Since 2011

Malachy its ALL politicans even those without “parties”

Agreed I meant all of them independents included ,

Joe your right , it’s their for vital services but they’re cutting vital services while having an aggressive tax in place . Our tax is going to
Merkel .. Simple as that !!

Landlords Max your Rent … Banks Max your Debt …. Political Parties Max your Tax.
Unless the Irish “Bring their Brains to the Polling Booths” …. this will not change.

Political Parties are just Private Clubs with their “own interests”.

Joe,
You’re right that in Ireland (and the Eurozone) the government needs to tax in order to obtain the revenue to spend on public services like hospitals and schools etc. However, the same constraint does not apply to sovereign currency issuing governments like the U.K. for example. In this case, the act of government spending is what actually creates the money which is then later removed from the economy via taxation.

So when the U.K. government pays its public sector employees, it is actually creating new sterling which did not exist before the salary was paid. So for example a £2000 monthly salary for a nurse in Britain will see her Barclay’s account credited by £2k (broad money) and Barclay’s reserve account (base money) at the Bank of England increased by £2k, all done by simply pressing the necessary computer keys to adjust the double entry accounts. Some of the new money is removed immediately via income tax and other amounts later through VAT on purchases etc. But the key point is that the U.K. does not need to obtain sterling from anywhere to pay the wages as it is the source of all sterling.

The U.K. faces no financial constraints whatsoever in the pound. It can afford to buy whatever resources (including labour) are for sale in the domestic currency. The same unfortunately does not hold true for Ireland or the other Eurozone nations who are in effect users of a foreign currency rather than issuers of our own.

Any debates and question marks surrounding the bank guarantee and what should have been done are completely missing the point. The real story is what led to the guarantee in the first place. We were mismanaged by a government (Fianna Fail) who displayed incompetence and corruption in equal measure, had cozy relationships with bankers, developers, big business, public sector unions and other vested interests and who viewed the electorate as their meal ticket. They created and sustained a property bubble because it was politically and financially advantageous to themselves and their vested interest buddies.

If we were like a properly run civilised country with a decent set of laws and protections, their behavour would be classed as criminal and instead of them enjoying their mulitple pensions (set up by themselves at boom-time levels, immutable obligations for the Irish taxpayer to meet) they would be in jail.

The mechanics of the guarantee are immaterial. By that stage we have been mismanaged to such an extent and the damage was so huge, that the only options available to us were absolutely appalling ones. So any talk and criticism of the Guarantee and how it was executed is akin to criticising a doctor in an A&E department for failing to save a pedestrian that had been mowed over by somebody that was pissed drunk, out of their heads on drugs, and asleep at the wheel.

Never forget where the blame lies folks. Never forget. I’m sure it’s hard to forget for the normal struggling families that will be paying boom time mortgages for the next 30 years on the house the bought to put a roof over their family’s head. Any party or political candidate that incorporates into their proposed policy a promise to go after these cowboys will be a strong contender for my vote.

The real story is – How did Anglo Bankers know that they would be saved by the State and given jobs before the collapse was announced …
That’s the real question – who designed it ?
Only new politicians will find the answer to this – hungry politicians – not fat cat politicians …

“Did you ring the cops for the dirt on that new Glitz fella ?”
“I did !”
“Right spill the beans – how do we soften his cough !”
“We can’t – the only thing they have on him is that he goes to work , comes home , does more work , goes to bed and then gets up the following day and repeats the process – he’s not like us !”
“Well what the bloody hell do we do then – Angela is going to be pissed – I hope she doesn’t spill the beans on me to get me out !”

The boys in FF of course bankers were smug in the knowledge that they would be bailed out they had no worries.

Indeed Reg, no one would have done any different.
Wasn’t the SSIA’s an attempt to get people saving instead of spending? Read the announcement in the Dail when it was introduced in the budget.
It backfired as people just spent it anyway though.

During booms, governments spend, during recessions they cut.
Booms will come again and recessions will follow. It has always been this way.
FF promised spending, FG, Lab and SF promised even more spending.
The people decided to go with FF who promised and delivered less spending that the other 3 parties.

I’ll ask again, at which point should they have pulled the plug on 100% employment? Added 50% to stamp duty?
Didn’t FG, Lab and SF promise to eliminate stamp duty altogether in 2007?

Just on the early childhood payments, do you remember what that was actually introduced for?
It was to help working families with child care costs.
Due to our constitution, they couldn’t pay this to working families with out also paying it to non working families.

There is a lot of selective memories in this country, not just yourself Reg.

They certainly should have reformed stamp duty at the time they were cutting income taxes. They should have intoduced an annual proerty tax and reduced stamp duty. That way they wouldn’t have undermined the tax base as much as they did and not spent 30 years worth of property tax (stamp duty) in one go with massive increases in spending. High stamp duty rates were massively unfair as it hit some people and not others. An annual propert tax is a fairer system and provides a more sustainable tax base. Once the property bubble burst stamp duty income fell off a cliff as well as all the other taxes that came from the property sector.

The money used for the early child payments should have been used to provide affordable child care and not dished out to everyone, many of whom didn’t need it to pay for child care.

The constitutional arguement is nonsense Danny. They now provide subsidised childcare to children for one year and are looking to add a second year. Why didn’t they do that to start with?

Indeed they did Reg, that’s called a recession.

A property tax could have been introduced back then, but I don’t remember anyone suggesting it.

It is certainly a popular policy today.

So, are you saying that eliminating stamp duty would have been a good idea?
In the same breath, you are complaining about the property bubble.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing Reg, but as I said earlier, not one political party or Indo wanted the boom to end, nor did they want spending to stop. (Apart from the Greens, as I said earlier. But this was motivated more by green issues than economic ones.)

Name on policy document from any party during 1997-2007 where spending was going to be cut or taxes raised.
If you can find any, I’ll raise my hat to you.

You obviously missed the bit where I already said that I wasn’t sure that others would of done anything a whole lot differently.

However Fianna Fail became very reliant on transactional taxes and based much of their spending increases on them. While there was a severe recession, the effect on the taxation income of the country would not have been been as severe had they not been so reliant on transaction based taxes like stamp duty.

The preschool year applies to everyone, all children. The exactl same as the early childhood payment.

Personally, I would have preferred if tax credits were given to parents to help with child care.

I remember discussions at the time saying that this could be seen as giving more to children of workers and leaving the children of unemployed behind.
You may not realise, that every child has to be given the same by the state under the constitution. There can be no exceptions.

If anyone thinks there are some children getting something from the state that others don’t, they are free to challenge this in the high court as would have happened if all children didn’t get the same advantage.

Again, Reg, can you show me a policy document from any party at the time that advocated cutting spending and raising taxes?