You didn't refute them, you were wrong. Lyons is basing his on the CSO. Do you know better?

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Shafarevich, a member of the Soviet Academy of Science, has written a brilliant book under the title Socialism; showing that socialism of any type and shade leads to a total destruction of the human spirit and to a leveling of mankind into death.
-Alexandr Solzhenitsyn,

I did refute them. On the same basis that Kevin mentioned earlier. The figures are simply not comparable. The PS/CS includes no min wage workers and includes all top level workers. The private sector figure includes all those on minimum wage and DOESN'T include drawing of sole traders or earnings of shareholders. They are just not comparable averages and it would be ridiculous to imply that they were.

Very nicely put.

No it wasn't. He's using incomparable figures.

This links shows the difference between comparable grades.
Irish public sector pay excluding pensions exceeds private sector pay by 10% for top jobs to up to 30% for other grades

All irrelevant anyway there is going to be cuts because there has to be we simply cannot afford to continue paying these rates and that is a fact whether you are left right or centre.

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Shafarevich, a member of the Soviet Academy of Science, has written a brilliant book under the title Socialism; showing that socialism of any type and shade leads to a total destruction of the human spirit and to a leveling of mankind into death.
-Alexandr Solzhenitsyn,

I don't think I can comment on that article for personal reasons.

I disagree however - you try to cut PS wages by what they consider to be an unfair amount and they WILL all strike.

Let them strike. They will have zero sympathy and we might get to fire some of them and replace them with more productive people. Anyway they know the sh2t we're in so I reckon they will go along. There will be some militants but once they know there is NO money left they will see reality.

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Shafarevich, a member of the Soviet Academy of Science, has written a brilliant book under the title Socialism; showing that socialism of any type and shade leads to a total destruction of the human spirit and to a leveling of mankind into death.
-Alexandr Solzhenitsyn,

Yes because that'll really work...fire them and replace them. Let's just put people into their roles that have no idea what their doing!

Best of luck with that!

That is a contradictionary statement. If something is new, it cannot have existed previously, hence 'new'. What you are talking about is modification of an idea beyond its original concept.

Qualify? Who decides those qualifiers? You? A bureaucrat? The market?

Workers work for the business. Most "workers" aren't innovative to start with. With most businesses, smarter or larger ones at least, when people start coming up with innovations that benefit the business, those innovative people tend to get promotion. With benefit to the business comes profitability, profitability comes expansion, greater productivity and/or more workers needed. Assuming no change in raw materials costs (yah, yah, I know) this means the product becomes less expensive to the consumer, which group happens to include the workers.

In your socialist world, that innovator would not benefit as he would be only an equal to everyone else and recieve what everyone else recieves. THAT would stultify innovation. What would the point be in striving when one does not benefit? Look at the 'great' socialist experiments, the USSR and China. The USSR folded economically because the "workers" had no incentive to do more than the minimum, if that. "Innovation" in the USSR was through dictat, rather draconian dictats.
China is fast taking on the aspects of capitalism though still governed by the Communist Party. Outside of the industrial centers, it's still lagging behind most developed countries in quality of life.

Humans are not all equal. Some are stupid, some intelligent, some lazy, some industrous, some altruistic, some greedy. Pure socialism dictates that all are equal regardless of the previous.

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The enemy of my enemy is the enemy of my enemy. Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action.

There are lies, damn lies and debatable points. "I'm not shouting, I'm making an assertive point." M. Martin

Thanks for that maybe the IMF should run a few candidates in the next general election I suspect that the prospect of nationalisation would appeal to many especially those in debt to banks (might be able to safeguard the bank employees jobs too!)

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"The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism - ownership of government by an individual, by a group,”

Franklin D. Roosevelt 32nd US President.