The Pro Austerity Crowd

longhalloween wrote: »

And who else would you vote for? Fianna Fail? The ones who caused this mess. Sinn Fein? The party that just says no to everything, but doesn't offer any viable alternatives. Labour and the Greens who've have pretty much sold themselves out in recent governments?

Fine Gael IMO are the only party who have some sort of handle on this mess. Sure, the measures are unpopular, but they're necessary.



And what do you want to do with them? Cut their dole and put them on the streets?

In fairness I don't think there's anything the government can do about people who don't want to work, except tighten up the system so the next generation of scroungers can't get a free ride.

Well you could give food stamps instead of money if they keep refusing to take up a job

tayto lover wrote: »

If someone was earning 150K per year i'd take more than 60% off him.

Ridiculous. We already have the most progressive tax system in the EU, and you want to make it even more progressive? If anything we should be making it less progressive and reducing taxes on high earners to bring us more in line with the rest of the European Union.

tayto lover wrote: »

I'd make them pay quite a bit tantrum. They can afford more because they earn/have more. Simple. The same reason why some of your people say pensioners are over-protected and should be taxed more. If someone was earning 150K per year i'd take more than 60% off him. I remember paying almost that myself.

Just to give you an idea of how ridiculous and ill thought out this is.

If you were earning 100k @ 45% tax =45k tax and leaves you with 55k
Take your 150k @ 60%=90k tax and leaves you with 60k

For your extra 50K earnings you would get 5k.

What would I do in this situation? Not work to get 150k and stay down at 100k. I would stop working take time off and only work part-time or part of the year. In reality I probably wouldn't work in the country

I have a sneaking feeling you don't understand how percentages work.

I would guess your next statement would be well then increase the tax at 100k. You end up with the same problem lower down the scale then. Maybe you get it down to everybody ending up with the same but then you are talking communism.
The reason communist stop people leaving the country is specifically because people were leaving the country as they would be much worse off.This didn't benefit people at the bottom and workers were grossly mistreated and lacked basic resources.
You simply can't put all the burden on one group rich or poor. While people think the burden is on the poor it is in fact on the better paid. People on the lower end say they are over burdened the reality is high earners are paying the majority of the income tax. There is point where by everybody must pay and that is what has happened when people who were out of the tax bracket were brought back in. They still pay a very minor contribution while getting more back.
Social welfare has become a trap for many or an easy choice.

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

So you've never heard of the concept of someone getting fired for screwing up before? O_o

Yes but they don't remove your pension and ask for your wages back as suggested.

Ray Palmer wrote: »

Just to give you an idea of how ridiculous and ill thought out this is.

If you were earning 100k @ 45% tax =45k tax and leaves you with 55k
Take your 150k @ 60%=90k tax and leaves you with 60k

For your extra 50K earnings you would get 5k.

What would I do in this situation? Not work to get 150k and stay down at 100k. I would stop working take time off and only work part-time or part of the year. In reality I probably wouldn't work in the country

I have a sneaking feeling you don't understand how percentages work.

I would guess your next statement would be well then increase the tax at 100k. You end up with the same problem lower down the scale then. Maybe you get it down to everybody ending up with the same but then you are talking communism.
The reason communist stop people leaving the country is specifically because people were leaving the country as they would be much worse off.This didn't benefit people at the bottom and workers were grossly mistreated and lacked basic resources.
You simply can't put all the burden on one group rich or poor. While people think the burden is on the poor it is in fact on the better paid. People on the lower end say they are over burdened the reality is high earners are paying the majority of the income tax. There is point where by everybody must pay and that is what has happened when people who were out of the tax bracket were brought back in. They still pay a very minor contribution while getting more back.
Social welfare has become a trap for many or an easy choice.

When people say tax the rich they usually mean people that earn more than them.
I dont believe anyone should be taxed more than 50%. The government should never be making more than the worker. It's psychological for mamy people and they would rather take time in lieu.

I think many people would benefit from looking at their net contributions. I remember during one of the post bust budgets someone I worked with complaining that parents were hit harder than single people but it was just their benefits. Single people were still paying far more tax.

bumper234 wrote: »

No

They could take you to court and the law may say you have to pay damages but they cannot just take your pension off you.

Of course not, but they can in fact sometimes have you pay damages. And I'm pretty sure they can dock your current pay, if you're still employed by the employer (in this case the state), in order to pay for the damage - correct? Why then have we not taken any of these people to court for damages?

Ray Palmer wrote: »

I don't think there is any suggestion that he was drunk or intentionally reckless.

Speak for yourself, I think it's pretty obvious that many, many of the principle actors in this saga were indeed intentionally reckless. That's something we can work out in court of course, but the point is, someone should be working on bringing cases. This regime is not.

RecordStraight wrote: »

You are in favour of politicising the justice system? Or do you think they should be independent of each other?

They should be independent of eachother, but that doesn't mean the justice system shouldn't be accountable. Our justice system is very clearly dysfunctional to the core - look at the number of suspended sentences for violent assaults vs the number of people jailed for non payment of fines etc. I don't think many would deny that our justice system is far too tolerant of serious crime.

Ray Palmer wrote: »

Have you missed the court cases? Name somebody in the saga who was intentionally reckless and explain how.

Can we start with Bertie Ahern? And Brian Cowen who was minister for finance throughout much of the property bubble?
What about all the bank execs who mandated deliberately reckless lending policies?

There should be an offense of criminal negligence for cases like these, but suing somebody for damages isn't a criminal matter anyway, it's a civil one. The state, as the former employer of some of these people, should sue them for damages.
Why is that such a ridiculous proposition? If I through my recklessness bankrupted my employer I'd expect my ass to get sued, and I'd lose all respect for them if they didn't chase me down.

mickydoomsux wrote: »

They did a costed study on this in the Irish Times recently and it is absolutely the case.

Add to that the fact that insurance and stuff costs more overall if you are single.

But things like insurance premiums are risk based, so any differential has a basis on the insurers expected return.

The rest of that IT article was frankly pretty sloppy journalism. For example it compared a married couple both working on total 100k to a singletion earning 100k. A more accurate comparison would be to a singleton on 50k!-in effect the most valid metric to compare a married couple to is two friends sharing a house and pooling income. There is still sime benefit to tax for married couples but individualisation and the need for both partners to work has largely removed it.

And don't get me started on childcare costs

Ray Palmer wrote: »

Your answer should have been "No". You are unable to name somebody and explain how they were intentionally reckless.

You can name people but you haven't said how they were intentionally reckless. You can start with Bertie Ahern. What exactly did he do that was intentionally reckless?

He and his cabinet over the years pursued policies which incentivised the inflation of the property bubble, and ignored all of the warnings against it by economists, such as George Lee for example. How is that not intentionally reckless?

Ray Palmer wrote: »

Other economists didn't agree. Another opinion does not make actions intentionally reckless. Is that how you would like to be judged in anything you do?

In and around 2005/2006, the coming property crash was widely prophesied. I remember, I was 16 years old in transition year, and every morning on my way into school I'd listen to Morning Ireland on which day after day people would warn about Ireland going the way of the US in terms of subprime lending and property bubbling. Nobody who was in power at that time could possibly claim they weren't warned - they were warned repeatedly and they smugly told those doing the warning to go off and kill themselves, while continuing to line their own pockets with their policies.

If you believe that kind of behavior is acceptable than fair enough. Personally, it falls below the standards I want from my public representatives.

Do you really think they thought that what they were doing would make things worse and didn't care?

Pretty much, yeah. As long as their own pockets got lined they didn't give a f*ck about anyone else, that's obvious from their attitudes both during and after the boom. If they didn't know it was dangerous it's because they didn't bother to pay attention. And that's focusing purely on the property bubble - what about all of the other shenanigans that wen on? Everyone who was found by the tribunals to have acted in a corrupt manner but has never seen the inside of a jail cell? You call that justice? I think I'd speak for a lot of Irish people when I say I want to see some consequences.

And by consequences, I don't mean consequences suffered by ordinary people while those in the political elite suffer none.

I don't agree there could have been better actions but I don't believe they wanted to destroy the country or thought what they were doing would cause that. You know like intent.

They didn't deliberately destroy the country, they simply served their own purposes without caring about the wider effects one way or another. Ergo, negligence. You don't have to intentionally destroy something to be negligent, you just have to intentionally take actions which you know are dangerous and not care about the side effects. For instance: If I'm in charge of a building and I hold a bonfire in its garden knowing full well that the wind is blowing towards the building, and it burns down, I haven't deliberately burned it down, but I knowingly took actions that ran such a risk. Negligence. That's something that should be punishable.

The same way I don't believe opposition parties would actually not do things when they get into power. It is very easy to say you would do things differently especially retrospectively but it doesn't mean much. Property tax and water charges being a prime example.

The current parties were forced into implementing those by the IMF deal signed by FF, but the way both charges have been implemented (especially Irish Water with its dodgy contract to Denis O'Brien, €86m for consultants, €200k for Tierney etc etc etc) has been absolutely scandalous. For that, I hold FG and Labour as directly responsible as I hold FF for the economic meltdown. The entire political establishment in Ireland is dysfunctional, large parts of it are incompetent, others are corrupt, others are cronyist, etc - I believe in ruthlessly chasing down and holding everyone responsible for that culture responsible. How else are we ever going to turn our society away from all that crap? People have to be seen to pay consequences for such behavior to scare anyone else out of following in their footsteps.

Ray Palmer wrote: »

Have you missed the court cases? Name somebody in the saga who was intentionally reckless and explain how.

How about the people who decided the lending policy of the banks? You can't tell me that loans of >200 grand to an apprentice were not reckless? How about the reckless bank guarantee? How about the reckless Irish water "JObs for the boys" fiasco?

steddyeddy wrote: »

How about the people who decided the lending policy of the banks? You can't tell me that loans of >200 grand to an apprentice were not reckless? How about the reckless bank guarantee? How about the reckless Irish water "JObs for the boys" fiasco?

I can say I didn't think they were a good idea but there were also other people who said it would work both in and out of government. To say they were INTENTIONALLY RECKLESS is a very different thing.

The public wanted, asked and put pressure on the banks to lend more money.

I am not aware of any apprentice being given €200k+ mortgages.

Prove the job for the boys claim. I know how the procurement procedures work and I don't know anyway around it. It is all completely audited so you can go look up why anybody got a the work. I was even offered a job working as a consultant on the job with some of the bidders. It was anybody's guess who would get the contract.