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What planet are they on ?

13

Comments

  • Closed Accounts Posts: 39,019 ✭✭✭✭Permabear


    This post has been deleted.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 643 ✭✭✭swordofislam


    Permabear wrote: »
    This post had been deleted.
    Roosevelt paid his advisers a dollar a year. A million a year doesn't get you the best people in banking if those people are motivated solely by money.
    If we don't demand Patriotism and Sacrifice we will never get Patriotism and Sacrifice.
    Frankly we have had a decade with the socially liberal and pro free market Progressive Democrats in government. This party Ireland's equivalent of the American Libertarians have left an appalling legacy.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,857 ✭✭✭Valmont


    This party Ireland's equivalent of the American Libertarians have left an appalling legacy.
    Ireland's decade of libertarianism? Was it the libertarians in Ireland who bailed out the banks and added over 65,000 workers to the state's ranks? I think you misunderstand libertarianism even more than those posters who are usually on the receiving end of the accusation.

    I have an idea for a sacrifice - why don't you give everything you own to the Irish state? If you're a patriot I'm sure you'll have no problem with that.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 13,227 ✭✭✭✭jmayo


    Permabear wrote: »
    This post had been deleted.

    Jeeze you must really enjoy the roads of Donegal. ;)
    Liam Byrne wrote: »
    ...
    The ONLY reason that the state has to run the banks at this stage is because those running them were incapable of doing so - DESPITE half-a-million and more salaries.

    Correction the CEOs of the top 3 banks that were "saved" by the taxpayer (Anglo, AIB, BOI) were paid in excess of 2 million and look how good a job they did. :mad:
    jasonc5432 wrote: »
    I have to say though, I think the reason Irish banks are underperforming is because the bonuses arent big enough.

    Yeah lets give them bonuses for lending like the good old days of 2002 to 2007.
    jasonc5432 wrote: »
    If we paid the bankers bigger bonuses they'd do much better.

    Yeah they did a fantastic job during the boom when they were on 6 figure bonuses.
    They did such a great job they helped bankrupt the state. :rolleyes:
    jasonc5432 wrote: »
    And if we made their basic salary several million they'd do even better again.

    For an excellent example look at a major Irish bank named Anglo Irish Bank.

    Try Nationwide too.

    Oh wait, theres a few others.

    The point is, if we pay bankers more money the banks do better. It's that simple. Empirical evidence proves it.

    And all the right wingers who keep screaming about this should be applauded for their defense of this pillar of the banking system -- pay the banker more, the bank does better

    You should use the sarcasm icon. ;)

    I am not allowed discuss …



  • Closed Accounts Posts: 39,019 ✭✭✭✭Permabear


    This post has been deleted.


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  • Closed Accounts Posts: 643 ✭✭✭swordofislam


    Permabear wrote: »
    This post had been deleted.
    I don't think even I could do that! :D


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 643 ✭✭✭swordofislam


    Valmont wrote: »
    Ireland's decade of libertarianism? Was it the libertarians in Ireland who bailed out the banks and added over 65,000 workers to the state's ranks?
    Of course it was.
    Mary Harney and the rest of the light touch brigade did what any libertarian would do and voted to protect their own personal interests. Also they lost their nerve when they saw that libertarianism/ neoliberalism whatever you want to call it doesn't work in the real world.

    You are engaging in a Nirvana fallacy that because one decision was non libertarian the PD/ FF government was non libertarian.

    In the real world politicians make compromises and libertarian politicians will make the compromises that protect their owners.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,583 ✭✭✭Suryavarman


    Roosevelt paid his advisers a dollar a year.

    And how did that work out for him again?
    A million a year doesn't get you the best people in banking if those people are motivated solely by money.

    Well the best bankers surely aren't motivated by the smile on somebodies face when they get their mortgage application approved.
    If we don't demand Patriotism and Sacrifice we will never get Patriotism and Sacrifice.
    Frankly we have had a decade with the socially liberal and pro free market Progressive Democrats in government. This party Ireland's equivalent of the American Libertarians have left an appalling legacy.

    Socially liberal? What socially liberal policies have been enacted in the last decade? The PDs were more like the Republican party than the Libertarian Party.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 643 ✭✭✭swordofislam


    And how did that work out for him again?
    Great they nuked Hiroshima and the economy was booming when he died. Or are you trying to say that if he was a libertarian he would never have died?
    Socially liberal? What socially liberal policies have been enacted in the last decade? The PDs were more like the Republican party than the Libertarian Party.
    Civil partnership legislation


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,583 ✭✭✭Suryavarman


    Great they nuked Hiroshima and the economy was booming when he died. Or are you trying to say that if he was a libertarian he would never have died?

    Nuking Hiroshima is a good thing?

    The economy was booming? Having food rations isn't generally the sign of a booming economy. When Roosevelt died the only thing that was being produced in America was tanks, warships and war planes none of those are exactly a sign of prosperity. The most optimistic accounts of the Great Depression believe it took ten years for GDP to return to 1929 levels even though most other countries had long achieved those GDP levels. In 1940 the unemployment rate still stood at 15%.

    I can't see were you see me implying that he wouldn't have died if he was a libertarian. That's more ridiculous than calling the PDs libertarian.
    Civil partnership legislation

    They more than made up for that by trying to introduce ASBOs and forcing telecommunication companies to store information on their customers so that it could be handed to the Gardai on request.


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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 13,227 ✭✭✭✭jmayo


    Permabear wrote: »
    This post had been deleted.

    Right tell us how Roosevelt was such a poor president in comparison to say one of the the Republicans (not counting Lincoln please).
    Funny isn't it how republicans, rather like our own ff, often leave office as the ecoonomy has tanked and it is up to a democrat to pick up the pieces. :rolleyes:
    And how did that work out for him again?

    Well he did manage to help get the country out of depression, help win a war, proved that a disabled person could run a country and get elected three times.
    Oh and supposedly most scholars vote him in the top three presidents along with Lincoln and Washington.

    Would you consider one of the republicans (not counting Lincoln please) to be more successful ?

    I am not allowed discuss …



  • Closed Accounts Posts: 21,727 ✭✭✭✭Godge


    Roosevelt paid his advisers a dollar a year. A million a year doesn't get you the best people in banking if those people are motivated solely by money.
    If we don't demand Patriotism and Sacrifice we will never get Patriotism and Sacrifice.
    Frankly we have had a decade with the socially liberal and pro free market Progressive Democrats in government. This party Ireland's equivalent of the American Libertarians have left an appalling legacy.

    We don't need patriotism and sacrifice. Of much more importance are competence, ability and integrity. If we have to pay for those, so be it.

    We certainly won't get those three from the opposition. ULA lack the competence and ability. FF and SF lack all three.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 39,019 ✭✭✭✭Permabear


    This post has been deleted.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,583 ✭✭✭Suryavarman


    jmayo wrote: »
    Well he did manage to help get the country out of depression, help win a war, proved that a disabled person could run a country and get elected three times.
    Oh and supposedly most scholars vote him in the top three presidents along with Lincoln and Washington.

    He didn't get America out of the depression, he unnecessarily prolonged the depression. By running and getting elected for a third time he also broke the unwritten rule of presidents only doing two terms.
    Would you consider one of the republicans (not counting Lincoln please) to be more successful ?

    Why would I count Lincoln? He was probably one of the worst presidents the US ever had. I think it's fair to say that apart from Lincoln all Republican presidents (and all the other presidents for that matter) were better than Roosevelt.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 18,163 ✭✭✭✭Liam Byrne


    Well the best bankers surely aren't motivated by the smile on somebodies face when they get their mortgage application approved.

    Where are these "best bankers" that you're on about ? The ones that created this mess ? :rolleyes:


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 18,163 ✭✭✭✭Liam Byrne


    Godge wrote: »
    Sell the house, rent closer to the job, that is what a German or Dutch person would do.

    Oh my good god! :rolleyes:

    I work from home most days. The fact, however, is that on the days that I need to travel, THERE IS NO PUBLIC TRANSPORT.

    So therefore the CAR IS A NECESSITY - which is the point that I was making.

    I have no obsession with property, and pointed out the error of the "property ladder" bullcrap to everyone who would listen....

    ...a house is a home, not an investment.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,583 ✭✭✭Suryavarman


    Liam Byrne wrote: »
    Where are these "best bankers" that you're on about ? The ones that created this mess ? :rolleyes:

    If I knew where these bankers were I'd be setting up an investment firm, hiring them and making myself a very wealthy man.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 18,163 ✭✭✭✭Liam Byrne


    Liam Byrne wrote: »
    Where are these "best bankers" that you're on about ? The ones that created this mess ? :rolleyes:

    If I knew where these bankers were I'd be setting up an investment firm, hiring them and making myself a very wealthy man.

    I think ethical, decent bankers and speculators are now like Santa Claus - non-existent.

    I recently had to call a supposed reputable firm to ask for my money and was told point-blank that I could not withdraw it......I lost a few hundred quid in completely unwarranted "instalments" by the time I found out that I could - by simply closing the account.

    Ethics and honesty are in seriously short supply in far too many areas of business.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 21,727 ✭✭✭✭Godge


    Liam Byrne wrote: »
    Oh my good god! :rolleyes:

    I work from home most days. The fact, however, is that on the days that I need to travel, THERE IS NO PUBLIC TRANSPORT.

    So therefore the CAR IS A NECESSITY - which is the point that I was making.

    I have no obsession with property, and pointed out the error of the "property ladder" bullcrap to everyone who would listen....

    ...a house is a home, not an investment.

    You have no obsession with property yet you own a house which you insist on keeping as it is a home, not an investment???? The logical thing for you to do still is sell your home, rent beside a train or bus station and use public transport. It solves your problem.

    If that doesn't work, as you work mostly from home, by moving closer to rent where you generally need to go, you can use a taxi on the few occasions you need to travel outside the house and public transport is not available. Much cheaper to use a taxi a couple of times a week than run a car.

    The only thing holding you back is an irrational desire to hold on to property such as a house and a car.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,857 ✭✭✭Valmont


    Of course it was.
    Mary Harney and the rest of the light touch brigade did what any libertarian would do and voted to protect their own personal interests. Also they lost their nerve when they saw that libertarianism/ neoliberalism whatever you want to call it doesn't work in the real world.

    You are engaging in a Nirvana fallacy that because one decision was non libertarian the PD/ FF government was non libertarian.

    In the real world politicians make compromises and libertarian politicians will make the compromises that protect their owners.
    Please please at least read the first line of the wikipedia article on libertarianism. You are so clueless it's hard for me to even acknowledge it.


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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 4,236 ✭✭✭Dannyboy83


    Frankly we have had a decade with the socially liberal and pro free market Progressive Democrats in government. This party Ireland's equivalent of the American Libertarians have left an appalling legacy.

    You can't say FF were left. You can say they were right.
    Both sides do it all the time.

    In some aspects, they were heavily right.
    In some aspects, they were heavily left.

    They didn't break the economy by following solely right policies.
    They didn't break the economy by following solely left policies.
    They broke the economy by taking facets of left and right, and combining it into deformed bastard ideology that should have died at conception.

    If you took Fianna Fails policies to any self respecting economics teacher and claimed it was workable, he would probably beat you to a pulp with his bare fists.
    Better to take it on a tour of South American countries where you will be paid handsomely for it.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 18,163 ✭✭✭✭Liam Byrne


    Godge wrote: »

    You have no obsession with property yet you own a house which you insist on keeping as it is a home, not an investment???? The logical thing for you to do still is sell your home, rent beside a train or bus station and use public transport. It solves your problem.

    Have a look at what passes for a house near the train & bus station and get back to me. :rolleyes: A whole selection of pokey, run-down flats with half of them boarded up. Remember what I said about a house being a home and not some kip or fragile cardboard box in which you can hear not just your neighbours but the drunken idiots down the hall ? Well the fact is that a home is a priority for me. My point was that a house isn't an investment to sell, it's somewhere to make a home. I resisted the "property ladder" crap and resisted the over-lending offer from the bank.
    If that doesn't work, as you work mostly from home, by moving closer to rent where you generally need to go, you can use a taxi on the few occasions you need to travel outside the house and public transport is not available. Much cheaper to use a taxi a couple of times a week than run a car.

    Yeah - if yoi ignore the fact that four 25-30 mile taxi trips every week cost more than the amount that I get for actually doing what I do when I get there. Please don't talk rubbish.
    The only thing holding you back is an irrational desire to hold on to property such as a house and a car.

    No. The only thing is that I have made rational choices based on my priorities that you choose to dismiss.

    But let's assume that I - and everyone else in the same boat - did the above. How much do you reckon rent for the kips near the train station would be ? And would they fit all - say - 15,000 of us, estimating 10% of the population in a similar boat ?

    Ireland needed to build facilities and then build communities around them, but greed and government failed.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,575 ✭✭✭RandomName2


    Liam Byrne wrote: »
    Moore McDowell is meant to be an economist, right ?

    One of these people who knows irrelevant things like facts and how economies work ?

    Then how come he claimed on tonight's Frontline that VAT was largely related to "optional" spending ?

    Are clothes optional now?
    Electricity & Heating?
    Petrol to get to work?
    Insurance?

    Does something happen to people earning silly money that makes them ignore the facts and spout rubbish, ignoring the facts of life that their skewed opinions force onto others?

    +1

    What's more - what really irks me in this context is that most of this VAT increase will be going to the EU.

    Electricity and Heating may have a lower rate but they probably shouldn't be VATed at all imo (they are seriously expensive essentials)


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,575 ✭✭✭RandomName2


    Godge wrote: »
    Sell the house, rent closer to the job, that is what a German or Dutch person would do.

    Not from choice it isn't.

    People on the continent are just as keen to be homeowners as Irish are.

    There may be statistically less of them, but the factoid is that they are all happy that way


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 14,753 ✭✭✭✭ednwireland



    Electricity and Heating may have a lower rate but they probably shouldn't be VATed at all imo (they are seriously expensive essentials)

    no but wait for the carbon tax hit

    My weather

    https://www.ecowitt.net/home/share?authorize=96CT1F



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 13,011 ✭✭✭✭Sand


    If you want to see incoherent, unrealistic economic thinking switch on VB now - Joe Higgins literally dying on live TV trying to hold together the hopes and dreams that is the ULA economic "plan".


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 13,029 ✭✭✭✭Chuck Stone


    Liam Byrne wrote: »
    Then how come he claimed on tonight's Frontline that VAT was largely related to "optional" spending ?

    Are clothes optional now?
    Electricity & Heating?
    Petrol to get to work?
    Insurance?

    VAT tax 'contribution' paid is more optional for people who have excess wealth than those who don't.

    The problem with VAT is that, as you have said above, it is not just levied on optional goods. Unless you live in a cave and wash your clothes in a river.

    Also, it is a flat tax so it hits people on middle and lower incomes proportionately more.

    Someone on 400K PA pays the exact same tax on a particular brand of washing machine as someone on 40K PA even though they both need a washing machine.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 18,163 ✭✭✭✭Liam Byrne


    Liam Byrne wrote: »
    Then how come he claimed on tonight's Frontline that VAT was largely related to "optional" spending ?

    Are clothes optional now?
    Electricity & Heating?
    Petrol to get to work?
    Insurance?

    VAT tax 'contribution' paid is more optional for people who have excess wealth than those who don't.

    The problem with VAT is that, as you have said above, it is not just levied on optional goods. Unless you live in a cave and wash your clothes in a river.

    Also, it is a flat tax so it hits people on middle and lower incomes proportionately more.

    Someone on 400K PA pays the exact same tax on a particular brand of washing machine as someone on 40K PA even though they both need a washing machine.

    That was more-or-less my point. Well-to-do people who don't live in the real world with the majority where these things hit hard, and yet have the ear of the government and media when they want to spout their rubbish.

    I don't think I've ever heard an economist or politician point out that our "low tax" economy involves someone on minimum wage paying 1% of their GROSS wages for a TV licence.

    But a TV is optional - clothes and electricity and heating aren't, despite whatever ****e McDowell spouts - he probably doesn't even know what the bill for his suits comes to.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 13,227 ✭✭✭✭jmayo


    Permabear wrote: »
    This post had been deleted.

    So no New Deal and let people starve or stand inline at food kitchens ?
    He should have just sat back and let the markets help the people, right ?

    How was taking the US into WWII calamitous ?
    Didn't the US come out of it as the leading world power ?

    BTW should he just have ignored the Japanese attack on Pearl ?
    Of course we are now going to probably go down the route of how he planned to let Pearl happen and blah blah blah.
    Conspiracy forum is over there somewhere.

    In case you didn't know, the US through lend-lease program had actually helped save the Allies long before they ever declared war on anyone.
    The convoys of equipment they sent to stalin actually helped stop the Germans.
    And then there were the supplies to the Uk.
    He didn't get America out of the depression, he unnecessarily prolonged the depression. By running and getting elected for a third time he also broke the unwritten rule of presidents only doing two terms.

    So pray tell us with all your wisdom what should he have done to shorten the depression ?
    Why would I count Lincoln? He was probably one of the worst presidents the US ever had.

    Bloody hell.
    Funny how most US scholars disagree. :rolleyes:
    I think it's fair to say that apart from Lincoln all Republican presidents (and all the other presidents for that matter) were better than Roosevelt.

    Yeah bush was fooking great and ronnie was a wet dream for the neo liberals.
    Except the seeds that old ronnie sowed ultimately resulted in the banking meltdown.
    Oh and his tax regime increased the gulf between rich and middle class never mind the poor.
    Added to that he tripled the debt.
    And guess who appointed mr greenspan ?
    Godge wrote: »
    You have no obsession with property yet you own a house which you insist on keeping as it is a home, not an investment???? The logical thing for you to do still is sell your home, rent beside a train or bus station and use public transport. It solves your problem.

    Oh ffs.
    For a start have you ever been near Limerick train station ?
    Secondly people may like to live in certain places rather than stuck in somewhere that happens to be lucky enough to be on a bus route.
    Godge wrote: »
    If that doesn't work, as you work mostly from home, by moving closer to rent where you generally need to go, you can use a taxi on the few occasions you need to travel outside the house and public transport is not available. Much cheaper to use a taxi a couple of times a week than run a car.

    The only thing holding you back is an irrational desire to hold on to property such as a house and a car.

    How the fook do you know why the guy wants to live where he is living ?
    Maybe he doesn't want to now sell in a depressed market ?
    Ever thought it might be because he or his other half (if he has one) have relatives living in the area and for things like childcare down the road this might be very beneficial ?
    Maybe he has children that are going to local school ?

    The amount of people around here who lecture others, particularly about where the should live, is fooking unbelievable.

    Having an obsession with property to me, is that you try and own as much of it as you can or you go to any length to buy it, including paying ridiculous amounts for it with huge borrowings.
    Buying a home for yourself at an affordable price, not overly extending one self to do this, is not a bloody property obsession.
    And before you compare us to some EU country, take a look at how their rental systems work.
    They don't have fly by night get rich quick landlords who are the wants really obsessed with property.

    I am not allowed discuss …



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  • Closed Accounts Posts: 643 ✭✭✭swordofislam


    Permabear wrote: »
    This post had been deleted.
    So you have left 'the surplus population' to starve?
    http://english.pravda.ru/world/americas/19-05-2008/105255-famine-0/

    The USA acquired a global hegemony for 250,000 dead. That's success in anyone's book.


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