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THE GERMAN ECONOMIST Peter Bofinger has said that countries like Ireland, the United States and Japan should follow Germany’s lead in order to make their way out of the debt crisis.
Writing in Der Spiegel he said that the problem in our country is that taxes are too low, that taxes should be slowly raised, and that the rich should pay more.
Bofinger identified Ireland as one of the OECD countries with the largest deficits, and said that the problems in balancing the books lie squarely in revenue. He said that government revenues only amount to about one third of GDP, which puts them at the bottom of the OECD scale, when countries with higher taxes have the lowest budget deficits.
Germany’s public revenues account for about 43 per cent of GDP, and Bofinger – who is a member of the government appointed economic panel known as the ‘Five Wise Men’ – said that Ireland should at least strive to reach this level.
According to the economist Ireland’s budget deficit (as a percentage of GDP) would go from a current level of -10.1 to -2.3 if revenue levels were the same as Germany’s.
Bofinger said that those who “benefited most from the – in retrospect undesirable – developments of the boom years” should now be made to pay higher taxes. He said that both income tax and capital gains tax changes could help to boost the government coffers.
Last month, a proposal to raise taxes in Germany for those earning more than €100,000 was shot down by coalition partners FDP. A spokesperson for FDP said:
Tax rises for the aspiring middle class of our country are nothing but a brake on social advancement by means of tax law.
Bloomberg reports that the German government has agreed in principle to grant tax relief for low and middle-income earners from 2013. The Free Democratic Party won 14.6 per cent of the vote in the election in 2009 on the back of campaign promises of lower taxes.
Ireland’s low corporate tax rate has attracted criticism from Germany and France in recent months, however a lowering of the rate is now off the agenda.
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I’m an Irish programmer, living abroad, and would like to work remotely for an Irish company. (It’s always a good excuse for visiting home every now and then.) Even with the skills shortage, it seems that no employer is interested.
I’m also in a similar position (living/working in the UK), I like to check in every now and then with job opportunities in Ireland and it’s always 3-5 years industry experience. It seems to be case (to me at least) that you have to move abroad to get your experience before you can come back and apply for these jobs.
I think everyone can agree (having myself being in a similar position) that there is NO SKILLS SHORTAGE.
It is a shortage of desired experience.
Every company requires 3-5 years it seems. None are interested in investing in staff to train/mentor them.
My advice would be similar to other posters for those with no experience: learn how to build a phone app, or try to improve a piece of software from the likes of Sourceforge.net Then put that at the top of your CV.
Exactly – nobody cares if you got 86% in second year in Software Systems – they just want to know what you can do.
I don’t blame companies for wanting experience though – why take on a 22 year old when you can take on a 32 year old? Not like in 30 years time you’ll regret that the older guy is retiring sooner than the younger guy, in the software industry :-P
In my own case I have six years of industry experience with Java, but no one is taking the bait.
Spot on. If you don’t have a github.com account with some interesting projects or contributions, don’t bother.
Software engineering is one of the few jobs that you can MAKE your own experience. As someone who hires developers, I’d sooner hire someone with an interesting github portfolio than someone with more qualifications than you can shake a stick at.
It’s pretty easy to spot people interested in building cool things.
You’re a dying breed Dave. Outside of google very few companies are looking for software developers who are in any way creative. However, they are increasingly looking for staff who are multidisciplinary. Agile is pushing things that way… especially devops.
Software companies want experienced engineers so there is the catch how can you have a constant flow of graduates when they can’t get jobs becuase companies want experienced people.
The other flip side the money is crap starting off.
Money isn’t crap starting off – it’s in line with most other jobs of similar expertise. Companies wanting experienced people is a nuisance though, but I’m not sure how to resolve that.
Software is one of those fields though where you can gain expertise without experience. If your CV has a link to your website, your GitHub profile or some mobile app you’ve worked on they shouldn’t care how long you’ve been working at it.
If you’re passionate about software and have the skills to match, you have the ability to convey this to an employer :-)
Sofware developers are the highest paid graduates of any field. They are even paid more than intern doctors and graduate engineers. Of course those fields catch up fairly quickly.
Is there a list of these vacancies/job specifications?
There is no skills shortage. There is however a bias towards 25-35 year olds, with 5 years experience in a very specific and narrow skill set.
The employers (HR departments) have absolutely no comprehension that a programmer is a programmer, that’s the “skill”, the programming language is usually pretty irrelevant.
If you are over 45 years old, then the employers pretty much ignore you and your wealth of experience.
Irish companies have become very Americanised in the practice of promoting (very) young people to managerial positions, who are then biased towards hiring people their own age.
So what skills are we short of? If it’s technical that’s something to work towards for our universities and students, if it’s language of course it’s going to be easier for people of other nationalities.
So half are picked by Irish residents !
Very poor CV screening, interviewing and technical tests result in a lot of false negatives. I was recently made redundant, and have just been through the process. I picked up a job pretty quickly, but I am genuinely surprised by the lack of opportunities for some of the more junior guys, given that I would be happy to work with all of them again and they have access to great references from everyone at the company.
I constantly see companies that are doing web-development asking about program complexity and solving scalability problems that they more than likely don’t have. If they do have these problems, they are self inflicted by people reinventing the wheel rather than using something off the shelf. Another thing I noticed is the asking of questions assuming knowledge of specific tools. Web summit insisted on degrees from Universities only, with a clear bias towards Trinity college.
I personally would prefer to hire someone with less experience of these kind of things, and the simple ability to do simple things correctly and take direction. I don’t think I would have a problem hiring in the current environment.
Given that we are in the middle of a tech bubble, we should not spend too much time trying to correct these problems at the expense of the exchequer and let the companies who have the problem deal with these self inflicted problems themselves.
I’m an Irish IT graduate with over 10 yrs experience. I’ve taken time out to raise my child. I’ve been trying to get back to work for the last couple of years & companies are unwilling to even respond to my CV. I understand the concepts, am easily retrained & willing to work. It’s not a shortage of skills, I think it’s that companies want an exact set of skills & aren’t willing to re-train people. I know I’m not the only one in this position.
You’re right. as an employer, it’s not efficient to hire someone that will take weeks or months to retrain. The onus is on you to skill up. Not your employer. Ad I’ve stated before, in IT, it’s very VERY easy to upskill and create your own experience in the form of personal projects.
I’m still shocked at those who don’t understand this. Nobody owes you a job and being out of work for 10 years means you’re practically starting from scratch anyway. But that doesn’t matter, it’s very easy to start and build something yourself to modernise your skill set.
I’d sooner hire a 17 year old who just finished their leaving with a decent github profile then someone with 3 masters and no effort put into keeping themselves relevant.
Too few jobseekers actualky put themselves in the shoes of a potential employer.
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