Myths vs reality sticky?

meglome

I remember back in the Lisbon debate when the constant crys of the EU stole our fish. The figures used were usually 250 billion but could be 350 billion or more. The reality was way less than the myth or exaggeration or lie, depending who was saying it. I can't speak for anyone else but repeating constantly that this figure was fantasy was very tiresome.

Now I see the same thing happening with the Oil reserves. Maybe I'm wrong here but it looks like someone has pulled a figure of 450 billion out of their ass and now it's being used consistently. Can we set up sticky for these kinds of things with links to all the correct/available info.

We have two Oil and fish, are there more?

Einhard

I think this is a great idea. Could be something like factcheck.org, except for keeping posters honest rather than politicans. Might be difficult to assure impartial posts though.

Yitzhak Rabin

One figure that is has moved into the realm of myth is how much the bank bailouts cost each individual taxpayer. I've heard wildly varying amounts from a few thousand to hundreds of thousand per household. It'd be good if someone could supply the actual figure.

Sand

Bank bailout headline cost is circa 50 billion. And rising.

With 4.5 million people in the country that comes down to about 11K for every man woman and child in the country. In reality, less than half of those are working, and less than half of those working actually pay income tax so the figure can rise as high as 40-45K per working taxpayer.

jimmycrackcorm

But the reality is that the banking bailout is actually costing us very little in real terms. We're effectively only passing the interest in a rolling deal. The coming budget cuts and taxes all concern our huge deficit and only a small part is to do with the banks

PanchoVilla

meglome wrote: »

I remember back in the Lisbon debate when the constant crys of the EU stole our fish. The figures used were usually 250 billion but could be 350 billion or more. The reality was way less than the myth or exaggeration or lie, depending who was saying it. I can't speak for anyone else but repeating constantly that this figure was fantasy was very tiresome.

Now I see the same thing happening with the Oil reserves. Maybe I'm wrong here but it looks like someone has pulled a figure of 450 billion out of their ass and now it's being used consistently. Can we set up sticky for these kinds of things with links to all the correct/available info.

We have two Oil and fish, are there more?

You wanna provide us with links to the correct figures so?

Richard tea

meglome wrote: »

I remember back in the Lisbon debate when the constant crys of the EU stole our fish. The figures used were usually 250 billion but could be 350 billion or more. The reality was way less than the myth or exaggeration or lie, depending who was saying it. I can't speak for anyone else but repeating constantly that this figure was fantasy was very tiresome.

Now I see the same thing happening with the Oil reserves. Maybe I'm wrong here but it looks like someone has pulled a figure of 450 billion out of their ass and now it's being used consistently. Can we set up sticky for these kinds of things with links to all the correct/available info.

We have two Oil and fish, are there more?

,,a 2006 Department of Energy estimate of “potential, yet-to-find” recoverable reserves of 10 billion barrels of oil equivalent, valued at €455 billion,,

Taken from here http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2010/1115/1224283325829.html

meglome

PanchoVilla wrote: »

You wanna provide us with links to the correct figures so?

Sure... simpler if I quote this post though.

Scofflaw wrote: »

Actually, that's 8% of EU waters and 4% of the quota - in other words, we get half of what comes out of Irish waters. Before we joined the EU, we got about 10%. All told, other EU countries have had about $8bn from our waters since we joined, and we've had about $4.5bn. The EU has both paid for most of Ireland's fisheries protection vessels and supported the Irish fishing industry through funding - a funding level which runs at about 7% of the Irish fishing industry's income.

Figures are here and here.

None of which should be taken to mean that the CFP has been anything but a disaster, but the "EU stole our fish" narrative is a fake.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Scofflaw

And therein lies one of the problems of such a sticky. We can easily dispense with myths about fish and oil, because they are, at the end of the day, measurable physical quantities - we know how much fish has been caught, we know what reserves have been found - but finance is far more arguable.

We can, as Sand has done, give a headline figure, but as he points out it's rising. We can also give a figure per capita by simple division, but again, as Sand points out, the payback will be through taxation, and that varies both by income and by consumption (since we have both forms of tax) - more importantly, dividing the figure by population, whether simply per capita or by the number of taxpayers, is also intrinsically meaningless, since citizen taxpayers are by no means the only taxpayers.

If we look at the government's receipts for 2007/2008, we can see the problem:

Customs . |265,904 |248,001 |0.6%
Excise |5,837,878 |5,443,338 |13.3%
Capital Gains Tax |3,105,495 |1,430,080 |3.5%
Capital Acquisitions Tax |392,349 |331,600 |0.8%
Stamps |3,185,602 |1,650,792 |4%
Income Tax |13,572,410 |13,176,857 |32.3%
Corporation Tax . |6,390,625 |5,065,894 |12.4%
Value-Added-Tax |14,496,588 |13,429,602 |32.9%

From that you can see that income tax is only part of the tax paid by the country - and is the only form of tax that is not also (or only) paid by businesses, since they also pay VAT, excise, CGT, stamp duties, etc. What we can say is that the headline figure of €50bn will need to be apportioned - over some debatable timescale - between the different tax areas in some debatable way.

So, while I'm in favour of such a sticky for those facts that can be established beyond reasonable doubt (there will always be unreasonable doubt), I don't think it extends to financial figures.

cordially,
Scofflaw

meglome

Richard tea wrote: »

,,a 2006 Department of Energy estimate of “potential, yet-to-find” recoverable reserves of 10 billion barrels of oil equivalent, valued at €455 billion,,

Taken from here http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2010/1115/1224283325829.html

“This is around 100 times Ireland’s annual consumption of oil and gas,” the association says. Also quoting the department, it says a “major oil discovery off the northwest coast, of the order of 750 million barrels recoverable, would deliver some $22 billion in taxes (€16.5 billion) to the exchequer over its lifetime”.

“In another example, a substantial gas/condensate field, say twice the size of Corrib, located in the South Porcupine area, would, over its lifetime, pay $6.7 billion (€5 billion) in taxes,” the association says, and, taken together, the two would make a “big hole in the bill for Anglo-Irish”.

The problem here is it looks like the Irish Offshore Operators’ Association is quoting the department of Energy. But where are they getting the figures from? It would be very easy for some politician to wave these numbers around but are they based in reality. I'm suspicious these large numbers are wishful thinking or just completely made up, though I hope they do turn out to be real.

Scofflaw wrote: »

...

So, while I'm in favour of such a sticky for those facts that can be established beyond reasonable doubt (there will always be unreasonable doubt), I don't think it extends to financial figures.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Yeah i agree fully.

Scofflaw

Richard tea wrote: »

,,a 2006 Department of Energy estimate of “potential, yet-to-find” recoverable reserves of 10 billion barrels of oil equivalent, valued at €455 billion,,

Taken from here http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2010/1115/1224283325829.html

Which is, frankly, an entirely made up figure intended to drum up interest from exploration companies in bidding for licences. I'd certainly give it for the sake of completeness, but "potential" and "yet to find" mean exactly what they say - it might possibly be there, but nobody has found any of it. You could draw up an estimate for the gold reserves in your back garden in much the same way - those too would be "potential, yet-to-find" reserves.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Scofflaw

“This is around 100 times Ireland’s annual consumption of oil and gas,” the association says. Also quoting the department, it says a “major oil discovery off the northwest coast, of the order of 750 million barrels recoverable, would deliver some $22 billion in taxes (€16.5 billion) to the exchequer over its lifetime”.

“In another example, a substantial gas/condensate field, say twice the size of Corrib, located in the South Porcupine area, would, over its lifetime, pay $6.7 billion (€5 billion) in taxes,” the association says, and, taken together, the two would make a “big hole in the bill for Anglo-Irish”.

Indeed - and one three times the size of Corrib would make an even bigger dent. Four times would be better, and ten times, while we're wishing, would be just peachy.

meglome wrote:

The problem here is it looks like the Irish Offshore Operators’ Association is quoting the department of Energy. But where are they getting the figures from? It would be very easy for some politician to wave these numbers around but are they based in reality. I'm suspicious these large numbers are wishful thinking or completely just made up, though I hope they do turn out to be real.

Compared to them, the numbers issued by the Greek Department of Finance are solid truth. If they turned out to be anything resembling reality, it would be by incredible coincidence, and long after Anglo had been wound up.

Look at it this way - Corrib was discovered in 1996. Despite the claimed "giveaway" nature of hydrocarbon taxation at the time (which wasn't guaranteed to last), absolutely nothing has yet been brought ashore, and no other discoveries were announced under that tax regime. There have been a couple of other discoveries announced, but they're not off the west coast in the Atlantic Ridge structure that's supposed to hold our missing trillions, and there are no associated figures I could find.

What I have found a source for is the really big figure - €4.5 trillion:

IRELAND has EUR5.4trillion of oil lying off the west coast, it was revealed yesterday.

The oil reserve is enough to pay off our national debt of EUR60billion almost a hundred times over and banish our recession woes for decades to come.

But contracts with foreign companies are preventing us from selling it and transforming us into the Saudi Arabia of Europe.

The state’s lawyers will have to renegotiate with the multinational firms or they will pocket all the profits.

The source is Tom Prendeville of the Irish Daily Mirror. Those who followed the fish saga will remember the name, because it's exactly the same guy who made up the €200bn figure for Irish fish.

Exploration companies, on the other hand, tend to be properly sanguine about what's really there:

Providence estimates that Dunquin could contain 25 trillion cubic feet of recoverable natural gas and over four million barrels of oil, which industry sources value at €20 billion.

If a third, or up to 300m barrels, of the potential oil at Dalkey Island is recoverable, it could be worth up to €18.7bn.

However, Providence is quick to distance itself from such guesswork.

As Providence chief executive, Tony O’Reilly explained: "We cannot put potential values on these wells. The reality is that we and our partners are the ones taking the risks and putting up the capital.

"Until we begin drilling, there is no guarantee that there is anything down there. That said, we are delighted that our analysis of the Kish Bank Basin has revealed the presence of a large untested structure that warrants further investigation.

Oil and gas aren't things you can hide. In the industrial quantities at which the oil companies make money, you cannot smuggle them in and out of countries. What is known to be out there is what is known, and that's currently a bit, but not enough to turn us into Saudi Arabia - and neither is it being taxed under Ray Burke's deal. It's being taxed at levels similar to those in other countries who have reasonable, but not game-changing reserves.

If there are huge reserves out there, bringing them onshore and reaping the benefit of them is a 20-30 year game. Corrib was discovered in 1996, and still the gas isn't flowing.

cordially,
Scofflaw

jay-me

http://www.shelltosea.com/content/gas-valued-%E2%82%AC420-billion-west-coast-ireland-while-fianna-f%C3%A1il-speeds-us-towards-imf

If this is true it is an absolute disgrace!:mad: Why didn't we put money and resources behind this when we had the chance???

meglome

jay-me wrote: »

http://www.shelltosea.com/content/gas-valued-%E2%82%AC420-billion-west-coast-ireland-while-fianna-f%C3%A1il-speeds-us-towards-imf

If this is true it is an absolute disgrace!:mad: Why didn't we put money and resources behind this when we had the chance???

Funny you mention that

https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056089807

PomBear

It was given away for nothing! Thanks to Bertie Ahern and Ray Burke so it could be sold back to the Irish Public at astronomical prices. Example of the corruption in this country.

meglome

PomBear wrote: »

It was given away for nothing! Thanks to Bertie Ahern and Ray Burke so it could be sold back to the Irish Public at astronomical prices. Example of the corruption in this country.

Read that link i posted.

PomBear

meglome wrote: »

Read that link i posted.

I did, while one asks for someone to post a link to prove something yet doesn't post a link to prove otherwise. Nothing to the statement really.

jay-me

Whether or not the "estimate" is incorrect is besides the point! There is a lot of money there and we should be looking towards gaining it for the state. Norway did it!

meglome

jay-me wrote: »

Whether or not the "estimate" is incorrect is besides the point! There is a lot of money there and we should be looking towards gaining it for the state. Norway did it!

That's the point of my thread. Yes there is some money there, no question but the high billion values have no basis in fact. Someone is pulling them out of a hat. And that thread does have details.

Scofflaw

jay-me wrote: »

Whether or not the "estimate" is incorrect is besides the point! There is a lot of money there and we should be looking towards gaining it for the state. Norway did it!

Norway cut a deal not dissimilar to Ray Burke's for the first fields in its offshore waters. They then raised the taxes on hydrocarbons, as we have done. The only field that would operate under the Ray Burke deal is Corrib, but that hasn't even brought anything onshore yet.

The figure of multiple-hundred-billions is made up by a government department, and is not backed by anything the exploration companies have shown to be there.

The reason we're getting all the media coverage for these large estimates is to drum up interest in the current licensing round, which closes in May next year. If you're going to cite figures, try asking where the figures are from, how the figures are derived, and why they're being spread across the newspapers right now.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Capt'n Midnight

Sand wrote: »

Bank bailout headline cost is circa 50 billion. And rising.

With 4.5 million people in the country that comes down to about 11K for every man woman and child in the country. In reality, less than half of those are working, and less than half of those working actually pay income tax so the figure can rise as high as 40-45K per working taxpayer.

One key point here is that most of those employed in the public service are paid for out of taxes, so their tax contribution can be seen as taking less out of the coffers than contributing to them. Factoring for this would change the figures too. Finally about half of those who are employed don't pay income tax , just PRSI so should they be counted too ?

Capt'n Midnight

Scofflaw wrote: »

If we look at the government's receipts for 2007/2008, we can see the problem:

Customs . |265,904 |248,001 |0.6%
Excise |5,837,878 |5,443,338 |13.3%
Capital Gains Tax |3,105,495 |1,430,080 |3.5%
Capital Acquisitions Tax |392,349 |331,600 |0.8%
Stamps |3,185,602 |1,650,792 |4%
Income Tax |13,572,410 |13,176,857 |32.3%
Corporation Tax . |6,390,625 |5,065,894 |12.4%
Value-Added-Tax |14,496,588 |13,429,602 |32.9%

From that you can see that income tax is only part of the tax paid by the country

http://www.finfacts.ie/irishfinancenews/article_1014307.shtml

In 1974, the Fine Gael-Labour Coalition Government (Labour had real influence across government in those times unlike the experience of the pigeon-holed PDs and Green Party, in modern times) announced plans to introduce 3 new capital taxes and farmers were brought into the income tax net for the first time.

At a football game in Croke Park between Dublin and Kerry, a Dublin supporter held up a placard on Hill 16 with the slogan- ‘Come on the Taxpayers.’

In 1978 PAYE had accounted for 87% of all tax and in the 1979 Budget, the Fianna Fáil Government introduced a 2% levy on the value of farm produce. It was vigoursly resisted by the Irish Farmers’ Association and the Government caved in and withdrew the measure.

In March 1979, in the aftermath of the surrender to the farmers, an estimated 200,000 workers marched through the centre of Dublin in protest against a tax system where penal rates were levied on average earnings while wealthy people and farmers paid little or no tax.

Just to give you an idea of what it took to get PAYE workers out on to the street. PAYE tax rates were unreal compared to now.

Had we been told the whole truth back in 2008 and tough choices taken then , we would probably be half way out of the mess by now and more importantly be seen to be working our way out of the mess.


Unfortunatly we still can't be certain that all the bad news is in the public domain.

K-9

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

One key point here is that most of those employed in the public service are paid for out of taxes, so their tax contribution can be seen as taking less out of the coffers than contributing to them. Factoring for this would change the figures too. Finally about half of those who are employed don't pay income tax , just PRSI so should they be counted too ?

The other side of that is, when the cut, cut, cut brigade go on a rant, they forget the Net savings aren't that great, nothing near the Gross savings. The state loses the tax, PRSI, Income levy and substantial Pension levies on that pay. Then when you factor in less spending in the economy from the loss of that Net pay and any SW entitlements, the saving is nowhere near the amounts quoted.

The reverse of that and my personal bugbear is people from the Public Sector quoting Gross cuts in Pension levies and not after tax savings!

Cuts in Government do affect growth as was seen with recent downward revisions on the latest growth figures and more to come.

We don't have other options, but it will quickly get forgotten that the very cuts people are calling for, contribute to lower growth figures that the same people complain about.

K-9

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

http://www.finfacts.ie/irishfinancenews/article_1014307.shtml
Just to give you an idea of what it took to get PAYE workers out on to the street. PAYE tax rates were unreal compared to now.

Had we been told the whole truth back in 2008 and tough choices taken then , we would probably be half way out of the mess by now and more importantly be seen to be working our way out of the mess.


Unfortunatly we still can't be certain that all the bad news is in the public domain.

The difference is, Ray McSharry could bring in tough cuts on one side and cut huge PAYE rates on the other side in 1987, rates of 55/65% from memory, with PRSI on top.

That was the stimulus to the economy that we don't have now. When half of the employees are paying little or no tax, what is left to cut?

And there folks, lies within the problem with a low tax, high spend economy!

Anyway, we are going OT here.