If you had a hundred billion to play around with

Denerick

Lets just humour me here. I fully realise that if you introduce a hundred billion into the economy then inflation will effectively render it almost worthless. But lets just say, for intellectual curiosities sake, that this 100 billion is adjusted for inflation. So in real terms, it is 100 billion.

You are allowed to spend it however you like, you can drag it out over many years or spend it all in one go. Here is what I would do:

10 billion into a national rail and road network.
10 billion into renewable technology with the aim to have 70% of Irish electricity generated by renewable sources.
40 billion to cover some of the deficit for the next 10 years.
5 billion to go on scrapping the HSE and replacing it with a NHS model health service (The rest of the current budget to come from existing HSE budget)
5 billion on a new wave of school building across the country.
2.5 billion on a national enterprise fund, geared towards the development of manufacturing and agri business.
2.5 billion on a national arts binge - theatres, libraries, monuments galore.

The remaining balance would go on reducing the tax burden for the next ten years. Hopefully this spending would spark some economic miracle, a new celtic tiger if you will. Probably not.

I know this is a rather silly exercise but I'd like to discover whether throwing buckets of cash at problems actually fixes them.

murphy93

I certainly wouldn't let the government or exsisting failed bankers maqnage it.
The country badly needs a team of Managers from outside to get us out of the bog. May be EU, Swiss or Uk experts or heads of Irish MNC's
Cowardn and Lenny have buried there heads in the bog and have been in denial.
The country will take a very long time to get over this shambles.
100 Billion can save us.
We need to cut public salaries, like mine, keep Bankers hands out of the tills and reduce wastefull spending asap
As Greece / Portugal are finding out failing to act is acting to fail.

Économiste Monétaire

Moved.

jmayo

For once get in before thread locked or complaints it should be in After Hours.

I would buy a nice tropical island somewhere that was not just a sandbar that will be flooded sometime soon.
I would then invite Irish people to come live there.
Mind you they would have to pass a lie detector test to make sure they had never been in ff, pds, greens or assorted independents and had never voted for them over the last 15 years.
If they had? Well tropical islands are usually surrounded by shark infested waters. :cool:

Seriously if you had 100 billion I would not let it anywhere near the Dept of finance or current government.
100 billion could be spent on proper broadband infrastruture, some on renewable energy such as wave/tidal, resurrect our beet industry to manufature ethanol that would have to be used by public transport (some on bribes to organise that last bit).
Some on a bulding program for schools, hospitals, prisons that would use some of the unemployed construction workers who would be forcibly taken off dole, but would have to work for much lower that their union rates.

Laminations

So OP you'd basically invest in all of the areas neglected by FF and scrap the HSE which was created by FF/PD but at the same time continue to vote for FF

krd

No, that kind of spending wouldn't work.

We'd have a few years of builders building more white elephants, buying 4x4s, flashing their cash around. The price of property would rise as more money would be squandered on bricks and mortar "investments" (the only investment the thicks understand). After a few short years the money would all be gone and we'd be worse off than before.

A confused and angry builder would drive his concrete mixer in to the gates of the Dail - believing the government has an obligation to fund his lavish lifestyle and buy his worthless cement.

We'd be back to square one.

We've squandered hundreds of billions on economically worthless activity.

I mean I know Irish people love their builders. Big thick men with their shovels and buckets, playing with their Tonka toys. But no one wants to buy what they do. Their work is economically useless.

If, we took 10 bn, and offered international entrepreneurs with export businesses 1 million to emigrate to Ireland and run their businesses here on the proviso they employed at least 10 people - we'd have 100,000 people back in employment. Tax revenue would go up. We'd have sustainable businesses. Real wealth. Do the same deal on 100bn - we wouldn't have enough people to fill the jobs.

Give 10 bn to the ignorant paddies they'll build apartment blocks in the middle of nowhere, buy flash cars, and cement trucks. And when the money would run out they'd drive the cement mixer into the gates of the Dail.

We built up huge credit from the years we did well in hi-tech and pharma exports. And then we blew it all on the shovels and buckets brigade.

Ireland can be rebuilt and rebuilt very quickly. But we have to give a sharp kick in the hole to all the school drop outs who believed they had a divine right to become millinaires.

jmayo

krd wrote: »

No, that kind of spending wouldn't work.

We'd have a few years of builders building more white elephants, buying 4x4s, flashing their cash around. The price of property would rise as more money would be squandered on bricks and mortar "investments" (the only investment the thicks understand). After a few short years the money would all be gone and we'd be worse off than before.

A confused and angry builder would drive his concrete mixer in to the gates of the Dail - believing the government has an obligation to fund his lavish lifestyle and buy his worthless cement.

We'd be back to square one.

We've squandered hundreds of billions on economically worthless activity.

I mean I know Irish people love their builders. Big thick men with their shovels and buckets, playing with their Tonka toys. But no one wants to buy what they do. Their work is economically useless.

If, we took 10 bn, and offered international entrepreneurs with export businesses 1 million to emigrate to Ireland and run their businesses here on the proviso they employed at least 10 people - we'd have 100,000 people back in employment. Tax revenue would go up. We'd have sustainable businesses. Real wealth. Do the same deal on 100bn - we wouldn't have enough people to fill the jobs.

Give 10 bn to the ignorant paddies they'll build apartment blocks in the middle of nowhere, buy flash cars, and cement trucks. And when the money would run out they'd drive the cement mixer into the gates of the Dail.

We built up huge credit from the years we did well in hi-tech and pharma exports. And then we blew it all on the shovels and buckets brigade.

Ireland can be rebuilt and rebuilt very quickly. But we have to give a sharp kick in the hole to all the school drop outs who believed they had a divine right to become millinaires.

You appear to have an intense distain for builders, which I can partially understand, but we have to do something with the hundreds of thousands of unemployed construction workers.
Now I don't subscribe to the sh**e that can all be retrained and suddenly work in some magical new smart economy.
So what you are saying is tough luck if you are a brickie, a sparks, whatever and you will probably not have future.

I am not saying we build effing houses, but we do need schools, hospitals, prisons and we have workers lying idle drawing dole that could be diverted to this as part of a works program.
I am not saying these people should get the old normal union rates, in fact I would ban unions from these sites so that the labour prices were as low as possible.

You think you can suddenly get loads of entrepreneurs to flood in here and magically move their operations from Slough, San Jose, San Sebastion, Bremen, wherever ?
If they already have export businesses then they are probably already bedded in somewhere else.
There is some real merit to your idea, but expecting it to magically solve our unemployment is pie and the sky.

No one thing is going to sort us, it will have to be a combination of things.
Putting all your eggs in one basket si what got us into this mess.

Denerick

Laminations wrote: »

So OP you'd basically invest in all of the areas neglected by FF and scrap the HSE which was created by FF/PD but at the same time continue to vote for FF

What? Just go away. Absolutely pathetic.

Tea drinker

Why not throw in the other 50 billion we already wasted on the banking sector? Sure we could put a man on the moon with that, or develop Nukes. Of course, no one wanted to talk about paying hollywood prices for a house in a boghole, what about those billions? What if there was no housing bubble, instead we had invested THAT money in manufacturing, R+D education etc? How much better would Ireland be to live in today?

RichardAnd

If the economy was healthy, I'd put it away and save it for times like these.