Union Leaders Peddling "National Recovery Bonds"

[Factorem]

Is it just me, or is anyone else extremely skeptical of this "National Recovery Bond" idea? Have the unions really got the best interests of "the people" at heart, or are they simply cosying up alongside big business and partaking in a PAYE swindle of monumental proportions under the auspices of some kind of patriotic socialism?

FF are only delighted to see the unions being "innovative" and proposing schemes/scams in which there'll be plenty of opportunity to hand out "jobs for the boys", only in a 2009 context.

Personally, I don't trust any of them. The golden circle of corruption and cute-hoorism encompasses the union leadership AFAIC and the whole thing is one big game for big business: working out ways of extracting as much money from the PAYE wage slaves as possible (preferably without them even realising. Better still: brainwash them to the point where they volunteer to have numbers subtracted "automatically" from their wage slips!)

If the unions/government want a "National Recovery Bond", let them float one on the free market and let them pay full whack interest. They won't be getting cheap money from me I can tell you.

[anewbeginning]

We buy the bonds, the government uses the money to bail-out the banks which is really code for helping bit by bit write off the debts of the developers and when we come to get the money for the bonds back, the government borrows more money abroad or else tells us they can't pay them back.

Would anyone give FF a tenner and expect to see it again? These guys and their friends are common swindlers.

[feargach]

These "recovery bond peddlers" are asking the state to raise taxes on them to a new higher rate of 48%.

Are you volunteering as much?

The bond is suggested to be ringfenced for things like school and hospice buildings: stuff that will maximise patriotic interest.

Then again, this is the kind of thing that is only of interest to those who are willing to take a hit to their wallets for the good of the nation, so not really P.ie material.

You want to give red meat to that crowd, you push the reliable GOP-style policies of tax cuts and bashing five kinds of hell out of everyone working for the public sector.

[Factorem]

These "recovery bond peddlers" are asking the state to raise taxes on them to a new higher rate of 48%.

Oh I see! Here: Buy this piece of paper (and pay tax @42%+slimey charges/fees on it) or else you'll be paying tax at 48%. The slimey bastards. But don't worry: We'll be paying you sometime close to 2016 -- to commemorate our fine nation's independence, like (erase from your mind the fact that the people selling you this junk-status piece of paper will be long retired and playing golf in the Algarve by then).

You couldn't make this stuff up.

The bond is suggested to be ringfenced for things like school and hospice buildings: stuff that will maximise patriotic interest.

Isn't that what tax money is supposed to be used for?

Instead, it's pissed away on gold chains for fat town mayors and salaries for 1000s of councillors who do SFA, corrupt quangos, stationary/IT budgets with "preferred suppliers", corrupt tendering on capital projects, public/private "partnership" schemes/scams, bailing out banks, etc.

We could have a 10% tax rate and still have schools, hospitals, policing, a judiciary, roads, public transport and governance. It's the **************************************** snout-in-the-trough stuff that's a disgrace.

Get your hands off my stash Ireland cos you're not getting any of it. Now please fock off and stop threatening me with property tax/water charges/further toll roads/compulsory health insurance/council tax/carbon tax/etc.

[FutureTaoiseach]

They just want us to cough up so they can continue earning 20% more than us in the private-sector. They're our aristocracy. They have a sense of entitlement.

[Jacob Richter]

Because capitalism has historically increased real GDP per capita, I suggest nothing less than legislation for annual, non-deflationary adjustments of the minimum wage and of unemployment insurance benefits to match real inflation (not notorious government underestimations due to faulty measures like chain weighting, or even underhanded selections of the lower of core inflation and general inflation) and, furthermore, both the restoration of the aforementioned to their original living-wage levels and the universalization of such annual cost-of-living adjustments, again on a non-deflationary basis, for all other non-executive remunerations and benefits.

[In less technical language, I'm suggesting the slogan of "sliding scale of wages" with specific limitations outlined above.]

This pretty much kills the tailist drive behind collective bargainism. Where would the union bureaucrats go?

[Dios]

Reminds me a bit of the war bonds the US had to sell a lot of during world war 2 to avoid going bankrupt.

[smitchy2]

Although an innovative idea for once from the unions, a lack of confidence in the current government would make the bond fruitless.

People also realise that they pay a health levy that is not ringfenced for anything in particular.
So there would be no faith that a government would actually spend a bond on what they originally say they will.

[irish_bob]

They just want us to cough up so they can continue earning 20% more than us in the private-sector. They're our aristocracy. They have a sense of entitlement.

it was 20% 12 months ago , i suspect its much more at this stage

[FutureTaoiseach]

it was 20% 12 months ago , i suspect its much more at this stage

Very true.