A workers view of this please

by redjade Sat Jul 02, 2005 18:26

The IHT article ( http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/06/29/opinion/edfried.php ) says that 'in a quite unusual development, the government, the main trade unions, farmers and industrialists came together and agreed on a program of fiscal austerity' They gloss over the fact that Charlie Haughey, the Irish premier with a penchant for fine wines and expensive clothing. is the guy who actually brought this about. You can't understand what has happened in Ireland without understanding something about him.

You can like or dislike Haughey (I generally fit into the latter camp) but it's crazy not to acknowledge that he played a significant part in getting the national show on the road. Now Fianna Fail (his party, and the the party which still leads the government) makes no mention of him, and his picture doesn't even appear on the party website.

•more at
http://www.eire.com/blogarchives/000246.html

by redjade Sat Jul 02, 2005 16:05

[....] Having lived in three different countries, my perception is that Ireland has its poverty but also offers more safety nets than many other countries.

more commentary and discussion at...

Irish Eyes
http://irish.typepad.com/irisheyes/2005/07/irish_poverty.html

by redjade Sat Jul 02, 2005 15:39

An Irish Indy-Blogger perspective on the Irish Celtic Tiger (while writing from somewhere in America)....

Friedman on the Irish economy
http://funferal.org/mt-archive/001011.html

by Chekov Fri Jul 01, 2005 18:05

Answer: only if you take fairly meaningless measures of what makes a country rich. Although I can't access Friedman's article, in general these studies concentrate on GNP/GDP per capita and on income per capita. The do not include such obviously important things as investment in infrastructure or public services. Ireland comes top for two reasons:

1. A large number of US corporations report their European taxes through Ireland (due to our scandalously low rate of corporation tax - we are the scabs of Europe). Virtually none of this wealth remains here despite being included in our GDP figures. This artificially skews the 'wealth' of the nation.

2. Due to the ardently neo-liberal nature of the government our public services are sorely neglected and a much higher proportion of the 'national income' ends up in pay packets rather than in funding public services. This means that much more of our individualised incomes has to go into paying for things that are provided by the state elsewhere such as healthcare, childcare, transport, etc. If you factor this in (as none of the neo-liberal reports do) you end up with us being far from the wealthiest people in Europe, but rather a division two side.

On an anecdotal level, it's pretty obvious that many European countries are far wealthier than Ireland - having spent decades building up massively impressive public infrastructure. If we were to fund a health service or transport infrastructure comparable to France's, we'd soon see who was rich.

by Redbhoy Fri Jul 01, 2005 17:51

We're a nation who let anything happen. We're a nation who dont bother reading or finding out whats going on in the country today or ever. Governments get voted in by people who are brainwashed into thinking that it'll always be that way and thats all we deserve. What can be done to get the rest of the monkeys out and realise that they can make a change.
The government couldnt care about education- a fully educated electorate wouldnt stand idly by and watch a countrys assets stripped away by foreign capital.
Why dont the government make not voting illegal- Because they'd be voted out. The first election after they made it illegal would no doubt be a landslide victory against the reigning government as most of the lazy f***s would vote them out from spite. "Cheek of them getting me out to waste a half hour of my life voting when i could be scratching my balls at home."
Sad but true!

by By Any Means Necessary Fri Jul 01, 2005 15:49

The full potential of the Irish working class is stunted by the political division of the nation.
T
he false economy of the six counties and the corruption of the elite business class in the 26 is evident.

A society of plenty is possible, it is time that Ireland becomes united, independent and economically democratic.

We workers are the wealth producers...we know who the parasites and wasters are.

by Redbhoy Fri Jul 01, 2005 15:37

"Today, 9 out of 10 of the world's top pharmaceutical companies have operations here, as do 16 of the top 20 medical device companies and 7 out of the top 10 software designers."

Wheres the other 1 pharma crowd the other 4 medical device company and the other 3 software designers. Our government has questions to answer.
Heads will need to roll over this one!

You have to ask yourself the question- Are we any happier??

by Michael Rogers Fri Jul 01, 2005 06:31 MikeDaleRogers at cs dot com

It is also interesting that the Economist--no lefty rag lists Ireland as #1 in quality of living!
It sounds awfully good!