing his images, he over-simplifies and distorts things somewhat. InFront's criticism in this thread of his "dismissing as 'safe' what he calls red brick solidarity in the professional suburbs" is one with which I agree.

Third, he is like a politician in seeking vindication: he opens his piece by defending The Generation Game and responding to those who were critical of it.

I suspect that he is on a search for popularity rather than truth.

gurramok

P. Breathnach wrote: »

I'm not sure whether, on balance, I agree with you more than I disagree. Or the other way about.

The property bubble has burst, and that's pretty well the end of that. There has been a great deal of damage done to individuals and institutions. But I think we have just about enough capacity to recover from that, albeit set back considerably. Idiocy can be very persistent: there are still people trying to find angles for making quick turns on trades in similar ways to those used in the past few years. I think, however, that most people are learning the lesson.

Over the next couple of years I think people will adjust to a new set of realities, those of higher unemployment, higher taxes, lower earnings, lower prices, more modest expectations. Those of us who were economically active in the 1970s know it is survivable. It won't be fun, and it bothers me greatly that we will not all share the pain anything like equally. But we will survive, simply because there is nothing else for us to do.

The other important circumstance, the international environment, is simply too big for us to have any noticeable influence on affairs. Which is just as well, because I think we don't have the right talent in the right places to do much good. I feel a little spark of optimism about the international response because there seems to be some will in the international polity to work co-operatively on it (in parallel with the self-interested policies which they are also adopting -- political life is messy). Given how open our economy is, and how trade-dependent, any recovery in the international situation will benefit us greatly.

In sum, my view is that we should tighten our belts and hang in there; things will eventually get better.

You are hopelessly optimistic. Look up structural problems in the economy and you will see an international upturn will not turn around 'higher unemployment, higher taxes, lower earnings'.

The structural deficit is there and will be there for many years hence an international upturn will only slightly help, its not the godsend.

dodgyme

TBF McWilliams is only highlighting the obvious. Most 30 somethings are in the vunerable group and are living outside the M50. Alot ended up starting in Flatlands or early CT apartments and drove past the areas he describes, past the ex council houses, and the red brick middle class area with their good schools and facilities and aging populations on there way to their new houses with no schools,pubs etc. He is not going to talk about the exceptions, he will talk about the rule and he is good at doing it.

Its just a pity that in Ireland the areas with the facilities are always the old areas - there is no regeneration for the classes that need the facilities. Instead it takes another generation before a new school is built where it is needed due to bad policy and even worse planning.:mad:

P. Breathnach

gurramok wrote: »

You are hopelessly optimistic.

Surely a contradiction in terms!

Look up structural problems in the economy and you will see an international upturn will not turn around 'higher unemployment, higher taxes, lower earnings'.

I don't understand your conjunction. I am not positing higher unemployment, higher taxes, and lower earnings as a basis on which to build an international upturn, or even an Irish one. I am simply suggesting that is what will happen here. Because we are very small in world terms, our impact on the world economy hardly matters, and because we are so trade-dependent, our recovery depends more on international recovery than it depends on our driving a recovery strategy for Ireland. Reduce taxes to increase demand? Much of that demand will be for imported goods and services. Where is the bulk of the demand for the goods and services we supply? Out there, in foreign places.

The structural deficit is there and will be there for many years hence an international upturn will only slightly help, its not the godsend.

What structural problems have you in mind? Some, like the huge distortion in the property market, will be corrected at the cost of great pain -- and I don't underestimate how big that is, and will be. Similarly, the huge excess capacity in the construction sector will need correction and that, too, will involve pain. Perhaps the heavy dependence on non-Irish workers has some ameliorative effect, because many will leave Ireland.

Our real hope has to be an international upturn.

seamus

McWilliams's writing is colourful (if a little tedious at this point), but he's consistently the pessimist and panders to the public's innate pessimism in his writings. He spent the last nine years scoffing at the economy and pointing out the obvious, "This is going to end". Now he's failing to see the flipside of it and he's constantly saying, "It's ended and now it's going to continue getting worse".

Of course, he's playing the easier side of the game. People will listen to you when things are bad, but when they pick up again nobody will treat you with contempt and you simply go back to being the dissenting voice.
To play the other game, and be the optimist, you will be attacked and disgraced when things go bad despite your optimism, and nobody will ever listen to you again.

McWilliams is just playing it safe.

gurramok

P. Breathnach wrote: »

I don't understand your conjunction. I am not positing higher unemployment, higher taxes, and lower earnings as a basis on which to build an international upturn, or even an Irish one. I am simply suggesting that is what will happen here. Because we are very small in world terms, our impact on the world economy hardly matters, and because we are so trade-dependent, our recovery depends more on international recovery than it depends on our driving a recovery strategy for Ireland. Reduce taxes to increase demand? Much of that demand will be for imported goods and services. Where is the bulk of the demand for the goods and services we supply? Out there, in foreign places.

We tend to disagree on the extent of this. Yes, an international recovery will help but it will only help a small bit. I'll answer it in the next bit.

P. Breathnach wrote: »

What structural problems have you in mind? Some, like the huge distortion in the property market, will be corrected at the cost of great pain -- and I don't underestimate how big that is, and will be. Similarly, the huge excess capacity in the construction sector will need correction and that, too, will involve pain. Perhaps the heavy dependence on non-Irish workers has some ameliorative effect, because many will leave Ireland.

Thats where it is, construction related activity. It constituted 23% of economic activity in 2006(http://www.finfacts.com/irelandbusinessnews/publish/article_1011255.shtml), at least double of what it should of been.

And then most of the other jobs created during the boom were pubic sector related and thats where the structural problem is also and they have to be paid for. The ESRI recently said the structural deficit is about 8% for many years even after an international upturn.

http://www.finfacts.com/irelandbusinessnews/publish/article_10008721.shtml

forfas report 2006 wrote:

Employment growth in the wider economy continued to increase, with construction, public administration, education and health accounting for 53,000 of the 83,000 jobs increase in 2006.

Our real hope has to be an international upturn.

It can only go so far to address the imbalance. It needs good export based policies to help and that has not come so far.

All this still won't help the generation duped into getting that overpriced 'starter home', they will be stuck there for many years struggling to pay off their mortgages.

djpbarry

jmayo wrote: »

Gorey is a prime example of one of the commuter towns inhabited by FTBs who needed to buy, or felt they had to buy, but couldn't afford anything closer to Dublin.

If you wish to continue working in Dublin, but you can’t afford a property within a 80km radius of Dublin, then you really have to question whether buying is the best option for you. I have very little sympathy for people who bought in places like Gorey and Mullingar and continued to work in Dublin and I say that as someone who has a close relative who lives near Gorey and commutes to Baggot St every day. It’s complete madness and it’s totally unsustainable.

dodgyme

djpbarry wrote: »

If you wish to continue working in Dublin, but you can’t afford a property within a 80km radius of Dublin, then you really have to question whether buying is the best option for you. I have very little sympathy for people who bought in places like Gorey and Mullingar and continued to work in Dublin and I say that as someone who has a close relative who lives near Gorey and commutes to Baggot St every day. It’s complete madness and it’s totally unsustainable.

Look people are sheep. The fact is that policy is there to lead sheep. Its there sheperd and the policy was not there for the benefit of the people but for the benefit of the builders etc. I have alot of sympathy for people since they were working hard and trying to do there best not like the 4% who never bothered to get up off there a%ses and had a dole run thru the whole of the CT. Everyone knows that the houses in gorey were to service dublin etc. So if they are a bad idea then the gov thru is planners should have stopped it but ofcourse they didnt. They should have encouraged older people to move from established area etc etc.

jimmycrackcorm

I was a fan of McWilliams until he wrote a piece in the Business Post last week about the situation in Letterkenny. Basically he grossly exaggerated it (dole queue half a mile long and so on). As I know better from being there and seeing the reality, I take all his writing now to lack honesty. For some reason I thought economists tell things as they see them (using facts as their basis of reasoning ), but he is a journalist first and foremost and a truth sayer secondly.

dodgyme

jimmycrackcorm wrote: »

but he is a journalist first .

therefore as a journo he is expected to write articles probably even when he has nothing to write on or no new ideas, hence I will forgive him 20% to be muck. But alot is good food for thought. e.g for me was the popes children. He used the popes visit as an anchor for the idea yet the people he characteristed were clearly born earlier having the wherewithall of people born between 1968-1975ish. However I liked the article posted as the OP since it hold more then a grain of truth and I maybe should have posted without the name of the writer and the debate may be different. People seem to talk more about McWilliams then the piece

jmayo

P. Breathnach wrote: »

...

And no, I don't think the country is f***ed. We have big challenges that we need to take seriously, and a certain amount of disunity on the team. But things will get better, mainly because the international situation will eventually improve, and our boat will float on the rising tide -- and whatever parties are in government at the time will claim the credit.

I disagree becuase I believe we have a very huge mountain to climb, even without the banking debacle strapped to our backs.

But then I might be termed a hopeless pessimist

I always use the likes of Carlow or Ballinasloe as examples of how we lost some small companies (some indegenous some not) that had been based in these towns even through the bad old days of the 70s and 80s.
There weren't many concerns raised when they did close, becuase there were plenty jobs in construction, in construction services and in retail.
Nobody, bar the workers themselves, appeared to care that the likes of Braun, Irish Sugar, Lapple or Dubarry were downsizing and/or closing altogether.

Now when the construciton jobs are gone, the consumer spending is drying up meaning all these retail parks, hotels are facing very hard times, that the loss of these companies that actually manufactured something that brought much needed money into the locality is beginning to really hit home.

We have rising unemployment and no longer have luxury of offloading our unemployed on the UK, the US and indeed Europe since they are in the midst of recession.
This means our social welfare bill will be much larger than ever before.

We also built up a public sector budget based on non sustainable transactional tax revenues from construction industry adn property sales.

We no longer have the monopoly on attractive corporation taxes, access to EU markets or the cheap educated labour we did back in the 80s, so don't expect the future Dells, Intels, Microsofts to be beating a path to our door.

And the cherry on top is that we have huge levels of personal debt, young people tied to negative equity long term meaning they ain't going to be spending much for the forseeable future.

P. Breathnach wrote: »

I'm not sure whether, on balance, I agree with you more than I disagree. Or the other way about.
...
In sum, my view is that we should tighten our belts and hang in there; things will eventually get better.

My worry is that some of us won't have belts only baling twine to tighten, whilst some others will have their gucci belts hidden away ala the dirt/offshore ansbacher accounts of the previous bad old days back in the 80s. :mad:

Mystik Monkey wrote: »

...
To give an example, my wife had no clue 4 years ago about anything political, economic or otherwise. An occasional news-watcher or newspaper reader. She read his books, which outlined things for her, read more of his articles etc and now has developed wuite a keen interest in things, and is pretty knowledgeable too and not just in an Irish sense. I practically had heart failure when this time last year she started to debate over a Chinese the rights and wrongs of the American political system

mystic that sounds very worryingly like you saying you were surpirsed she now had a brain :eek:

djpbarry wrote: »

If you wish to continue working in Dublin, but you can’t afford a property within a 80km radius of Dublin, then you really have to question whether buying is the best option for you. I have very little sympathy for people who bought in places like Gorey and Mullingar and continued to work in Dublin and I say that as someone who has a close relative who lives near Gorey and commutes to Baggot St every day. It’s complete madness and it’s totally unsustainable.

Some people felt they had to buy and get on the ladder whilst some did due to family circumstances. It is easy saying rent but with kids, schools, security of tenure etc being issues I can see the point of buying over renting.

The option for some was buy unsuitable appartment on Dublin outskirts or house in Gorey.

jimmycrackcorm wrote: »

I was a fan of McWilliams until he wrote a piece in the Business Post last week about the situation in Letterkenny. Basically he grossly exaggerated it (dole queue half a mile long and so on). As I know better from being there and seeing the reality, I take all his writing now to lack honesty. For some reason I thought economists tell things as they see them (using facts as their basis of reasoning ), but he is a journalist first and foremost and a truth sayer secondly.

And you think the bank economists told you the truth

I would agree with a lot of what he said down the years,maybe not the way he dressed it up to appeal to the masses, until he started the cr** about leaving the euro.

eamonnm79

Mc Williams is probobly one of the smartest guys in the country.
Not only has he got brains and cop on but he also has compassion.
He is the kind of person that people hate, usually its jealousy or because people like him make the rest of us look so average (a bit like Bono).
He writes about complex topics in a way that is accessable to the avarage joe (something academics and snobs dont like).
I dont agree with some of the things he says and he has weaknesses in that he can lack paripharal vision sometimes.
However on this issue, just like many other issues, he is on the button.

People between 25-35 are the ones who are at most risk here. They do not know what bad times are. The country has been on a high all of their adult life. Now many of them are in severe negative equity and have huge personol debt on top. I am lucky enough that I dont own property but most of my friends are taking major financial hits, and the emotional problems are palpable. Remember Mc Williams sees how much trouble these people are in and yet he realises that house prices need to halve.
We are talking generational poverty here, for people who have been living the highlife for all their adult life.
Most of these people know little about politics, have no interest, they were too busy having fun.
They dont vote (or if they do they copy there parents) dont know how to complain and stand up for themselves like the Pensioners did.

My instinct is that lots of them will just throw the towel in and start handing back keys to the bank and move back in with mammy.
If this happens in large numbers then we are going to be looking at a whole heap more of toxic assets for the banks to deal with.

djpbarry

eamonnm79 wrote: »

Mc Williams is probobly thinks he is one of the smartest guys in the country.

Fixed that for you.

eamonnm79 wrote: »

He is the kind of person that people hate, usually its jealousy or because people like him make the rest of us look so average (a bit like Bono).

No, people dislike McWilliams because, like Bono, he's a knob.

eamonnm79 wrote: »

He writes about complex topics in a way that is accessable to the avarage joe...

So what complex topic is being discussed in this particular article? Where's the substance behind the wishy-washy language?

eamonnm79 wrote: »

People between 25-35 are the ones who are at most risk here. They do not know what bad times are.

I fall into that age bracket and I remember what it was like growing up in a council house in the 80's. I had prudent economical living drummed into me by my parents, as did many other people my age.

eamonnm79 wrote: »

Most of these people know little about politics, have no interest, they were too busy having fun. They dont vote (or if they do they copy there parents) dont know how to complain and stand up for themselves like the Pensioners did.

Wow - I can see you've obviously taken a leaf out of McWilliams' book of generalisations. My parents rarely vote, so you can imagine the conundrum I’m faced with every time I go to the polls :rolleyes:.

cabinteelytom

Just to survive (ie be a viable society and an independent state in twenty years time) the Republic has to;

* improve it's international competitiveness
* prevent it's most able people leaving for more attractive societies/opportunities/climates elsewhere
* relocate it's most able people from the 'safe' professions to exportable, foreign-exchange-earning goods and services
* increase indigenous innovation-based companies
* increase registration of new patents
* repeatedly shock the chronically unemployed out of the dependency culture
* downsize the public sector
* manage the problem of agriculture

...besides reform our political system into something cost-effective, retire a generation of post-civil war politicians, and manage our relationship with the EU , and I think David McWilliams recognises that.( I probably got this list from him).

jmayo

cabinteelytom wrote: »

Just to survive (ie be a viable society and an independent state in twenty years time) the Republic has to;

* improve it's international competitiveness
* prevent it's most able people leaving for more attractive societies/opportunities/climates elsewhere
* relocate it's most able people from the 'safe' professions to exportable, foreign-exchange-earning goods and services
* increase indigenous innovation-based companies
* increase registration of new patents
* repeatedly shock the chronically unemployed out of the dependency culture
* downsize the public sector
* manage the problem of agriculture

...besides reform our political system into something cost-effective, retire a generation of post-civil war politicians, and manage our relationship with the EU , and I think David McWilliams recognises that.( I probably got this list from him).

You forgot a few big ones and the whole AIB goodbodys deals involving Nevis in Caribean highlight them.

Clean out financial regulators office.
Clean out all directors of the stock exchange and bring in best practices from overseas with new enforcement watchdog.
Give Director of coroprate enforcement additiional resources and tougher sanctions.
Bring in stiff prison sentences and million euro fines for anything remotely like insider dealing and misleading the markets.
Bring in whistleblower legislation immediately.

These steps won't create jobs but they will show the world that we are serious about cleaning out the old cowboys network and not tolerating bad habits, which might give investors some confidence in investing in this country down the road.

gurramok

djpbarry wrote: »

I fall into that age bracket and I remember what it was like growing up in a council house in the 80's. I had prudent economical living drummed into me by my parents, as did many other people my age.

So had i. I'm 34 knocking on 35, but somehow i think most victims of the debt are those a few years younger than me. Alot of people in my workplace are in their late 20's and most seem to have money problems, being in debt from either an overpriced car and/or an overpriced gaff and/or having maxed out credit cards.

The age thing is a coincidence to those who left school/college in the mid-90's when the real Celtic Tiger took off and they always had good prospects of getting a job.

Contrast that to my class group of 1992, they nearly all went on the dole or to college or getting a one way ticket abroad which might start returning for the class of 2009.:mad:

eamonnm79

djpbarry wrote: »

If you wish to continue working in Dublin, but you can’t afford a property within a 80km radius of Dublin, then you really have to question whether buying is the best option for you. I have very little sympathy for people who bought in places like Gorey and Mullingar and continued to work in Dublin and I say that as someone who has a close relative who lives near Gorey and commutes to Baggot St every day. It’s complete madness and it’s totally unsustainable.

The commute from gorey to south Dublin takes 50 mins in the morning rush and evening rush (about 1hr30 on a friday in summer due to people going to holiday homes) So that is rubbish. I used to do it in a 1litre ibiza. gorey is far away but the N11 is an excellent road apart from the bottle neck where it goes to 2 lanes at the beehive.

djpbarry

eamonnm79 wrote: »

The commute from gorey to south Dublin takes 50 mins in the morning rush and evening rush (about 1hr30 on a friday in summer due to people going to holiday homes) So that is rubbish.

What's rubbish?

Sleepy

eamonnm79, that's fine if (like myself), you work in South Dublin. I count my blessings every morning when I turn off the N11 in Deansgrange just before the snarl up half a mile up the road.

On mornings when I'm working in City Centre, I'm looking at over an hour to get to the client site and I'm living in Brittas Bay which is twenty minutes or more up the road from Gorey. You also have to remember that the N11 is a road you'll see a squad car on at least once a week

P. Breathnach

Sleepy wrote: »

... You also have to remember that the N11 is a road you'll see a squad car on at least once a week

That should be irrelevant.

is_that_so

McWilliams needs to write something. I would call them conceits;clever little ideas that he bounces around for a while. Then he adds a peppering of pithy caricatures or labels , he gets some column inches in the Sindo and it does wonders for his continuing relevance. That's not to say that there isn't some truth in what he says but he "cleverly" recycles the same themes again and again. He's what Oscar Wilde would have written had he been an economist.

Electric Sheep

gurramok wrote: »

Contrast that to my class group of 1992, they nearly all went on the dole or to college or getting a one way ticket abroad which might start returning for the class of 2009.:mad:

There are much, much worse things than getting the one way ticket. For instance, getting the return ticket to Ireland during the Celtic Tiger. Those who did that were ****ed twice.

P. Breathnach

is_that_so wrote: »

McWilliams needs to write something. I would call them conceits;clever little ideas that he bounces around for a while. Then he adds a peppering of pithy caricatures or labels , he gets some column inches in the Sindo and it does wonders for his continuing relevance. That's not to say that there isn't some truth in what he says but he "cleverly" recycles the same themes again and again. He's what Oscar Wilde would have written had he been an economist.

That's a good description. And, no doubt, it helps to sell his books.

eamonnm79

djpbarry wrote: »

What's rubbish?

The bit where you said "It’s complete madness and it’s totally unsustainable"
thats rubbish.

djpbarry

eamonnm79 wrote: »

The bit where you said "It’s complete madness and it’s totally unsustainable"
thats rubbish.

Is it? You think it's perfectly reasonable for people to commute en masse to and from Dublin from over 80km away and for these people to expect an infrastructure to support their way of life? So where do we draw the line? At what distance from Dublin does it become unrealistic to commute to Dublin? From Athlone? Nenagh? Letterkenny?

nesf

He's a journalist with some economics background that writes fairly well about broad generalisations pegged together by a few anecdotal pieces of evidence. Calling it colour writing is overly generous, it's just another example of the victory of style over substance in the media in general, though arguably, it's this way because the people want it so. If McWilliams wrote like an economist, no one but the "anoraks" would read his stuff.

dreamlogic

We have big challenges that we need to take seriously, and a certain amount of disunity on the team. But things will get better, mainly because the international situation will eventually improve, and our boat will float on the rising tide.
....
we should tighten our belts and hang in there; things will eventually get better.

Sounds like Bertie or Charlie tbh. Belts tightening, boats rising... :mad:

P. Breathnach

dreamlogic wrote: »

Sounds like Bertie or Charlie tbh. Belts tightening, boats rising... :mad:

Come on, be fair: I'm not nearly as OTT as McWilliams. And my credentials as a sceptic are still good, because I wrote in the same post that "whatever parties are in government at the time will claim the credit."

Sleepy

P. Breathnach wrote: »

That should be irrelevant.

That was pretty much my point, driving from Gorey to south dublin in under 50 minutes would definitely require speeding...

brianthebard

Many here are saying that there's nothing new in this article and that its a fluff piece, but when most of the important people aren't facing up to this reality it needs to be reiterated until they do. The taoiseach is talking about economic recovery happening next year, but how, and at what price? There are housing estates, shopping centres, apartment blocks, etc littered across the country that are half finished or empty and never going to be filled. There are people living in silent desperation and their situation is only going to get worse. It makes me glad to be a student with only a few grand debt and an income of <4000 euro this year when I read about this stuff, because I'm in a better place than others my age or a few years older.

djpbarry

brianthebard wrote: »

Many here are saying that there's nothing new in this article and that its a fluff piece, but when most of the important people aren't facing up to this reality it needs to be reiterated until they do.

By “important people”, I presume you mean the powers that be? What about the people who are ultimately going to be responsible for turning this country around (if that ever happens – I’m not terribly optimistic), i.e. the electorate? My problem with pieces like this is that it is attempting to shift responsibility away from the people and toward the politicians. That’s not to say that politicians are in no way responsible for our current predicament, but people are ultimately responsible for their own actions (and that includes electing Fianna Fáil!). McWilliams refers to “victims” of the collapse of the property market as “the most potentially productive generation in the country”. Yet at the same time he’s claiming that these people have been “hung out to dry” by being duped into buying a property two counties away from where they work? Sorry, I don’t buy it.

Having said that, there is one statement in the article that I strongly agree with:

If a generation with young families is abandoned in the suburbs with no jobs and negative equity, they face three choices. First, they can emigrate if they can face the upheaval and find a place that might accept them. Second, they can stay here and snarl on the dole, possibly waiting for a political messiah to deliver them out of this darkness.

Third, they can rely on themselves, take things by the scruff of the neck and try to work their way out.

Over the coming years, I hope that they will do the latter.

However, as I said, I'm not terribly optimistic.

brianthebard

I agree, I wouldn't claim that those purchases were smart. But in Sligo (where I'm from) there are lots of buildings all around the county, which are technically fine for commuting from, but there isn't enough to go along with it in terms of infrastructure. Shop buildings and apartments have been thrown up all over the county with no regard for niceties like 'need' or 'markets' or any sort of research. It was just build and profit.

DJDC

McWilliams is a clever guy, youngest ever director within UBS at 27 and also headed up their EM research before moving on. He writes in a populist sensationalist style because that whats the Irish public likes and understands. Ireland is too small a country to have the likes of an FT or WSJ and we dont have any kind of real financial centre (IFSC is nothing more than a back office tax haven, no financial innovation occurs there). The market just isnt there for any kind of real analysis. I always get a much better impression of back home from FT alphaville or Bloomberg than the tabloid nonsense in the Independent or property advertising reliant Irish times.

djpbarry

brianthebard wrote: »

I agree, I wouldn't claim that those purchases were smart. But in Sligo (where I'm from) there are lots of buildings all around the county, which are technically fine for commuting from, but there isn't enough to go along with it in terms of infrastructure. Shop buildings and apartments have been thrown up all over the county with no regard for niceties like 'need' or 'markets' or any sort of research. It was just build and profit.

Yeah, sure; I saw the same thing where I grew up (in West Dublin). But there was still a requirement for a demand for these properties in order to make the supply profitable and that’s the part I have had difficulty understanding. You’re absolutely right in saying that many of these developments should never have been allowed (thank you very much Mr. Lawlor), but what I have never been able to understand is why people were prepared to pay such ridiculous amounts of money for these obviously badly-built properties in obviously badly-planned (or completely unplanned) towns and/or suburbs.

silverside

There is/was a lot of social pressure to buy

when the market was rising steadily (since about 1995) people jumped on the bandwagon, when you're in a shared house for years , dealing with sometimes annoying landlords and housemates, thinking about settling down, the attraction of your own place is very strong, even if it is in a greenfield site dotted around the m50 - you'll stretch to pay the first year mortgage, loan from the credit union/parents for the deposit, for the first year the discounted mortgage rate seems manageable - especially between 2

the lack of facilities (schools childcare etc) is not such a big deal when you're younger - the commute is just one of those things you put up with

Just trying to give a bit of perspective on why my generation bought...

Even now negative equity is only a huge problem if you want to move - its true that life in the outer suburbs can be a bit boring and hard to get places - but its not the end of the world, people have rooves over their heads and (up until a year or two ago) pretty decent money - blame Liam Lawlor and the brown envelope planners for the sprawl, blame the euro cheap money for the splurge !

eamonnm79

djpbarry wrote: »

Is it? You think it's perfectly reasonable for people to commute en masse to and from Dublin from over 80km away and for these people to expect an infrastructure to support their way of life? So where do we draw the line? At what distance from Dublin does it become unrealistic to commute to Dublin? From Athlone? Nenagh? Letterkenny?

The infrastructure is already in place as I explained, the N11.
I would say if it takes you more than an hour and if it costs you more than an hours wages in fuel its too much. So Gorey south Dublin is fine but gorey city centre if you have to travel in rush hour is not.

eamonnm79

Sleepy wrote: »

That was pretty much my point, driving from Gorey to south dublin in under 50 minutes would definitely require speeding...

Genuinely man I only had a 1 litre car with a top speed of 110 kmph. you only need to drive 60 miles an hour to do 50 miles in 50 mins. There is not one traffic light or junction the whole way.

DublinWriter

Peter Griffin is to Homer Simpson as David McWilliams is to Peter Brooks.

As for his earlier corporate achievements, read Dilbert and you'll know that the secret to fast-track executiveship is by having 'floppy-hair' ('we think it may turn silver').