Rising cost of doing business driving business out of Ireland

[cd27]

The self inflicted wound of using temporary tax revenue to hike the cost of government (with little or nothing in return) is now coming home to haunt us, Constantin Gurdgiev on the case,

Deadweight Government has us stuck in the blocks - Analysis, Opinion - Independent.ie

"No other place in the entire developed world has seen such a vast and rapid destruction of core jobs as Ireland.

Nor should any of this come as news to us.

Over recent years, virtually every multinational company has reshaped its operations here.

At first, product-cycle erosion took large volumes of specific goods and services out of production here.

This was accompanied by shrinking investment by multinationals in upgraded facilities or a fall-off in the domiciling of new products here.

Apple, Pfizer, GSK, Dell, Intel, Microsoft, even Google, the list can go on, but all of these multinational companies share one trait -- they all have been reducing their employment here and/or redirecting new product teams away from Ireland.

All of this is driven by one single economic force -- the rising cost of doing business in this country.

Even our main comparative advantage, the low corporate tax rate has, by now, been fully eroded by the levies collected by the State and its monopolies to pay high wages and other costs in the public sector, and by our ever-rising, state-controlled and regulated, prices for energy and other inputs.

Year after year, since at least 2002--2003, the EU Commission, the OECD and the IMF have warned about the uncompetitive business environment here.

A number of reports since 2001 highlighted the fact that pricing in publicly regulated sectors like health, education, energy, transport and in the labour market was out of line with what is required for a small, open economy reliant on foreign direct investment and foreign equity finance.

The response from our policymakers to all of this was to sign up to even more social partnership deals (giving up more of the nation's wealth and productive capacity to the public sector unions) and to create an army of task forces, quangos and regulators to oversee the rapidly decaying markets for state services."

[fiannafailure]

CD27
You didnt contribute to the energy policy thread

[atlantic]

Listen Cd27 your going to annoy a lot of people with this,most of them want to believe that that the gubermint have lorry loads of cash and pixie dust and everything is going to be great.
The Irish gubermint are like an ostrich that's seen a lion ,it reckons if it buries its head in the sand he'll go away and won't eat him.

[jpc]

No one wants to confront this inconvenient truth.

[cd27]

gubermint, i like it!

[cd27]

CD27
You didnt contribute to the energy policy thread

why would I?

Anyone got any other figures on Irish costs?

[fiannafailure]

[quote=cd27;1901363]

why would I?

Because energy prices are driving business out of Ireland

Anyone got any other figures on Irish costs?

Apart from labour costs, every other cost is levied by government and their policy is to increase them, not much more to say is there

[Supermanpolitician]

Two things are certain:

1 It's too expensive for many companies to do business in Ireland, including labour, energy, insurance costs etc.

2. Fianna Fail is uniquely to blame.

Anybody who disputes these two points is living in cloud cuckoo land.

[True Republican]

Cut electricity prices by 40% after half the gombeens in the ESB are summarily laid off and replaced by labour at half the wages.
Cut the minimum wage to €6 euros per hour.
Cut public sector pay by 10-25% thats only for starters,
Introduce compulsory downward rent reviews for the next 4 years.
Break up the VHI into separte companies and privatise these companies.
Introduce free market competion on the local bus and national bus services.
Cut the price of Gas by 40%.
Abolish all defined benefit pensions schemes, the public sector workers will have their pension determined by the stock market just like us mere mortals in the private sector.
Introduce legislation whereby multinationsl are legally entitled to summarily cut wages by 15-20% and the workers in the union recognised foreign companies can't go on strike.
Abolish all employers PRSI.
Cut corporation tax to 5% as a temporary measure for the next 5 years.

Thats some solutions I'll be back for more.

[fiannafailure]

In the 80s the fianna gael government was defeated because they wanted to tax childrens shoes, how come fianna fail can get away with the present fiasco and keep their mercs