The decline in Catholicism and the increase in debt.

realitykeeper · 12-09-2018 1:38am #1

I read in the Irish Times recently that the increase in Ireland`s national debt really began in earnest in the 1980s and it occurred to me that this trend coincided with the decline in Church attendance, the authority of the church, the numbers of catholics etc.

It is well known that the nuns were a frugal and thrifty group of women who knew how to stretch a pound, fair play to them, they were great when it came to running hospitals and so on. No super bugs in the hospitals back then, the hand scrubber and carbolic soap saw to that.

The consequences of the enormous national debt will be far more dire than almost anyone can comprehend and that being the case, would Ireland have been better off it it turned the running of the country over to the nuns these past 4 decades?

I know a lot of people think the nuns did a bad job running the laundries, but if Ireland faces serious financial difficulty in future, it seems to me that the reopening of the laundrys and workhouses generally will be a necessity as will the debtors prisons. Furthermore, if these institutions are run by non nuns, I believe they will not be as good as when they were run by nuns. All this reality could have been avoided if the country spent more time listening to the nuns and less to the liberal media.

The next recession will be the worst in human history and I believe it will start before the end of this decade. Ireland needs to be run by the nuns as a matter of absolute urgency. Am I wrong?

Hitman3000 · 12-09-2018 1:55am

realitykeeper wrote:

It is well known that the nuns were a frugal and thrifty group of women who knew how to stretch a pound, fair play to them, they were great when it came to running hospitals and so on. No super bugs in the hospitals back then, the hand scrubber and carbolic soap saw to that.

Easy stretch a pound when the women they held in the laundries were essentially slave labour, not forgetting the profit from the sale of babies to the US .

NIMAN · 12-09-2018 1:55am

Christ not you again.

Bit of a strange connection there. But you have form.

Hitman3000 · 12-09-2018 1:56am

NIMAN wrote:

Bit of a strange connection there. But you have form.

I believe his/her username is an oxymoron.

rom · 12-09-2018 2:08am

This reminds me of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6XoOfXAkuc&feature=youtu.be&t=2684

893bet · 12-09-2018 2:38am

Yes you are wrong.

pauldla · 12-09-2018 6:19am

We need laundries, workhouses and debtors prisons run by nuns to get the country back on track and to avoid recession?

'Not even wrong', as is sometimes said.

Peregrinus · 12-09-2018 7:36am

Your timeline's all wrong, realitykeeper.

It's true that the increase in public debt began in the 1980s - debt to GDP ratio was about 65% in 1980, and it had reached 115% by 1987.

But this was a time when religion was still very influential in public life in Ireland - we had the eighth amendment passing by a two-thirds majority in 1983, and a referendum to introduce divorce was defeated in 1986.

The debt-to-GDP ratio peaked in 1987. It declined steadily from then on. It was back down to 65% by 1997, and the decline continued until it reached a low of 24% in 2007.

It was, of course, the 1990s and onwards during which mass attendances tumbled, religious identification per the census declined, and religious orders withdrew from the management of schools, hospitals and similar institutions on a large scale. And of course in a succession of referendums from 1992 to 2002 on abortion and divorce the socially conservative side lost in every case.

So the process of secularisation that you speak of coincided with a big fall in public debt, rather than a rise.

Public debt has risen again since, following the GFC and the banking crisis - it's now at about 80%, from memory - but you will struggle to convince even yourself that this is the result of secularisation. Even if it is, the secularists are not at the the dizzy heights that Holy Catholic Ireland managed in the late 1980s.

I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that debt levels are not causally connected with religiosity, either positively or negatively.

kneemos · 12-09-2018 8:14am

The national dept was practically nothing before the bust,thirty billion or something.

The current dept would be that bit less if the nuns and others paid their bills.

smacl · 12-09-2018 8:48am

Peregrinus wrote: »

I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that debt levels are not causally connected with religiosity, either positively or negatively.

Seems reasonable, and as with any unusual assertion, the burden of proof lies on that side of the argument. What seems more reasonable is simply that levels of debt rose with availability of credit, both at national and individual levels. If you can't get credit, you won't get into debt, simple as that.

As for nuns of a working age, they simply don't exist in the numbers to run anything, nor does it seem likely that they will again in this country. While I don't doubt we'll hit hard recessions again in the future, I struggle to see the scenario where we'd have a debtors prison in this country. The modus operandi seems more to be bankruptcy, loss of wealth, and a poorer existence propped up by social welfare. Apart from being inhumane, locking people up who don't represent any threat is more expensive than the above.

realitykeeper · 12-09-2018 9:35am

kneemos wrote: »

The national dept was practically nothing before the bust,thirty billion or something.

The current dept would be that bit less if the nuns and others paid their bills.

It was enormous before 2007, it is just much more enormous now. Even at the peak of the celtic tiger, the government only had budget surpluses of about a billion because it squandered so much on quangos. The nuns would not have wasted money on quangos, they would have done away with the dole and given work to the idle. Factories would have hum to the sound of industry and happy workers would have recited the rosary in the fields, the factories and in the board rooms. Ireland would have competed successfully with China to stave off imports.

* Crucially, wealth manifests where you combine hard work with frugality. The Ireland of today has neither of these attributes, it has debt and it is about to pay dearly for that debt.

Billy86 · 12-09-2018 9:43am

realitykeeper wrote: »

It was enormous before 2007, it is just much more enormous now. Even at the peak of the celtic tiger, the government only had budget surpluses of about a billion because it squandered so much on quangos. The nuns would not have wasted money on quangos, they would have done away with the dole and given work to the idle. Factories would have hum to the sound of industry and happy workers would have recited the rosary in the fields, the factories and in the board rooms. Ireland would have competed successfully with China to stave off imports.

* Crucially, wealth manifests where you combine hard work with frugality. The Ireland of today has neither of these attributes, it has debt and it is about to pay dearly for that debt.

Debt to GDP in 2007 was about 20% of what it was in 1987 (and at 20-25% may have been the lowest in the states' history, though finding pretty 1980 figures online seems borderline impossible).

I'd be inclined to say correlation does not equal causation, but you're lacking any correlation to begin with.

12-09-2018 9:45am

realitykeeper wrote: »

.............

The consequences of the enormous national debt will be far more dire than almost anyone can comprehend .......

realitykeeper wrote: »

..................

The next recession will be the worst in human history and I believe it will start before the end of this decade..............

You are either without peer as an economist and or a total loon

realitykeeper · 12-09-2018 10:01am

Hitman3000 wrote: »

Easy stretch a pound when the women they held in the laundries were essentially slave labour, not forgetting the profit from the sale of babies to the US .

If someone borrows money in my name, money that I have to pay back with interest, they are not doing me any favours. Now, if I have spent a lifetime working for the person who borrowed the money in my name, it is even worse because not only have I worked for this guy, I now have to repay all the money he borrowed to pay me. That is the folly of state workers. As for private workers, they didn`t even get paid the money that was borrowed in their name, yet they are still on the hook for the repayments and interest.

To be honest, if I had to choose, I would rather work for nothing than have to repay what I earned with interest. At least the women in the laundries got free bed and board until they were ready to move on.

realitykeeper · 12-09-2018 10:13am

Billy86 wrote: »

Debt to GDP in 2007 was about 20% of what it was in 1987 (and at 20-25% may have been the lowest in the states' history, though finding pretty 1980 figures online seems borderline impossible).

I'd be inclined to say correlation does not equal causation, but you're lacking any correlation to begin with.

Yet in 2008, Ireland had to call in the IMF.

This obsession with GDP is totally erroneous because GDP is not recession proof. GDP in Ireland is heavily dependent on foreign multinationals based here. Ireland`s public debt per capita is third highest in the world, so is Ireland`s private debt.

smacl · 12-09-2018 10:32am

realitykeeper wrote: »

At least the women in the laundries got free bed and board until they were ready to move on.

So do prisoners in Mountjoy. While many women in these laundries were there against their own free will, unlike prisoners in Mountjoy they hadn't committed any crime to get there yet were treated as little more than slaves. If you're seriously advocating there was any good being done by incarcerating innocent women in this fashion I would suggest you have a long hard look at your moral compass because from where I'm sitting it seems totally banjaxed. Most survivor accounts also show that the nuns behaved disgracefully during this period.

Cabaal · 12-09-2018 10:38am

Can we look forward to another thread next week about how the rise of mobile phone usage and the decline of landlines is linked to the decline of Catholic Church?

And another about how the increase of access to Internet is linked to decline of Church?

:pac:

Billy86 · 12-09-2018 10:40am

realitykeeper wrote: »

Yet in 2008, Ireland had to call in the IMF.

This obsession with GDP is totally erroneous because GDP is not recession proof. GDP in Ireland is heavily dependent on foreign multinationals based here. Ireland`s public debt per capita is third highest in the world, so is Ireland`s private debt.

First, can you point me to why we called them in and the IMF report on it please?

Second, GDP to debt makes infinitely more sense than looking at inflation in isolation. There is a reason why it is easier for the US or China to take on €1mn debt than it is for Vanuatu or Nauru. I'm not sure I should even be explaining this to be honest, but it's the same reason why Apple or Google can take on and manage €1mn debt more easily than FX Buckley Butchers across the road from me would manage with the same €1mn debt.

Billy86 · 12-09-2018 10:43am

Cabaal wrote: »

Can we look forward to another thread next week about how the rise of mobile phone usage and the decline of landlines is linked to the decline of Catholic Church?

And another about how the increase of access to Internet is linked to decline of Church?

:pac:

Uhm, is this realitykeeper an AongusVonBismarck style parody account? Honest question since I'm not on the Christianity forum much at all (I only got to this thread because it popped up on the front page).

Mainly looking at the "the women in the laundries got free bed and board until they were ready to move on" - not only is the last part a lie, but the first genuinely is something you'd expect to see in satire if it weren't so blatantly on-the-nose.

EdgeCase · 12-09-2018 10:45am

It's down to the availability of credit and that's global. Irish banks were able to tap the derivatives markets and effectively sell broken up packets debts as investment vehicles on the financial market. Then if you add in Ireland's membership of the Eurozone, Irish banks were given far too much credit based on confidence in the Euro, rather than the underlying Irish economy at the time.

It's not all that different to what happened in the USA or the UK, other than we also hit the limits of what was acceptable to our Eurozone partners when we wrote a blanket bank guarantee for the private losses of the banks, effectively granting them the Irish state's then very credit rating and pushing the problem onto the ECB.

Other countries have had similar messes over the years. Japan is running a debt to gdp ratio that's off the scale entirely, Iceland went bang and came back, the USA had a massive crisis, the Canadians have had several property crashes, the UK had a parallel crisis that just didn't involve the eurozone but was pretty much as severe and resulted in the wholesale bailout nationalisation of several huge banks and austerity.

The UK also was the first recipient of an IMF bailout in the modern context back in the mid 1970s.

Basically, populist policies fanning the flames of pro cyclical economics.

Also during Ireland's more pious years it may have had low ish debt but it was an economic basket case with low living standards and probably the least developed western nation for a long time. I wouldn't look back on the old days here through rose or green tinted glasses too much. It was a very impoverished society for most of that era with massive levels of emigration and a falling population.

realitykeeper · 12-09-2018 10:45am

smacl wrote: »

So do prisoners in Mountjoy. While many women in these laundries were there against their own free will, unlike prisoners in Mountjoy they hadn't committed any crime to get there yet were treated as little more than slaves. If you're seriously advocating there was any good being done by incarcerating innocent women in this fashion I would suggest you have a long hard look at your moral compass because from where I'm sitting it seems totally banjaxed. Most survivor accounts also show that the nuns behaved disgracefully during this period.

We will will have to agree to disagree on much of the above but the point I am making is that the women who worked in the Magdalene laundries were not charged for their bed and board. Employees of the state are paid with borrowed money so ultimately they and everyone else will have to repay that money with interest.

Why work for money you have to repay? The nuns would have balanced the books, not imposed a debt that will bury us.

BIGT4464 · 12-09-2018 10:46am

realitykeeper wrote: »

I read in the Irish Times recently that the increase in Ireland`s national debt really began in earnest in the 1980s and it occurred to me that this trend coincided with the decline in Church attendance, the authority of the church, the numbers of catholics etc.

It is well known that the nuns were a frugal and thrifty group of women who knew how to stretch a pound, fair play to them, they were great when it came to running hospitals and so on. No super bugs in the hospitals back then, the hand scrubber and carbolic soap saw to that.

The consequences of the enormous national debt will be far more dire than almost anyone can comprehend and that being the case, would Ireland have been better off it it turned the running of the country over to the nuns these past 4 decades?

I know a lot of people think the nuns did a bad job running the laundries, but if Ireland faces serious financial difficulty in future, it seems to me that the reopening of the laundrys and workhouses generally will be a necessity as will the debtors prisons. Furthermore, if these institutions are run by non nuns, I believe they will not be as good as when they were run by nuns. All this reality could have been avoided if the country spent more time listening to the nuns and less to the liberal media.

The next recession will be the worst in human history and I believe it will start before the end of this decade. Ireland needs to be run by the nuns as a matter of absolute urgency. Am I wrong?

What a load of tosh

Wanderer78 · 12-09-2018 10:50am

I'd say the rise in debt, in particular the real debt burden, I.e. private debt, is more to do with the deregulation of the financial sector, and the global movement towards neoliberal/neoclassical polices, I do believe we ve moved towards this different form of belief system and away from traditional belief systems such as catholicism, believing it ll save us all but, in fact it is doing the opposite. Being agnostic I'm gonna say both approaches are nonsense and in fact dangerous for all humanity, particularly the latter

Bubbaclaus · 12-09-2018 10:51am

Can we nominate this thread for worst of the year?

lawred2 · 12-09-2018 10:51am

realitykeeper

It's so oxymoronic to the point of parody

realitykeeper · 12-09-2018 10:54am

Billy86 wrote: »

Second, GDP to debt makes infinitely more sense than looking at inflation in isolation. There is a reason why it is easier for the US or China to take on €1mn debt than it is for Vanuatu or Nauru. I'm not sure I should even be explaining this to be honest, but it's the same reason why Apple or Google can take on and manage €1mn debt more easily than FX Buckley Butchers across the road from me would manage with the same €1mn debt.

Not sure how any of this is relevant to the point I made. As for inflation, did I even mention that?

realitykeeper · 12-09-2018 11:02am

EdgeCase wrote: »

It's down to the availability of credit and that's global. Irish banks were able to tap the derivatives markets and effectively sell broken up packets debts as investment vehicles on the financial market. Then if you add in Ireland's membership of the Eurozone, Irish banks were given far too much credit based on confidence in the Euro, rather than the underlying Irish economy at the time.

Bank debt is private debt, not government debt, and the nuns would not have bailed them out.

Come to think of it, if the nuns had run the banks, they would never have needed a bailout in the first place.

12-09-2018 11:22am

The nuns knew how to boil a spud, scrub a floor and oversee the abuse of innocents.

I'm not sure if running banks would have been their cup of tea.

Years back the innocent folk that the nuns abused (they helped many of course but tough love was rampant) were single mums and their kids.

Instead of the nun approach Ireland in the last 3 decades + have taken to giving these young ladies financial aid and housing......... that hasn't been without problems either I think we'll all agree, no approach is perfect.

Billy86 · 12-09-2018 11:32am

realitykeeper wrote: »

Not sure how any of this is relevant to the point I made. As for inflation, did I even mention that?

Apologies, I mistyped - intended to say debt in isolation vs debt as a percentage GDP.

It is very relevant to your post though, hence the analogy of why Apple or Google can take on €1mn of debt vs a local butcher.

realitykeeper · 12-09-2018 11:43am

Augeo wrote: »

The nuns knew how to boil a spud, scrub a floor ...

I'm not sure if running banks would have been their cup of tea.

But the bankers needed a hundred billion euro bailout, so banking certainly wasn`t the bankers cup of tea.

By contrast, the nuns would have steered clear of speculating on derivatives, and fractional reserve lending. The nuns would have been prudent.

SusieBlue · 12-09-2018 11:53am

realitykeeper wrote: »

We will will have to agree to disagree on much of the above but the point I am making is that the women who worked in the Magdalene laundries were not charged for their bed and board. Employees of the state are paid with borrowed money so ultimately they and everyone else will have to repay that money with interest.

Why work for money you have to repay? The nuns would have balanced the books, not imposed a debt that will bury us.

They weren't charged for bed and board but they were exploited, abused, used as human incubators and baby making machines, and kept as prisoners, largely against their will.

The nuns made their fortune not only selling "illegitimate" babies to rich Americans, but by also outsourcing their laundry services to local businesses. The free slave labour supplied by the women ensured the nuns could keep their profits up.
Those women also did all the cleaning, cooking, washing, gardening etc. so the nuns actually had no overheads at all.
This saved them a lot of money by not having to actually employ people to provide these services, and as we all know, the women were not paid a penny for the duration of their imprisonment either.
They were not employees, they were given nothing for decades of hard work, bar the "bed and board", which you seem to be suggesting is some great honour & privilege.

So yes, I'm sure if this government were willing to incarcerate pregnant women, sell their children, and then keep them imprisoned for years washing the clothes and bed linen of all the locals to earn their "keep", the national debt would decrease at a quicker rate than it currently is.
Thankfully we don't treat our women & children in such a disgusting manner any more.

The decline in Catholicism and the increase in debt.

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