2010 Morgan Kelly Article- Ireland is finished

NIMAN wrote: »

I don't buy this line that we all paid for the bailout.

Ok, maybe everyone paid extra indirect taxes, but some paid massive multiples of tax compared to others. To claim those on the dole were hit just as hard as others is nonsense. And I have a wage slip to prove it.

The unemployed paid with diminished prospects, especially when they been cheerleaded into huge debt by the government and vested interests to buy homes for their families where there turned out to be no other employment than speculative property.

You don't get back those frustrating years, once they're spent they are gone.

[Deleted User]

NIMAN wrote: »

I don't buy this line that we all paid for the bailout.

Ok, maybe everyone paid extra indirect taxes, but some paid massive multiples of tax compared to others. To claim those on the dole were hit just as hard as others is nonsense. And I have a wage slip to prove it.

The squeezed middle.
Just about anyone who earned between 2 and 5 times the minimum wage was really screwed, those who didn't earn suffered a small loss in relative terms. While those in the higher income brackets most probably didn't feel the pain at all.

I don't buy this line that we all paid for the bailout.

Ok, maybe everyone paid extra indirect taxes, but some paid massive multiples of tax compared to others. To claim those on the dole were hit just as hard as others is nonsense. And I have a wage slip to prove it.

CatFromHue wrote: »

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

Which is why I said the developers' bank should have been let go - instead FF decided unilaterally (before EU or ECB got involved) that us taxpayers would pay out on the gambling debts of shysters.

The party that did this looks likely to be the most popular in the next election.

Just to play Devil's Advocate but did they know just how badly exposed the developer banks were at the time? All banks were exposed to some degree but i'm not sure how much they knew exactly they knew Anglo and Irish Nationwide were at the time, possibly because Anglo and IN had no idea themselves.

Everyone with a brain could see the banks were crashing for a full 18 months before sept 08 when the aib and bofi share price went from €20 to cents.

The crash didn't happen in one month but fianna fail faithful would have you believe it was all toasty only for Lehman's going wallop.

Those were symptoms but the cause had been sitting in plain view all over the country with unsold estates.

CatFromHue

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

Which is why I said the developers' bank should have been let go - instead FF decided unilaterally (before EU or ECB got involved) that us taxpayers would pay out on the gambling debts of shysters.

The party that did this looks likely to be the most popular in the next election.

Just to play Devil's Advocate but did they know just how badly exposed the developer banks were at the time? All banks were exposed to some degree but i'm not sure how much they knew exactly they knew Anglo and Irish Nationwide were at the time, possibly because Anglo and IN had no idea themselves.

Ulysses Gaze

All politicians care about are power, money and getting re-elected so that they can, to paraphrase Dermot Morgan, stick their arses in the air whilst their noses are gorging at the trough.

Doesn't matter if they are (Smoked Salmon) Socialist, Pseudo-Republican, vaguely Centre Right or whatever.

They don't give a f!ck about you, they don't give a f!ck about you. At all.

noodler wrote: »

But if we let every bank go (which was never feasible in the case of BoI and AIB) we still would have had almost identical austerity.

Which is why I said the developers' bank should have been let go - instead FF decided unilaterally (before EU or ECB got involved) that us taxpayers would pay out on the gambling debts of shysters.

The party that did this looks likely to be the most popular in the next election.

noodler

This needs to be said constantly.

But if we let every bank go (which was never feasible in the case of BoI and AIB) we still would have had almost identical austerity.

The chasm between expenditure and revenue in 2009 onwards was the result of us spending temporary money on permanent items.

catbear wrote: »

We had technical zero unemployment so this generational dolers is a false argument

Oh come on. We had north of 100,000 work shy during the boom, don't make excuses for them sucking off the public purse.

It appears far easier to cut the welfare for some family in negative equity in bally go backwards where there's no jobs post building boom than actually turn on the political establishment that's kept seanie fitz out of the clink.

It's not an either-or, his trial is under way as I understand it and further comment from myself is unwarranted, but it would not require a genius to fill in the gaps...

Rumpy Pumpy

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

We've heard this all before. And it doesn't wash. The fact is that half of this country is basically living off the other half. We (the people who actually work for a living) a're mad as hell and we're not going to take it any more (use your favourite search engine for the reference.)

We used to be 'decent' and 'liberal' people but the extent to which we are being screwed, looking at the children of generational dolers having better prospects than our own, has turned us. An Irish Thatcher, or worse, will come, and the graspers will only have themselves to blame.

The sad thing is that FG used to represent us.

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

We used to be 'decent' and 'liberal' people but the extent to which we are being screwed, looking at the children of generational dolers having better prospects than our own, has turned us.

We had technical zero unemployment so this generational dolers is a false argument and attacking those left high and dry by the bank loving politicians wont get people back their precious property bubble.

There is genuine resentment out there but its being misdirected towards those who have the least ability to change the inequalities in Ireland while letting off those who are the real culprits. Seanie Fitz should be in jail now!!!!!

It appears far easier to cut the welfare for some family in negative equity in bally go backwards where there's no jobs post building boom than actually turn on the political establishment that's kept seanie fitz out of the clink.

catbear wrote: »

We all pay taxes indirectly like VAT or user charges so what goes out recirculates.

We've heard this all before. And it doesn't wash. The fact is that half of this country is basically living off the other half. We (the people who actually work for a living) a're mad as hell and we're not going to take it any more (use your favourite search engine for the reference.)

We used to be 'decent' and 'liberal' people but the extent to which we are being screwed, looking at the children of generational dolers having better prospects than our own, has turned us. An Irish Thatcher, or worse, will come, and the graspers will only have themselves to blame.

NIMAN wrote: »

If you were on the dole cut when the crash came, did you really help bail out the banks?

Benefits did not suffer much, and if you aren't a taxpayer, then how did they contribute to the bailout?

Wasn't under 25s dole cut regardless of having paid stamps?

Ultimately that taxpayer argument is irrelevant. We all pay taxes indirectly like VAT or user charges so what goes out recirculates. Plus that's not mentioning the unmonitized value of voluntary work that all citizens, young and old, working and not working, create in this society.

The politicians who bailed out the banks and also overruled their own engineers objections to building on floodplains and where there was no demand are ultimately culpable, not the unemployed.

The fact that we were at technically zero unemployment before 2002 means that no one was planning a cushy number for themselves on the dole before the government decided not to regulate a massive private debt binge.

The fact that it took me 6 weeks to get approval for a credit card in 1998 but I was being offered 10K approved loans in the post in 04 says the only ones truly liable were those who regulated in 98 but looked the other way six years later.

I know a guy who told me in 2011 that it was only his children that kept him alive yet there's fingers pointing at him for all that went wrong just because he and his family relied on social services after he lost his livelihood.

Cutting his dole wasn't going to make the 10K approved loans come back through peoples letterboxes.

Somehow taking medical cards off pensioners with an income of 80k was 'hitting the vulnerable'

Meanwhile working families have to think whether their child is ill enough to justify a 50 euro visit to the doctor. Paid for in cash out of their after-tax income, so over 100 euro gross

Politicians will always do what's in their interest, not what's in the countries interest.

Hence not taking money off rich pensioners or most on benefits. They only seen bad publicity and lost votes, not the improvements they would have brought.

NIMAN wrote: »

If you were on the dole when the crash came, did you really help bail out the banks?

Benefits did not suffer much, and if you aren't a taxpayer, then how did they contribute to the bailout?

Bertie forced massive increases in cash benefits during the boom, but these were politically impossible to reverse for the most part. There were some cuts in dole, but OAPs were insulated despite the fact they got massive gains far above the cost of living in previous years.

Where I live, all the OAPs have new cars. All the families with children have old cars.

I'm sick of the notion of 'vulnerable' and 'solidarity'. You can stick the pair of them up you arse as far as I'm concerned. The system screws me and people like me, so I'll be voting strictly in my self interest from now on. Socialists, you brought the inevitable comedown upon yourselves. I don't agree with all of what's going to happen, but you've screwed me over enough to not care about you or your needs anymore.

Don't talk to me about the costs of the bailout - place the blame fair and square where it lies. FF decided to guarantee the banks with State money (i.e. our money), nobody was making them. They could and should have let Anglo fail, it was only a developers bank after all, while protecting depositors in retail banks. Instead they hanged us all with the debts of shysters, and this party is now becoming the most popular in polls? Democracy is wasted upon the people :rolleyes:

If you were on the dole when the crash came, did you really help bail out the banks?

Benefits did not suffer much, and if you aren't a taxpayer, then how did they contribute to the bailout?

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

The entitlement classes will never accept that, so social housing will have to be built to a higher standard. Meanwhile the working stiffs will have to put up with whatever they can get.

This is never going to change unless we start asking very hard questions of candidates on the doorstep at election time. But given teh yoot's love-in with SF, anti everything alliance and the rest, it's just not going to happen - until the magic money tree of the middle aged middle class working hard to pay for the leisure of others dries up.

Don't forget that the ultimate benefits brigade were the banks who were bailed out in 08 and let continue doing what bankrupted them until the country went broke itself.

There is an argument that people were only wanting the same entitlement as the banks they bailed out.

Deleted User wrote: »

The sad fact is that for every generation that has learned the hard way, is followed by another that is yet to learn!
They are destined to make the same mistakes.

if you can't be a good example then you'll have to be a horrible warning!

I would say though that having lived in Aus recently, Perth to exact for three years, I do feel that the actual speed of our boom and bust may actually be a positive in comparison.

They've gone without a recession since 1992 and there's whole generations who're going to be in for one hell of a shock when it busts.

People have been convinced they need to buy crap they don't need.

It's something in this generation that didn't exist before.

But to see people sleeping out to spend nearly half a million Euro on a property in Ireland less than 10 years after a crash is simply unbelievable. these folk deserve no sympathy when the next crash comes.

Ulysses Gaze wrote: »

I've said this to people I know that it is all heading for a Neo-Feudal economy.

Work your guts out to rent, or if you are (un)lucky own, a poorly soundproofed two bedroom shoebox where you can hear your neighbours upstairs taking a piss, hear them sneeze or turn on the kettle.

Who wants to buy into that "dream"?

The entitlement classes will never accept that, so social housing will have to be built to a higher standard. Meanwhile the working stiffs will have to put up with whatever they can get.

This is never going to change unless we start asking very hard questions of candidates on the doorstep at election time. But given teh yoot's love-in with SF, anti everything alliance and the rest, it's just not going to happen - until the magic money tree of the middle aged middle class working hard to pay for the leisure of others dries up.

[Deleted User]

The sad fact is that for every generation that has learned the hard way, is followed by another that is yet to learn!
They are destined to make the same mistakes.