tough but fair. Why should the budget be fair? I believe the budget should be unfair to everyone. Social partnership is a silly idea.

Thanks - you are right, I should be the one to write the budget.

If it's 'unfair' for everyone, that it will be fair, no?
But you and I know perfectly well that that is not what is being cooked up in government buildings. Just look at the name of the three 'experts' who made a presention to the government yesterday. We are about to see the gap between the have's and have nots widen significantly and these blind Dublin 4 types believe that the community that is about to be crucified will just sit back and take it.

We are in a bad enough hole!!!

Interesting that he believes we should be running a structural budget surplus. Cant see that happening EVER

If we had leaders they would be telling us now what was coming in the budget so we can PLAN.

The Dept of Finance are making it up as they go along. Waiting for the Unions recommendations. That is not leadership.

Can see a text tax this year for definite !!
PAYE allowance of €1,830 needs to be reduced to €1,600
Income & health levies need to be abolished as does PRSI. Needs to be incorporated into income tax rates. We need to simplify tax code.
Pension relief to be at standard rate only
30,000 redundancies in the public service

Yup.

The strange thing is, he's well capable of writing in a better, briefer, to-the-point style, even when adressing the awfully serious overall fiscal picture: The Irish Economy Blog Archive Mis-Diagnosis

Maybe he thought the Irish Times demands a drier sort of prose.

The current dark cloud does have a silver lining. For one thing, we get to see eejits like Hal tie themselves in knots as they endorse the view of an academic economist, just weeks after dismissing them all as cranks. More substantially, the proposed approach of grim austerity and deflationary cuts, all with no end in sight, will bury Fianna Fáil as a political project.

If they'd any sense, they'd f-off and leave it to the blueshirts. But they're still digging...

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"On a blanket guarantee for all banks - ML [Merrill Lynch] felt this could be a mistake and hit national rating and allow poorer banks to continue."
Excerpt from a handwritten note of a meeting with the Minister, the Thursday before he decided to implement a blanket guarantee.

Really? I thought it was murky and contradictory.

See if you can spot the big howler with two of his main points juxtaposed.

1. Ireland is ageing, and this will be very expensive, ergo...

2. We must become a low-wage economy to meet the challenge.

A bit like solving the problem of malnutrition by suggesting people cut down on their calorie intake.

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When you see the words "Mises" or "Hayek" in someone's post, just ask yourself: do I really want to ban paper money and go back to gold?

You have to pity the kind of people who buy into conspiracy theories. I find the following to be the saddest words on the internet: "Re: connection between Bilderberg puppet lady gaga and viral outbreak in ukraine "

Great analogy. Fergal O' Brien, the "economist" at IBEC last Friday said that for growth to occur incomes must drop.
So for us to buy more things we need to earn less. Or to increase the population we need to have less sex.

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"We will not have any more crashes in our time."

John Maynard Keynes 1927, responding to concerns raised by Hayek and Von Mises over the 1920s credit bubble.


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he had a good post on irisheconomy.ie there yesterday too, and on the literature too

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your point only holds if taken to extreme, clearly he means a modest reduction in wages/prices will increase employment to such an extent as to grow the economy much more, not a massive decrease in wages...but then again the greedy and wealthy aren't even prepared to sacrifice anything (with falling prices already) to help the unemployed

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