populism

I watched the Nama program last night and hand up I couldn't care less if property developers have 3 merks and 5 helicopters and want to do naked headstands in their garden, All I am really interested in as a tax payer is that they make money and pay back the money they owe and fair play if they make a bit of money for them selves.

Again I don't care how much the ESB pay their staff because lowering the pay of the ESB would have next to know effect on the cost of electricity to me and the Irish economy.

Yet when you read the newspapers or watch pirmetime you would think the majority of Irish people are made up of the ' phone joe I am outraged!!!!! ' brigade

Surly there are a lot of people maybe the majority are more like me?

Monty Burnz

This may not be witty enough for After Hours, but I suggest you read up on rent seeking. It's interesting.

The simplest definition of rent-seeking is the expenditure of resources attempting to enrich oneself by increasing one's share of a fixed amount of wealth rather than trying to create wealth. Since resources are expended but no new wealth is created, the net effect of rent-seeking is to reduce the sum of social wealth.
Rent-seeking generally implies the extraction of uncompensated value from others without making any contribution to productivity. The origin of the term refers to the gaining control of land or other pre-existing natural resources. In the modern economy, a more common example of rent-seeking is political lobbying to receive a government transfer payment, or to impose burdensome regulations on one's competitors in order to increase one's market share.

Snakeblood

mariaalice wrote: »

I watched the Nama program last night and hand up I couldn't care less if property developers have 3 merks and 5 helicopters and want to do naked headstands in their garden, All I am really interested in as a tax payer is that they make money and pay back the money they owe and fair play if they make a bit of money for them selves.

Again I don't care how much the ESB pay their staff because lowering the pay of the ESB would have next to effect on the cost of electricity to me and the Irish economics.

Yet when you read the newspapers or watch pirmetime you would think the majority of Irish people are made up of the ' phone joe I am outraged!!!!! ' brigade

Surly there are a lot of people maybe the majority are more like me?

I want the money back, and to be honest, no, I don't want developers making money. I don't think that makes me a begrudger, I think it's reasonable to expect that there be consequences to actions. Developers made millions in the last decade by pricing the average consumer out of the market, and encouraging them to overextend. Those people are still overextended, so the concept of developers getting back on the gravy train (even a reduced form of it) repels me. I'd also like to see politicians who took big contributions from developers in return for favours get named and shamed (as apparently we can't convict them of something) because in my opinion (and it's only my opinion, they did more damage on a wider scale to society than lets say, the rioters in England recently.

Oh, and I'm not on the 'property ladder' at all, and I'm doing fine financially. I just think that people who do bad things should not be let off.

starbelgrade

First off, we as a people should not be responsible for the massive debts saddled to us by Europe. The fact that we are is scandalous, if not criminal.

Secondly, it is important that costs, including overheads & wages to state & semi state bodies are examined, because competitveness is an important issue.

And thirdly, it is important that bankrupt developers don't get to keep their three mercs & helicopters.

You accuse the majority of Irish people of being part of the 'Joe Brigade', yet your opening post - which is based purely on the point that 'de workin' man should be able to earn a crust' and feck everything else - sounds exactly like something you'd hear on Liveline.

Maybe you should talk to Joe.

Big Nasty

When asked were they going to pay the money back not one of the cnuts could answer straight - i.e. they have no intention of! :mad:

D1stant

mariaalice wrote: »

I watched the Nama program last night and hand up I couldn't care less if property developers have 3 merks and 5 helicopters and want to do naked headstands in their garden, All I am really interested in as a tax payer is that they make money and pay back the money they owe and fair play if they make a bit of money for them selves.

Again I don't care how much the ESB pay their staff because lowering the pay of the ESB would have next to effect on the cost of electricity to me and the Irish economics.

Yet when you read the newspapers or watch pirmetime you would think the majority of Irish people are made up of the ' phone joe I am outraged!!!!! ' brigade

Surly there are a lot of people maybe the majority are more like me?

You're dead right. The majority is very like you. Which is why Ireland is so unequal, and unlikely to change

Personally when I see my tax deductions on my payslip and then see what my money is being used for I get a little Joe about things

Fran1985

mariaalice wrote: »

I watched the Nama program last night and hand up I couldn't care less if property developers have 3 merks and 5 helicopters and want to do naked headstands in their garden, All I am really interested in as a tax payer is that they make money and pay back the money they owe and fair play if they make a bit of money for them selves.

Again I don't care how much the ESB pay their staff because lowering the pay of the ESB would have next to effect on the cost of electricity to me and the Irish economics.

Yet when you read the newspapers or watch pirmetime you would think the majority of Irish people are made up of the ' phone joe I am outraged!!!!! ' brigade

Surly there are a lot of people maybe the majority are more like me?

surely if they sold 2 merks, and 4 helicopters they could use that money to pay back the tax payer? Surely if the ESB had a lower wage bill they wouldn't have to keep increasing the cost of electricity?

I'd be of the same view that they should be allowed do what they can to pay back the taxpayer, but having 3 merks and 5 helicopters parked in the driveway isn't exactly proving to me that they're doing all they can to pay it back. Drive a Kia, and fly Ryanair if you have to travel. Sell your big house and move in to a house on one of those ghost estates you built! That would ease a lot of anger towards these people if they made some sort of effort to pay back.

Crazy Horse 6

mariaalice wrote: »

I watched the Nama program last night and hand up I couldn't care less if property developers have 3 merks and 5 helicopters and want to do naked headstands in their garden, All I am really interested in as a tax payer is that they make money and pay back the money they owe and fair play if they make a bit of money for them selves.

Again I don't care how much the ESB pay their staff because lowering the pay of the ESB would have next to effect on the cost of electricity to me and the Irish economics.

Yet when you read the newspapers or watch pirmetime you would think the majority of Irish people are made up of the ' phone joe I am outraged!!!!! ' brigade

Surly there are a lot of people maybe the majority are more like me?

Sorry most normal people do care. If the average PAYE Joe or Jane on the street is feeling the pain of bailing out the elite then the elites should shoulder the burden more than most.

It more that Name ( wreathe you agree with it or not ) should get on with its job)

The rest is a bit of silly side show designed to appeal to the ' I am outraged '

Maybe I am in the minority thinking as I do, but then I am pragmatics and always have been.

Snakeblood

mariaalice wrote: »

It more that Name ( wreathe you agree with it or not ) should get on with its job)

The rest is a bit of silly side show designed to appeal to the ' I am outraged '

Maybe I am in the minority thinking as I do, but then I am pragmatics and always have been.

I'm pragmatic. The state doesn't have money to pay for helicopters for people who don't need them and can't afford them themselves. Give them to hospitals, if we can't sell them.

starbelgrade

mariaalice wrote: »

The rest is a bit of silly side show designed to appeal to the ' I am outraged '

A silly side show for the outraged?

I think you're confusing the main stage with the Bacardi tent.

Monty Burnz

mariaalice wrote: »

Maybe I am in the minority thinking as I do, but then I am pragmatics and always have been.

Surely a pragmatist would be opposed to rent seeking behaviour?

I am not expressing my self very well I think, of course there should be accountability but much of the reaction to things is not motivated by a desire for accountability's but for reverence.

policarp

Didn't a union official, employed by the ESB, get into a lot of hot water during the week, for saying that his fellow employees were overpayed.?

Snakeblood

mariaalice wrote: »

I am not expressing my self very well I think, of course there should be accountability but much of the reaction to things is not motivated by a desire for accountability's but for reverence.

For revenge, I think. THat's largely open to interpretation. I don't think justice is the same as revenge. I can't see a good reasy why developers who have assets of minus 500 million should be living in large houses, with mercedes, when the taxpayer is paying for it.
Fairness would demand that the rules of indebtedness are appliede ot them as evenly as anyone else. The bailiffs would be sent in and anything saleable would be sold to pay the debts owed.

Everyone is subject to the law and if a developer or anyone is make bankrupt then all there assets are sold to pay there debts, but appealing to populism is when its reported on the front page of a newspaper ( with glee ) and with added photos.

I am not defending developers or anyone else, but many developers have not been put in to receivership and are working for Nama, I am not interested in their private lifes I am however interested as a tax payer that they pay back the money they owe.

Snakeblood

mariaalice wrote: »

Everyone is subject to the law and if a developer or anyone is make bankrupt then all there assets are sold to pay there debts, but appealing to populism is when its reported on the front page of a newspaper ( with glee ) and with added photos.

I am not defending developers or anyone else, but many developers have not been put in to receivership and are working for Nama, I am not interested in their private lifes I am however interested as a tax payer that they pay back the money they owe.

There's an argument though, for the public interest. It's what separates footballers private lives, which we shouldn't really have any interest in (as we neither pay their wages nor have a vested interest in what they do in their spare time) and Namaed developers private lives, where we pay their wages and we do have an interest in what they are spending and how they are spending it, because it's our money, essentially, not theirs.

Edit: not that I',m advocating hunting them through the streets, flaying the skin from their bones and making an nice coat from it. But we do have a right to know how our money is spent, and what constitutes value.

Monty Burnz

mariaalice wrote: »

Everyone is subject to the law and if a developer or anyone is make bankrupt then all there assets are sold to pay there debts, but appealing to populism is when its reported on the front page of a newspaper ( with glee ) and with added photos.

Not if the developer carries out the development within a limited company. If the limited company goes bust with debts of hundreds of millions, they can't touch a cent of the developer's money.

mikemac

For my own uninformed populist comment, I don't know exactly how these developers go about transferring assets to their wives.
But as I understand these assets then cannot be touched

I may be wrong, just something I read about and I don't know the exact rules

But if it's going on I get angry about it