Is it sustainable for 63c from every euro collected being spent on social welfare? The banks were recapitalised from a fund which was losing money. But is the 22,000,000,000 euro spent on social welfare helping the recipients or trapping them? it certainly helped landlords, builders, middle class parents, middle class kids get a house, bookies and publicans and over 2000 public sector employees who administer the overly complex schemes. Simplify, reform, cut. Social welfare should be a safety net not a way of life. In that context a 3% cut is laughable.

social welfare refom is ok, but IBEC want to keep the system that exist and simply pay people less, in the jhope that with the welfare rate lower wages will be driven lower. In actual fact what happens is spending power in the economy declines and IBEC members have less demand to meet so let people go.
Itys what happened in the Great Depression and will happen again.
Welfare reform is nescessary but reform does not mean recationary cuts.

IBEC are becoming such a discredited organisation and Dan McCoy the economist was debating the issue with a guy from Vincent de Paul on Morning Ireland. The VdP guy beat the living daylights out of him, best interview I heard in ages. I would never give VdP money but I might change my mind now.

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Knowledge is power.

Economic Left/Right: -0.25
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -2.97

In 2009
Economic Left/Right: -2.12
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -4.26

Its perfectly reasonable to look for a 3% cut in SW when real prices have fallen by the same amount.

SW payment were increased by 2% in October because it was anticipated that inflation in 2009 would be 2%.

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This is the same VDP guy who said that many of the costs for people on SW, like electricity, haven't fallen?

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Countries than produce fewer total CO2 emissions than Ireland:

Bangladesh (Pop. 162m)
Ethiopia (Pop. 80m)
Peru (Pop.30m)


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bnut thats the point Goose, we dont wabnt to maintain the spending power of the poor at a static level, we want to increas eit to restore demand in the economy.

Agree, I actually think Dan McCoy even felt some shame at his own proposals by the end of it.

As for VdeP, I really think until you have volunteered with them you can never understand the educational deprivation and sheer economic need out there

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Real Prices?? whats that? As was discussed on other treads the CPI is not a good indicator as it includes things as the interest rates on mortgages. If you were to take Real food prices, you will see they have not fallen. Unfortunetely if you are on Social Welfare Mortgages rates are the least of your concers when you have to pay for food, rent and electricity( again see other treads about our very expensive electricity)

__________________
Knowledge is power.

Economic Left/Right: -0.25
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -2.97

In 2009
Economic Left/Right: -2.12
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -4.26

Your idea never will work because Ireland cannot become rich by selling goods made in another countries. You will get some margin, but money will flow away. Ireland has only one real income of source – export oriented companies.
I would propose to replace some part of welfare packages by vouchers, which can be used to buy only Irish goods in shops
Lets assumed welfare recipient received instead 204 Euro 154 euro plus vouchers for 50 Euro, which he can spend in shops to buy local goods, such as beer, bread, meat, milk. Some shops already have a mechanism to indicate is it Irish or imported on receipts.
Shop will take some part of those vouchers and will pass the rest to manufacturer.
Those vouchers can be used only to pay taxes(corporate and income for employees) in rate one to one. If somebody want to make a market and sell those vouchers to companies to pay taxes, it is fine.
As result it will be parallel currency which can be used to stimulate local companies. It will reduce unemployment and will remove some people from dole.
Low cost competitors from all eu will not stimulate their own economies anymore.
Foreigners on dole will not send so much money to home.
Then it can be extended on PS workers as well, to compensate their salary reduction.
Removing people from dole will compensate some loss in taxes.
I have seen food vouchers for unemployed in US, but it was not locked to local goods.

Perhaps the state should cut the social welfare bill by six billion but give one billion to the VdeP. Does anyone think the priorities would be universal childrens allowance, paying people not to work and preventing those on the dole getting into education, retrain or start a business, would they see the need for over 50 programmes?
And to have over 2000 administrators and processors. I think not. Charity are efficient, government is anything but.