Economy Pessimists - Point us in the right direction.

Rujib1

It seems to me that pretty much the vast majority of contributors to the Irish Economy thread on Boards and absloutely totally and entirely pessimistic about the short term, mid term and probably long term prospects for the economy.
The very few posters who post any mildly optomistic opinion are soon put to the sword

Well pessimists .............. put up or shut up :pac::pac:

The country needs leadership, guile and entepeneaurship to get us on a recovery path again.

Do any of you pessimists posess even an atom of the above charcteristics in your make up or are you all just plain old useless in terms of pointing the way forward?

Stand up and be counted! Show the way!

digme

Yes, get all bankers and politicians and shoot them, problems solved, then we can be optimistic about our futures.

AARRRGH

Stop baiting people on.

If you use the search feature you will see there have been many suggestions.

ei.sdraob

why dont you read the threads? plenty of good points and ideas floating around this forum, its not all just doom and gloom

most of the pessimism is caused by the realization that the current government are incompetent and people standing in opposition are not much better

and most of all a realization that we ****ed up


ok here goes plans to save ireland in short/medium/long terms

* a national bond/ssia like scheme, so people can invest their saving in a government guaranteed scheme from which the money is used to improve infrastructure of the country, and not invested abroad or on property or paid in fat pensions to few
* reform the public sector, this was promised a long time ago, nothing happened
* put a freeze on corporation tax and promise not to raise it, create an act or something, once theres certainty itl attract business
* lower minimum wage, its way too high leading to a situation where its better to be on dole than work
* once above is done lower dole
* bring in legislation to ensure the financial regulator can do the job which it was meant to do
* slap a 50% stamp duty on any home thats put on sale after less than a year with new owner, this will kill speculation and has been done in singapore which has mostly avoided a property boom
* kill all incentives tax schemes, to build more property in this country, theres enough for a long time
* reform education system to focus on maths and science, and make at least one foreign language compulsory, drop religion from schools
* kill nama in its tracks let the banks sort out own mess

Riskymove

ei.sdraob wrote: »

* reform the public sector, this was promised a long time ago, nothing happened

This is mentioned a lot

While your other points are very specific this is not; might I ask what you mean by "reform the public sector"?

imme

It ain't so OP, it ain't so.
a lot of what passes for economic debate on here is regurgitated rubbish from The Indo (PS bashing; traveller bashing; what next? kill all the old people:eek:); David McWilliams (I told you so; Boni-this, Ryanair-that).

People need to be realistic, call what's being done wrong, highlight and praise the good points. I'm a realistic person, I posted some while ago about the way Boards was obsessed with the PS. I asked where was all the talk of PE-ratios and the like, this is an Irish Economy & Budget thread.

Flamed Diving

imme wrote: »

It ain't so OP, it ain't so.
a lot of what passes for economic debate on here is regurgitated rubbish from The Indo (PS bashing; traveller bashing; what next? kill all the old people:eek:); David McWilliams (I told you so; Boni-this, Ryanair-that).

People need to be realistic, call what's being done wrong, highlight and praise the good points. I'm a realistic person, I posted some while ago about the way Boards was obsessed with the PS. I asked where was all the talk of PE-ratios and the like, this is an Irish Economy & Budget thread.

Actually, this forum was partially created (well, merged with the Budget forum) as a dumping ground for much of the trash that had floated into the Economics forum, especially when it was part of the Soc category. The Economics forum is for more technical discussion, where sources and data are pretty much compulsory. Perhaps you would like it.

ei.sdraob

Riskymove wrote: »

This is mentioned a lot

While your other points are very specific this is not; might I ask what you mean by "reform the public sector"?

find a way of measuring productivity and reward accordingly

more importantly punish accordingly, someone who is not doing their job does not deserver to float along and get a nice pension just because their job is "safe", often at the expense of younger members, and yes that include firing people

hinault

Rujib1 wrote: »

It seems to me that pretty much the vast majority of contributors to the Irish Economy thread on Boards and absloutely totally and entirely pessimistic about the short term, mid term and probably long term prospects for the economy.
The very few posters who post any mildly optomistic opinion are soon put to the sword

Well pessimists .............. put up or shut up :pac::pac:

The country needs leadership, guile and entepeneaurship to get us on a recovery path again.

Do any of you pessimists posess even an atom of the above charcteristics in your make up or are you all just plain old useless in terms of pointing the way forward?

Stand up and be counted! Show the way!

As others have suggested here, the Board is littered with good ideas from many of the people you deem to be pessimists.

Here's a quick summation though :

1.That the powers that be stop waffling and accept that the country is in a financial mess.
2.Adopt a clear headed strategy to work our way out of this, instead of praying/hoping that property/construction sector will reflate the economy and that we will return to "2003-2007".
3.That we start making a product/service which is indigenous but which there will be demand from abroad.
4.That we re-cost our economy to make us competitive and which will create an economically sustainable model going forward.

Count Dooku

Riskymove wrote: »

This is mentioned a lot

While your other points are very specific this is not; might I ask what you mean by "reform the public sector"?

Do more for less

Any wasting of public money must be considered as crime and any public servant found guilty in inefficient use of taxpayers money must be fired without any pension

Amhran Nua

Rujib1 wrote: »

The country needs leadership, guile and entepeneaurship to get us on a recovery path again.

Do any of you pessimists posess even an atom of the above charcteristics in your make up or are you all just plain old useless in terms of pointing the way forward?

Stand up and be counted! Show the way!

Click on the sig there, we have hundreds of ideas and more coming in daily, all neatly organised and indexed for your viewing pleasure.

Sleepy

Some good suggestions above. My 2c:

• Ban unions for the next 5 years (or permanently with a clause that any ammendments to current labour law revokes the ban).
• A complete independent examination of our public sector with a view to a reduction of overlaps, a flatter management structure, a removal of pay scales with automatic increments, removal of many allowances / unvouched expenses etc.
• A decimation of numbers of TD's with larger electoral regions with the aim of reducing the impact of local politics on national government.
• A reduction in the state pension.
• Removal of many of our tax breaks for bookmaking, horse-racing etc.
• Scrap the scrappage scheme
• Invest whatever we can afford in education.
  • Move the leaving certificate more towards problem solving and demonstration of understanding rather than simple regurtigation.
  • Look at shortening or adding to college courses which have low hours (e.g. either make a B.Comm a 1 year course, expand it so that it's the equivalent education of a current B Comm & MBA over 3 years or a mixture of both to create a 2 year B. Comm).
  • Weigh student grants / loans towards Science, Finance, Engineering etc. creating a financial incentive to studying areas which will lead to high level employment.
  • Get a cheap, high quality distance university system up and running (or expand Oscail)
  • Free MCP / A+ etc. testing & certification for the unemployed through FÁS. The training materials are already in libraries and the content can be learned on-line. (I'm only listing IT stuff here because that's what I know, I'm sure there is similar industry certification available in other areas of merit)
  • Incentivise private sector employers to contribute towards further education for their employees.