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About LinkBacksSo your in favour of a Keynesian stimulus package, but want public sector pay cuts. What kind of stimulus do you think pay cuts provide? (I'll give you a hint if you want)Originally Posted by patslatt
So your in favour of a Keynesian stimulus package, but want public sector pay cuts. What kind of stimulus do you think pay cuts provide? (I'll give you a hint if you want)
"the revolution is just a T-shirt away"
The 2 are not mutually exclusive.. The stimulus package should be targetted to capital investments, R&D, grants and loans for SME's.. Not maintainence of Public Sector wages.. Whats so hard to understand about that?
Originally Posted by The Red Rose of Cork
I dont care about "the majority of people"
Pat, the ECB can't bail us out. I don't know where you're getting that idea from.
Nothing will motivate the lazy / apathetic / Americanised / west-British types to embrace their culture and the Irish language.
If there are substantial pay cuts I would vote for a strike. I would not expect to get anywhere but I would go down fighting. Why:
1) Our Government just blew 1.5 Billion rescuing a developers bank that's of no systematic value to the Irish People.
2) I want some sort of Promise on childcare- that given we could throw tax breaks for cardboard apartments, the Government will bring generous tax breaks for creche building and some sort of framework for regulating their outrageous costs.
3) Tax evasion would be dealt with severely-its not at present.
My wife has lost her job-our income is already down 40%. I have not seen any real evidence that everyone in the private sector is taking wage cuts. Yes Unemployment is up but to read some of these posts you think everyone was going to be unemployed soon. Nonsense. Even the most pessimistic think its only going to go to 12% next year.
I teach ,so kids will lose class time but given the total lack of interest the state has in ensuring kids attend school ,that wont make a massive amount of difference to many kids. I read tons of posts on incompetent teachers but most posters here wont acknowledge that the youth of today lack concentration and drive and get away with blue bloody murder. So please no drivel 'on pity the kids!'
Adios
Whats the economic rationale?I have not seen any real evidence that everyone in the private sector is taking wage cuts.
The context of the debate regarding public sector paycuts is that their employer is broke.
The Government is broke.
We have no money. We are worse than having no money. We are minus money. We have to borrow to fund current expenditure.
There is a fukking economic rationale to the theory of cutting the public sector wage bill. It is to boost the public finances.
So we can pay for childcare, and schools and hspitals, and stuff like that, you know?
Lots of private sector employers went broke. Their employees lost their jobs. Others employees in non-broke firms are on 3 day weeks, had their wages cut, promised raises were shelved, etc.
See a trend here?
Your. employer. is. broke.
If theres strikes I will be one of the first volunteering to be a strike breaker, just give me a hard hat, a baton and a tazer. Fookin champagne socialists wanting to screw the 80% of us who are'nt on the pigs back.
Any chance you might focus your anger on the probably 5% who ripped everyone off and landed us in this mess? Don't hear you advocating that we go after the greed merchants and get the money back that they looted through rediculously inflated house prices etc. Have you noticed all the 70% off sales about? Gives you some idea of the extent of excessive make ups and the rip off.
Number 1 - I'm raging over this as well but 2 wrongs won't make a right.
Number 2 - what is your obsession with childcare ? I have 3 kids and my wife gave up a good job (no career break or anything like that available to her) when we were staring down the barrell of 2,500 a month in creche fees. We weren't happy about it but it wasn't exactly sprung on us either. We knew the deal beforehand and still went ahead and had the kids. Why should your kids have some sort of leverage in the context of a public sector pay dispute but mine don't ? Are kids of public servants more valuable than the kids of the rest of us ? It is unfortunate that your wife has lost her job and for that you have my sympathy. However you should consider the fact that you do have the luxury of a permanent job to fall back on and therefore it is unlikely that you will end up on the street. Some of the rest of us don't have that safety net to fall back on and in our case we had to give up a perfectly good job because of creche fees. Bearing this in mind would you not agree that I have a greater grievance with relation to childcare costs than you do ?
Number 3 - Of course it should. As far as I'm concerned we can free up CS resources through greater efficiencies and redeploy them to tax collecting duties in revenue. At least then they might cover their costs.
There was a culture 10 or 20 years ago whereby it was nearly acceptable to engage in social welfare fraud. It was nearly a badge of honour. I'm not saying it is gone yet but I do think that the public's attitude has hardened on this point.
We need the same mind shift when it comes to tax evasion. Next time a plumber fixes your radiators ask him for a VAT receipt. If he asks for cash say no. If he asks for more money because you refused to pay him cash threaten to report him to revenue. The culture at the moment is that you get the job done cheaper by paying cash and I can't think of anyone who refuses a better deal when it is put in front of them - that has to be addressed. I doubt if this is the same tax evasion that you were talking about but it is still tax evasion in the context of a black ecomony. We need all the money we can get these days.
I don't see why semi-state workers would strike if there were wage cuts in the Civil Service. While the union bosses might be tied at the hip, your average semi-state worker wouldn't give a second thought about civil servants getting paid less. In fact, some would probably agree with it!
Pay cuts among the highest paid public sector workers earning €50,000 to 100,000 a year who tend to save a high proportion of incomes have a far lower multiplier effect on aggregate demand and growth in the economy than pay cuts among low income people who spend most of their incomes instead of saving.
No pay cuts are welcome in a recession but the reality is that among the hard economic choices that must be made,cutting the pay of civil servants who are wildly overpaid in the €50,000 to 100,000 a year brackets is the obvious best choice available.
The principal options for preventing unsustainable budgetary deficits that could bankrupt the economy include: a)big pay cuts of up to 20% in the public sector concentrated in the €50,000 to 100,000 a year pay brackets b)lesser pay cuts in the public sector than in a) plus mass public sector redundancies of around 10% plus of the workforce c)some cosmetic tax increases on high incomes in the private sector to create the impression of sharing the pain d)serious tax increases on business and on the highest incomes in an abandonment of Ireland's low tax model,despite the fact that this model has generated fantastic revenue growth through stimulating economic growth e)slashing the capital budgets to which the government committed to prepare for the economic recovery.
The last general election result would seem to rule out options d and e. Option d would risk driving the economy into a depression by accelerating the downwards spiral of business. Option a could be considered a form of Keynesian redistribution of income outside of redistributive taxes since saving on pay would reduce the need for present and future taxes to cover the pay.
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