Ability to pay

later12 wrote: »

I'm still not seeing the link between non-compliance and nonmeans tested medical cards, student fees, septic tank charges or turfcutting protests.

Although it depends. Obviously if you're calling every nonviolent protest a demonstration of passive resistance then yes, they were so. It's the same almost everywhere.

However, if you're calling nonviolent resistance (i.e. civil disobedience) a demonstration of passive resistance, then the household charge qualifies, but I still can't think of any other, and certainly the examples you provided would not.

These are all very much the exception to the rule.

Eh, to be honest I'm not really very concerned about that particular point. It exists mostly in relation to those who wonder why we don't do Greek or French style protest, not by comparison to a complete lack of resistance.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Scofflaw wrote: »

I'm thinking of the Household Charge, the non-means-tested Medical Card, student fees, household rates (back in the day), septic tank charges, turf cutting, and so on - the examples are pretty numerous, and all share the same feature, which is that a hit to the pocket gets you a revolt. To some extent one can even attribute some of the Greens' electoral unpopularity to the 5c "carbon charge" on fuel. Even our attitude to Europe seems largely determined by whether it's perceived as giving us money or costing us money.

I'd consider passive resistance characteristic because the public demonstrations, in most cases, were quite small - and often consisted of the same people - while the effect on the government usually resulted from a far wider pattern of passive non-payment or non-compliance.

I've discussed "salience" elsewhere specifically in respect of the household charge, and agree it's important, but nothing I've said requires that it not be.

There's an easy upcoming test, of course, which is water charges. I'd expect to see there the exact same results as the household charge - there will be a number of "public meetings" with much the same faces at each one (SF/ULA making political capital and grabbing airtime, essentially), and a wider pattern of passive non-compliance which will be decisive.

As to the "most vulnerable in society" and the Nordic model - that's the point, really. We're not talking about the "most vulnerable in society", most of whom are exempt from the household charge in any case - we're talking about people's readiness to proclaim themselves as "most vulnerable" when by any objective measure they're not, and what is actually objected to is that they are losing some of their discretionary spending capacity.

There is room for a lot of shading on details, some of which you've picked up on, but I would say that my central point here is that Irish politics is primarily about the money in one's own pocket at all levels, from the voting public to the elected representatives (with the latter a reflection of the former), and that public debate revolves around money to the exclusion of principle. As an ancillary point, I would say the Irish public demonstrates certain forms of rather negative social solidarity about money, such as not contradicting someone else who is playing the "poor mouth" card in order not to be contradicted when playing it oneself. The "most vulnerable in society" thing I regard as merely another card in this kind of play - a form of hypocritical claim that frames one's argument for personal benefit as a moral argument, and one's opponent, therefore, as callous and vicious.

I don't like that kind of argument from either side - on another thread, we had a poster framing opposition to mortgage write-downs in an equally tendentious way, with non-payers characterised as well-off D4 types while those who wouldn't get a write-down characterised as quintessentially good Irish people. Either way round, it's grossly dishonest, and regrettably characteristic of public discourse in Ireland. One might say that the love of money is the root of all Irish politics, but that it's the love that dare not speak its name, and therefore hides behind a cloak of decency - which renders much Irish public discourse fabulously hypocritical.

cordially,
Scofflaw

You know what Scofflaw I love it when you get into the Scofflaw version of a rant. It tends to bring out some real post gems.

meglome wrote: »

I'm making a general point that we are not highly taxed in this country. We seem to want a Scandinavian model but don't seem to realise how much tax they pay to support it. At the end of the day a lot of people are suffering financially but that doesn't change the fact we're not over taxed as a nation.

Who pays tax in Ireland? The little quiz revisited
Paying tax in Ireland: Where the richest (and poorest) pay

and an older one
Are Irish workers undertaxed?

This will inevitably generate either anecdotal "but I pay a lot of tax!" responses, or a comparison of central taxes to show that we're actually highly taxed.

And from a central taxes perspective - income tax and other headline taxes - we are actually taxed more than the EU average. However, we pay very little in local taxes compared to other countries - a result of stripping local government of its tax-raising powers as part of the ongoing centralisation of the State's powers - and the net result is that we are lightly taxed compared to other countries:

Taxation Type|Ireland (%GDP)|Eurozone Avg(%GDP)
Central|30.8|21.5
Social Insurance|4.8|12.4
Local|0.9|10.9
Total|36.5|44.8

So, when people do a central taxes comparison, they can show that Ireland is "really" a high-tax economy, but it isn't. It's just unbalanced.

In a sense, you can look at this as the State's contract with the citizen - you don't really have a local services "contract" as such - there's no real financial relationship between you and your local government. They don't tax you, the central government does - and, in turn, it's the central government that allocates services.

One might almost welcome the household charge as a return of some tax-raising power to the local government level, but, of course, this being Ireland, it's no such thing - instead it's a centrally mandated charge, with local government having no discretion over it and therefore not able to engage in tax competition. Not, to be fair, that there's much room for real tax competition in rates, given the very much higher costs of rural service delivery because of the dispersed pattern of rural dwelling - something which one can also see as being partly an outcome of Ireland's centralised tax model, because rural service expenditure is decoupled from rural revenue generation.

cordially,
Scofflaw

battle_hardend wrote: »

various politicans and media commentators on the left long to see the scandanavian model applied here , they get stuck however when it comes to hugely increasing the level of tax paid by lower income earners , as is the case in scandanavia , in effect , various elements of the left dont want the scandanavian model brought in at all

I often don't understand the left in this country, perhaps it'd be the same in other countries to, I dunno. And when I say I don't understand I mean outside of out and out populism. They say they want to protect the poor and vulnerable but the things they often support would hurt the poor and vulnerable. They want a 'fairer' tax system (read tax the rich) but we have a progressive tax system and the rich (for the most part) pay the majority of our taxes already. Somewhere along the line we've gotten to the stage were they believe people are owed a house, a good living, good healthcare, luxuries but without having to work for them.

Scofflaw
Only about half the population appears to be willing to pay taxes on the basis of the sort of social solidarity found in, say, Nordic countries - the other half won't reach for their wallets unless they're obviously going to be forced to do so.

I'd be interested to see if there have been any studies done on the subject.

This is an interesting point (and a bit of a myth as far as I can figure out).

One point I never hear raised in these debates, is that Nordic, French & German people who reside and pay tax, here, in Ireland, constantly complain of being being unfairly taxed, far more vocally than Irish or British people ime.

Let me reiterate that, just for clarification - They pay substantially more tax in Sweden, France & Germany, yet they feel they are unfairly taxed in Ireland -> Why is that?

How is it that people who are conditioned to paying high taxes are so exasperated with Ireland? (and why is this always ignored in these debates?)

p.s.
Perception is probably the most important factor being overlooked here in the assessment of Irish people imo.
Ideological politics never make it past the manifesto - it's practical politics which count.
Many working class don't earn enough to pay any tax, yet they utterly resent the USC.

On paper, they income tax hasn't changed, yet someone working 39 hours a week to earn €337 is going to be paying about €30 of that on the USC.

Say what you like to them about income tax, prsi, USC and so on - to them it's all just tax.

Scofflaw wrote: »

It's very much offered as a personal opinion rather than fact!

Yes I understand that, but it seems to me that one of the variables is not being accounted for, to me it reads like

Variable + x = outcome

Tax + ? = good outcome in Sweden
Tax + ? = bad outcome in Ireland

I won't say mentality, because I believe mentality is a result of the outcome(s).

On the other hand, that also looks purely anecdotal. Any evidence?

None unfortunately.
It's a topic which interests me - there is definitely a different mentality in Ireland compared to the countries we might aspire to be like.
It's something I've discussed with extend family, colleagues and friends.

I generally find that Eastern Europeans are really grateful to be in Ireland and praise it in comparison to their native countries, that life in Ireland is considerably easier, altho virtually all of them also say the gap is rapidly closing, partly because their native countries are improving but more heavily due to Ireland degrading.
I was in Vilnius just a few weeks ago and I would have to agree.

But I actually find Nordic people to be more heavily critical of Ireland than any other group - I suppose it makes sense really when you consider what they are comparing it to tho.

An outrageous tax proportion of 8.9%.

I think you might be backing up the point I was making and which I think you were disputing...

Not quite disputing it, I just it's too easy to dismiss the actual problems which exist, without examining the causes.

What causes people to resent handing over that 9%?
Why do they feel they are being robbed?
Why do Swedes happily hand over so much money?

I will be the first to say that Irish people generally don't give a damn until you hit them in the pocket.
I remember when Cork was flooded in November 2009 and this forum was hopping was the various goings in, in the country - the 'average' Irish person was more interested in Thierry Henry's bloody handball.
I knew that there would be revolt when the government tried to introduce property and water taxes, as soon as people began to feel it in their pocket.

Personally, I would love to pay in 60% and have a system like Sweden, where the state provides.
Irish people know from experience that will not happen; they could pay in 75%, but we will still get the same half arsed outcomes we always get and will still end up paying services charges with your remaining 25%

1. Many Irish people are very, very greedy about their money (whether they are rich or poor).
2. Most Irish people do not trust the state/govt at any level whatsoever (other than perhaps their local "fixer"/td).

Agree with both points, however, I believe that point #1 is a result of point number 2, present day more than ever before in the history of the state.

I can give some explanation of the reason a Scandinavian might resent handing over tax in Ireland, based on this paper: http://www.york.ac.uk/res/herc/documents/wp/08_28.pdf

The paper is a little technical, and relates to the most easily measurable service, which is health, but the basic conclusions are that Ireland has relatively poor public services. That bit is, I suppose, not news.

Unfortunately - and this is where the paper is interesting - it's very difficult to measure public service performance across different countries, because there are very different expectations in each country. The paper uses a series of "vignettes" - little scenarios - to determine the way respondents in each country view a specified service outcome. For example:

1. [Simon] was speaking to his doctor about an embarrassing problem. There was a friend and a neighbour of his in the crowded waiting room and because of the noise the doctor had to shout when telling [Simon] the treatment he needed.
Q1: How would you rate the way the health services ensured [Simon] could talk privately to health care providers?
Q2: How would you rate the way [Simon’s] personal information was kept confidential?

So the paper asks two sets of questions - how do the respondents see patient confidentiality and privacy in Ireland, and how do you rate it in the scenario above. That allows them to establish a baseline for the "own country" responses.

The results are interesting, because they tell you not only how people rate the health services in their country, but also how they would report them if they all had the same expectations. Some of the results are:

Prompt attention:

Raw Result|Benchmarked
DNK (56)|GRC (32)
AUT (55)|AUT (23)
UK (48)|NLD (23)
CZE (46)|ITA (21)
GRC (44)|CZE (20)
SWE (43)|BEL (19)
BEL (43)|UK (18)
NLD (41)|ESP (18)
IRL (38)|MEX (17)
FRA (34)|DNK (16)
FIN (31)|SVK (16)
SVK (31)|DEU (16)
HUN (31)|PRT (16)
DEU (31)|SWE (14)
ITA (22)|FRA (13)
ESP (21)|FIN (13)
MEX (14)|HUN (12)
PRT (13)|IRL (11)

That tells you that Ireland has the poorest service in terms of "prompt attention", but that the Irish don't perceive it that way. We perceive it as ranking 9th, whereas it would more objectively rank 18th. The exact scores there are difficult to explain, being derived from a reasonably complex set of statistical and mathematical steps, but the principle is simple enough.

Turns out we're OK at perceiving dignity (11th in both measures), but not too good on confidentiality (we think 6th, more like 15th).

Overall:

Rank|Subjective|Objective
1|AUT(56)|BEL(30)
2|DNK(51)|AUT(27)
3|GRC(46)|DNK(27)
4|BEL(46)|SWE(27)
5|UK(45)|FIN(26)
6|CZE(45)|FRA(26)
7|SWE(43)|UK(24)
8|IRL(42)|GRC(22)
9|HUN(40)|NLD(21)
10|FRA(40)|DEU(20)
11|FIN(35)|CZE(20)
12|DEU(33)|ESP(18)
13|NLD(27)|MEX(17)
14|SVK(23)|PRT(17)
15|ITA(23)|HUN(16)
16|ESP(22)|IRL(16)
17|PRT(16)|ITA(14)
18|MEX(15)|SVK(9)

Overall, then, we view our health service as ranking 8th, whereas a more objective measure would put it down at 16th. So anyone from the countries above Ireland in the right column - including, embarrassingly, Mexico - would perceive Ireland's health service as overall worse than their home service. If a similar pattern held true across other public services (and it won't across the board - Revenue, for example, are very good), then immigrants to Ireland will often resent paying tax here because they will perceive the services they receive in return as poor - the higher up the table one goes, the more that should be the case.

It seems to be very hard to get good cross-country comparisons of public services, and it seems likely that part of the problem is the different expectations held by public service users in each country. The paper in question would seem to offer a reasonable way of producing such comparisons (although I'm sure if I were an academic in the same field I could subject it to withering criticism, because that always seems to be possible).

I'd certainly like to see such a set of comparisons. Ireland tends, instead, to focus on "productivity" measures and other pseudo-business "time and motion" sorts of figures. I don't think those are actually particularly relevant, since the goal of public services is not to be efficient in the same sense as a factory (most output per euro), but in the same way as a service company - that is, most customer satisfaction per euro spent.

Despite the fact that we in theory elect our government based on the expected/promised outcomes of their policies in terms of our quality of life, we actually have absolutely no real ongoing measurement of policy or government contribution to our quality of life. That's frankly verging on the insane, but since it's only one on a long list of pretty insane things, my expectations are, of course, rather low - something which suggests a vignette such as those used by the researchers:

1. [Patrick] was voting in a general election to install the next government of Ireland. [Patrick] bases his vote on the extent to which the different parties' policies would improve or reduce his quality of life, but Patrick has no way of comparing the past or present performance of his government or any other government on that score.

Q1: How would you rate the way [Patrick’s] vote is likely to produce a good outcome for [Patrick]?
Q2: How would you rate the general silliness of such a situation?

cordially,
Scofflaw

Excellent answer Scofflaw, and very accurate based on what I've heard by talking to people.

This, imo, helps to explain your earlier comment:

Only about half the population appears to be willing to pay taxes on the basis of the sort of social solidarity found in, say, Nordic countries - the other half won't reach for their wallets unless they're obviously going to be forced to do so.

Someone coming from a system with good outcomes (Sweden, Germany) comes to Ireland which tends to have poor outcomes and they're frustrated because they feel their money is wasted.

The same applies to Irish people who live in Ireland (and all countries with poor public services as far as I understand it). The difference is, rather than comparing (A:Sweden) to (B:Ireland), they are comparing:
(A:My situation now at x% taxation) vs (B.My situation tomorrow at x+y% taxation)

or in layman's terms:
"I already pay a fcuking small fortune for road tax, fuel levies and so on - but just look at the state of the roads! There is only 1 decent road in the county and that's a tolled motorway out of the county!!
I pay more tax now than I did 5 years ago, and it's worse the roads are getting! And now they want to steal even more money off me to pay for the public service increments and those gangster in the Dail? I won't pay it unless it's ringfenced, I'll go to jail first! "
.
.
.
On the hand, when people see a tangible benefit from their taxes, the majority of people are actually prepared to reach for their wallet.

During the Celtic Tiger, roads generally improved while tax evasion significantly reduced. Granted, this is in part because taxes became cheaper so that the risk of not paying them no longer outweighed the potential gain, but also because the exchequer was overflowing with so money, that some of it inevitably was spent on public infrastructure - meaning people experienced tangible benefits.


This is simply human nature and basic common sense really.
If public services in Sweden degraded to the levels seen in Ireland, the 'social solidarity' would rapidly disappear -> I believe that because I've heard it said by Swedes on numerous occasions!!:pac:

This is why I believe mentality is a product of the outcome(s), rather than a precursor.


Take then the scepticism applied to property and water taxes.
Ostensibly this is to fund local services, but very few Irish people genuinely believe that. Leave aside the fact that we're bombarded by gruesome stories of corruption and the 'pork belly' on a daily basis by the media.
The layman just sees this as theft.

You're clearly an educated person, and while pragmatic, you also seem (to me anyway) to be somewhat ideological, not just in environmental issues. You would have to be to voluntarily commit so much time of your free time to this forum.
Most people aren't like that tho. LOL!

A lot of people are really pretty simple and fairly ignorant - and prefer to stay that way.

If you try to roll this thing out based on ideology, you will fail, people will revolt.
The government should figure a way to soften people up.
If 'he fixed the road' (tangible) can get a TD elected on a local level, then perhaps "But they're fixing the roads" (tangible) could work on a national level?