Exchequer Returns for May : Deficit now 10b

[toughbutfair]

the left wing media often talk about "living in poverty" when what they mean is living below the poverty line which somebody defined as 60% of the average wage - so as we all (even the unemployed) got richer during the boom, the poverty line increased too. the average wage was about 33k, so about 20k is the line. This is hardly poverty. i moved up to dublin in 1998 and worked for the equivilant of about 10k euro per annum.

[badboy2]

this is good news. . . We have turned the corner. . . .

Ireland came out of recession in 1985. It took 20 years of growth to get unemployment down.

You reversed 20 years of job creation in one year. When do you think employment will be back to where it was in 2007?

The economy is not a set of statistics, it is comprised of millions of lives.

The effect your party's failure has had on those lives is unmeasurable.

To misquote Ronald Reagan.

Recession is my neighbour losing his job.
Depression is me losing my job.
Recovery is Brian Cowen losing his job.

[droghedasouth]

The point on VAT is that the slide has not continued. Its trending at about 78% of last year. The same as April year on year. This does indicate the spending slum may have reached a bottom.

It is a very very minor positive. There will still be a €30bn gap at year end.

WRONG - we will only have reached bottom when VAT revenue is 100% of the year before.

The only positive is that the rate of decline has reduced slightly but that only means we have have fallen about 1/2 the way down the curve.

That means that we can begin to estimate when we will actually reach the bottom, which is likely to happen sometime in 2011.