Spin Spin Spin - How will you pay for your plans Pat?

[Libero]

How are you defining working class families?

People on the lowest rate of taxation.

Yay! I'm working class!
Hands up everyone who's working class!
Aren't we, loike, y'now, focking great?

Quick - to the shops for some Luke Kelly CDs and Dublin jerseys!

[blue33]

I still think a tax increase for the middle band, especially if tax bill for working class families is to be alleviated, is inevitable.

How are you defining working class families?

People on the lowest rate of taxation.

Working class is someone who makes their living through manual labour.

[qtman]

[
Regarding qtman's point, the road to Government does indeed lie through the middle classes. The road to power however is something quite different, and that lies through a radicalised and politicised working class base.

It's all very well for Fergus Finlay to announce there's no such thing as the working class. The reality is that it is the non-voting working class that is the deciding factor in elections, by its simple decision not to vote, it requires parties to fight for a middle class vote on an increasingly crowded middle ground.

In terms of appealing to the middle classes, something I have no problem doing, it should be on the honest basis of increased taxation for your class in order to fund better public services. If they don't like it, they can choose from FF, FG, Labour, PDs, Greens etc. who will all promise them increased public services expenditure with reduced taxation if they can get away with it. If they like it, they have a genuine and credible alternative to choose from.

This is quite poetic but just naive. If the Left has to rely on the non-voting working class to come out and assert their power, the Right will rule forever.

The most powerful political force in Ireland is the Independent media group. They deliberately muddy political debate and gratuitously criticise politicians precisely to keep the non-voting working class at home. Political power therefore rests with the stakeholders: the debt-ridden middle class and the rich. The Left can't just walk away from the the centre in the vain hope that their principles will sustain them. The British Labour Party nearly vanished from the face of the earth when they tried this. I admire the way SF has tackled the problem of turnout in working class areas, but a lot of their success has to do with their Republican Anti-Establishment mystique. That's the same mystique that will prevent them from advancing their support base beyond its current ceiling, however.

[JimLarkin]

There are other ways to pay for Labours policies that do not require an increase in income tax, hundreds of millions of euro worth of tax concessions are given to studd farmers, there are many people in ireland earning hundred of thousands of Euro who pay less tax than the average industrial worker because of loopholes that exist in the tax system. Several Millionaries payed no tax last year at all. Closing down these loopholes would raise a lot of revenue. Also we have an economy growing at an average of 5% per annum, this will gaurantee hundreds of millions of euro in increases in revenue to the exchequer each year for the next few years. I personally would favour an increase in taxation for those earning above a certain amount say 130,000 per annum, but rabbite and burton think more funding can be available without doing that and i trust them.