I know 5 electricians who will give 2 different quotes for every job. There’s a cash price you see…

Let’s not act like only those at the top are cute h00rs.

Par for the course mickmc, a FF councillor, former TD and Minister, changed the county plan after the closing date for public viewing, to allow a new road to pass through his land. This could not have been done without the knowledge of councillors and officials. In a separate incident, a sitting FG Senator’s constituency running mate has been removed, supposedly voluntarily although he had never given any indication of this, quite the opposite, from the ticket, to allow this former minister’s son a free run. This is the standard of politicians in our republic.

Exactly Maire, like a doctor diagnosing the sickness without perscribing the cure just compounds the illness.

Like shopping in five different supermarkets to see which is the cheapest instead of shopping more economically, or five petrol station to get the cheapest petrol instead of getting a car which uses less petrol per km or making fewer journeys.

The scale is somewhat different though Máire. Plus the fact, should you report any or all of these electricians to Revenue, there is a good chance they will be investigated and prosecuted. That is not the case with the likes of politicians and big business. Have you missed the last few years?

Apologies, should have been addressed to Ciaran.

Globally-speaking, Credit Suisse define the top 1 percent as those who have: Assets – Debts >/=$80,000. How that fits into McWilliams’ Ireland, I do not know. That aside, I share the frustration voiced elsewhere here, of having the problem elucidated without a solution being proposed. Clearly, Political & banking corruption has been a problem yet we have not brought anyone to account. It took water to get some folk onto the streets. The Dept. Of Social Welfare could have used a proper ID mechanism, tied to passport usage to identify social welfare tourism years ago, yet failed to do so. And, many of our own work in the black economy while drawing welfare payments. Whether through action or inaction, we are all part of the problem.

The top 1% have assests-debt of > $80,000? Surely you’re missing a zero there – $800,000? Otherwise my working class parents would easily be in the top 1%. They have no debt, own 2 houses and would have a good amount of savings of over €100K.
Their secret? Incredibly frugal living… especially my mother.

Lucky that I have a job that actually pays a decent wage.

So you’re moaning for the same of it.

moaning because someone would expect to earn more after 16 years, not less

Most of those who emigrated from Ireland during the crash were not the unemployed but those with jobs. This is a country where people who earn €32,000 a year are regarded as super-rich and taxed accordingly. This is needed to fund, amongst other things, an annual 20 billion Social Welfare budget which accounts for 40% of all government expenditure. Is it any wonder that we can’t recruit any of the thousands of Irish nurses and doctors for our own health system? We have an unequal society because government implements policies that make society unequal. The Irish political system is crowded in the middle with social democrat do-gooder types who constantly preach about equality but implement policies which militate against hard work and enterprise.

And still people say we should not introduce a 48% tax rate for over 100000 or increase corporation tax to 15%.

Begrudgery is never far below the surface in this country, even at local level where people are involved at trying to create a better place to live.

The higher band is 40%, plus USC7% plus PRSI 4% which gives an effective rate of over 50%, so there’s no need for a ’48%’ rate.

@mer no it doesnt when you factor in tax breaks and the portion of income paid at the lower rate it gives those earning over 100000 an actual income tax +usc + prsi tax rate of about 25% if you add on indirect taxes this comes to just under 30% which is only 2% higher the direct plus indirected taxes paid by the lowest group of earners and 8% higher than average wage earners.

Where can one find out about these magic tax breaks only high earners seem to be able to get?

@justin most of the figures i quoted can be found in here
http://www.tasc.ie/publications/tasc-a-defence-of-taxation/

Are you completely mad, dude? Did you even read the article before looking for people to pick arguments with?

@Fifty – I was responding to your comment which was implying that Ireland is a right wing state – which it is not by the way.

@Hidden revolt – When the government is interfering in every aspect of people’s lives and stealing all their wealth so as to redistribute it to others – I think that pretty much sums up the definition of socialism by its own benchmark.

Erm… the aim of socialism is to take wealth from the RICH and redistribute it to the POOR…the exact opposite of what has been happening for the last 7 years as all these statistics show.

@Fifty – it well may be its aim in theory – however it works out in practice quite differently. Nonetheless, all that matters is for it to be stolen from some, so that it can be distributed to others, in order for it to be classed as socialism.

No, Dude, though Bertie Ahern did claim to be socialist, not that he would know the meaning of the word! Socialism in even its mildest form died the moment Labour got into bed with Fine Gael. Ireland is in fact very right wing, with Fine Gael being even more right wing than Fianna Fáil (if that was possible). By no stretch of the imagination is any Irish government left wing.

Is that why we are living in a welfare state Mary?

Dude, have you read Marx? Or is your opinion, like so many others, based off American pop culture and Cold War red phobia? We’re living in a welfare state because we allowed ghetto areas to develop in inner city regions, reduced educational opportunities for the poor, decided foreign direct investment was a better option than funding local entrepreneurship, refused to regulate banks, gave out loans without any regard to the pre-liquidity ratio, then bailed out said banks after the system finally crumpled. That is fairly straight-forward Neoliberalism.

Well almost €8 Billion would come from not paying annual profits (interest) to the banking industry and the American corprations could easily pay more tax, Apple owes how much?

Not being funny, but there’s plenty of money to be made from docking their salaries and pensions, taking more tax from the rich, American multinationals and back from bond holders. Also, basic Leaving Cert economics: you can’t tax your way out of recession. If people have no money to spend, there won’t be any economic activity. Sadly, you need to bite the bullet, spend money you don’t have and wait. It’s their own fault for landing us in this mess in the first place.

@goonforlife
Thank you, you’ve proven my point.

Watch the doc “Inside Out” it gives a comprehensive analysis of what caused the 2008 global crash.

@goonforlife,
‘Inside Out’ is not a documentary, it’s a kids movie.
Documentaries are made all the time by people coming from a certain viewpoint and so made to show something from their angle, another doc could be made of the same issue showing another viewpoint. Documentaries are not necessarily the truth.

If you want to know how our problems are ‘engineered by the rich’, you need to understand three basic principles. First, is the Fear of Falling Principle. If you have more money than you will ever spend in your lifetime, a bank account with billions of dollars in it, every luxury imaginable, you still fear losing any of this money you will never spend. You get everything you want, you want more. Because money is power, and those with money create jobs, spend millions in lobbying and know who’s corrupt enough to be bought in governments, they can largely influence policy to their advantage. With a global society, they can also take advantage of cheap labour in one country and cheap taxes in another; think factories on the US/Mexico border. This has caused a shift in global income trends over the past two decades. During the 1990s, we had the champagne glass divide, where the top 10% of income holders held 50% of the world’s wealth. This has shifted to a graph which now resembles very uncomfortable underwear, where that 50% of the world’s wealth is held by a mere 80 individuals, or .000005% of the world’s total population. Income gaps have not been this high since the peak of the industrial revolution, when the welfare state had to be created to avoid Proletariat uprising. To understand how this has been allowed to happen by people, I’ll give you a curious anecdote from colonial Africa. During colonial times, European superpowers decided to create a hierarchy out of the Tribal system. They would make one tribe superior, and give them a small proportion of the wealth. To the Europeans it was leftovers, but it was considerably more than fellow Africans would have had. As a result, even though they were only been given such a tiny fraction of the wealth being earned in their country, these upjumped tribes would align themselves with their European masters, and would micromanage their own countrymen for them. This is essentially what is happening in our society, the richer the person the more likely they are to identify with ruling elites over the poor, even though their actual income levels are more comparable with those of poor people. They vote in conservative/neoliberal governments, support tax breaks for the wealthy and sign up to clearly false ideologies such as trickle-down economics, or that our society is meritocratic. This system is inevitably unsupportable. Not only because the growing poor become incredibly angry, but only on the environmental level, because the rich overconsume, the poor overpopulate and the aforementioned fear of falling principle causes ruling elites to instigate ‘treadmill-based production’ (or environmentally unstable production) to produce more product, ergo more profit.

@Alca
You’re right, both FG & Labour had said they would do more before they got into power but the realities of dealing with it all was a lot tougher than they expected, there were/are no simple solutions to it all, I believe they tried to make the right decisions for the country, I think they have played the markets well to get our interest rates so low for borrowings and also to push out the bailout repayments (it will always be pushed out).
Reforms have started in the public sector but the unions should be the ones blamed for the slow pace of reform.

It would seem WE DO have lots of money still? Always have had this money, even throughout the recession? As Vinnie Browne always says – we are still a very wealthy country.

This wealth, while not equally spread, is out there amongst alot more people than you think.

Lots of people seem to compartmentalise their savings relative to their debt and their perceived wealth . Almost like the savings dont count when deciding whether one is rich or not. Ones richness based on weekly/monthly earnings only, excluding any deposits or assets owned.

“Irish private-sector deposits increased during the period, with household deposits accounting for 54 per cent of the €175 billion recorded at the end of July 2015.”

Yes thats 54% of €175 BILLION on deposit by Irish People … €94.5 BILLION ( not sure if this includes cash on deposit in Post Office, Credit Unions etc .. That figure I think bumps up to close on €116 Billion with these included ..

http://www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/loans-to-households-companies-continue-to-decline-in-july-1.2334995