swiwi_ wrote: » My economic philosophy is simple: incentivise the common man to work hard and get ahead in life. I think the current Irish tax system is the complete antihesis of this. Not helped by a system that encourages multi-nationals to make buckets of tax-free money, increasing further the need to tax the employed middle classes. The politics of envy (progressively tax those who earn more) is a form of communism that encourages state dependance. There is a reason Switzerland has minimal unemployment: it is financially much more attractive to work here, than to to try and live off welfare (which is virtually impossible as a lifestyle choice anyway, as benefits rapidly tail away after a couple of years). It should ALWAYS be better financially to work than to live off the state. It is quite possible in Ireland to have as much money through benefits and allowances than from holding down a standard 9 to 5 job. It is amazing how motivated people become when the choice is work vs poverty. There are always exceptions to the rule, I'm not hard-hearted, but in general terms this would be my approach if I were finance minister...
DGRulz wrote: » Okay ... but what would you do about fixing the roads?
irishbucsfan wrote: » Your economic philosophy is called objectivism. Just in case you wanted to a niftier word for it. It's commonly associated with Ayn Rand and her book Atlas Shrugged. The arguments against it are pretty varied and I won't bore you with them, but it's an interesting sphere of reading.
irishbucsfan wrote: » Well I'm not actually talking about post-crash fallout at all actually. Pre-crash GDP was what I was referring to in the first part of my post. None of that actually changes my point, which is that public spending was not the problem and the cuts were completely avoidable if the ECB had remembered it was a central bank in 2008 rather than 2012. Public spending only became a problem when our GDP was threatened by the downturn, before then it was within perfectly normal levels of GDP and would have remained there.
swiwi_ wrote: » Oooh. I'm an objectivist Hardwork, thrift, responsibility for ones actions, social conscience for those genuinely in need, would sort of be my approach...
Buer wrote: » Well, it's also turkeys voting for Christmas given the politicians themselves are highly paid public sector employees. They're the very epitome of the mentality of the nation. Our current leader became a TD at 24 with no qualification aside from his father having been a TD and dying in office. They've no appetite to deal with the status quo.
CMOTDibbler wrote: » And my point is that public spending was based on an income stream that was itself based on quicksand. A base that the then government refused to act to curtail. Spending to GDP was 35% in 2007, 42% in 2008, 47% in 2009 and a whopping 66% in 2010. Only Sweden and Slovakia ever hit higher levels than that.
irishbucsfan wrote: » I know it was based on quicksand, I said that originally. That doesn't mean it was incorrect, it was based on actual GDP that actually occurred.
irishbucsfan wrote: » Our GDP was over-inflated by the lack of control of the European banking sector.
irishbucsfan wrote: » The reason it shot up in 2009 and 2010 so much was specifically because of the mistakes and intentional retraction of our economy. 35-45% is completely normal. It's the same reason our debt to GDP ratio shot up, we slashed our GDP because it was the only option we were left with by Trichet.
irishbucsfan wrote: » EDIT: Just to keep this in context, the original claim was that public spending was "the cause" of our financial problems. I'm saying that it wasn't at all, it wasn't a banking crisis that was mismanaged into a public debt crisis
CMOTDibbler wrote: » Were you talking about the same quicksand though?
CMOTDibbler wrote: » We slashed our GDP by means of cutbacks in government spending to match the shortfall in income caused by the property crash. That's what I meant by 'chicken and egg'.
CMOTDibbler wrote: » I agree with this. Except for the point that prudent government would have looked closely at the underlying GDP figures and hedged on the possibility of the property boom being a bubble. The same way that the central bank (and the individual banks) should have been aware of the over-exposure of the banking sector to property investment. Bank of Ireland were probably the only one that started to see the writing on the wall and had actually started a process of divestment before the crash happened.
irishbucsfan wrote: » The quicksand was the massive over-capitalisation of the european banking sector. The symptom of that was the property sector you're referring to.
irishbucsfan wrote: » I'm not actually sure there's an alternative reality where this could have been avoided as if we had tried to curtail our banking sector I guarantee you that the EU would have come down on us like a ton of bricks, as our banks were their customers. Our banks were not the root of the problem, just an extension of it, the continental banks were in a much worse position, the only difference is their governments never had to take responsibility for it in the same way ours did.
thomond2006 wrote: » Here's my economic philosophy: The TV licence is a ****ing scam.
CatFromHue wrote: » Do you mean it was a banking crisis mismanaged into public debt? As others have said our govt income had been increased by property/construction bubble that was never going to last and when it burst we were left with massive budget deficits. I'd love to see more on how exactly the bail out money was spent as as far as I know a lot of it went on our day to day expenditure. Also not only are you not getting into Heaven but now CMOTDibbler has gotten two passes in :pac:
awec wrote: » Wouldn't want to be John Terry today :pac:
irishbucsfan wrote: » This Fyre Festival stuff is brilliant
Erik Shin wrote: » Come all the way to Lisbon and this is what i see when i walk in the hotel door
