United Left Alliance convention

How many of these people ever created a job or ran a pony show?

You’d better remove this post before John McH reads it. 🙂

Its obvious now that the Euro was a credit / production recycling invention , first world core European economies gave peripheral second world European economies credit to buy goodies.
The private credit in Ireland bought BMWs & the public debt in Greece bought submarines.
But this expenditure did not increase total aggregate wealth in the eurozone – it merely concentrated the existing stock of wealth.
A static wealth base cannot service exponential interest forever – therefore we experience a breakdown crisis that will ultimatly effect all countries but over a staggered time period.

PS blaming the wealthy for being wealthy is a typical leftist postion – they seem not to realise that the wealthy also spend & invest in the country although perhaps inefficiently.
The core problem for Ireland is that its money supply is being drained to service interest on unprofitable & unproductive investments when default & restructuring is needed.
Also a central bank that is extremely hostile to the concept of Goverment money so therefore people have no domestic safety nest other then Gold or foregin accounts.
I do however favour the creation of a state industrial bank that will engage in medium to large scale projects that are revenue neutral in nature – some free marketeers might scorn at this policey but they must realise that engaging in a feverous export drive to service foregin interest is also revenue neutral or perhaps even negative now.
We have experienced a 26% reduction in GNP since Q1 2007 at yet our EU “partners” do not want to play ball.
Its time to fill their greedy mouths with punts now – we have no choice.

What exactly is this chap a professor of ? His solution calls for an overnight balanced budget, significant increase in foreign reserves and probable expulsion from the EU (due to the Corrib heist). Vapid, shallow thinking like this usually comes from the celebrity economist.

@ Desmond Brennan

http://www.nuigalway.ie/cisc/people/tmcdonough.html

“Vapid, shallow thinking like this usually comes from the celebrity economist.”

I think you’re confusing people who provide wizzo-schemes to put things back the way things were, with people who wish to change everything.

IMHO the paragraph attributed to Kieran Allen (in the IT article) is a classic.

I must keep keep a wary eye out over my shoulder for the striking “rich capital class” in Ireland. They seem to be equally as good at hiding themselves as fifth columnists were in another era. Maybe I should check under my bed.:)

Nevertheless as someone who is proud of Irish democracy I believe that the United Left Alliance is a welcome addition to the political spectrum and hopefully they will eventually be able to contribute to public debate with ideas and proposals which ordinary voters can consider and then either reject or accept.

Another advantage of the the United Left Alliance is that the political right may also be motivated into organising itself and providing alternative ideas after the present (IMHO unavoidable) coalition manages to “mop up” after Fianna Fail, enabling us to return to healthy debate and politics by June 2014.

@ EWI,

Would Iran be an example? From what I know none of the major oil companies have been back after the Iranian Revolution in 79.

@EWI,

I take your point, however it all depends on the level of investment and the guarantee of return. Make them a deal which is too good to be ignored and they just might be back by your side.

However I believe no major oil company has been willing to invest several billion dollars in politically unstable countries. Several companies have left Nigeria, due to political instability.

In addition international sanctions can be placed on foreign companies trading with rogue states. Of course it depends on who you annoy to be called a rogue state!!

There are other examples, BP did go back into Russia after losing a lot of money the first time. However it depends on the rewards, and how much kissing and making up is accomplised.

From the IT report:

“A further €80 billion was attributable to “the elite’s refusal” to tax itself. “Irish working people and poor people cannot pay, shouldn’t have to pay and sooner or later won’t pay,” he said.”

Really?

From The Sunday Times yesterday:

“IRELAND’S seven universities and Dublin Institute of Technology employ 1,001 staff on salaries above €100,000 a year.

Records released under the Freedom of Information act reveal that University College Dublin (UCD) has the most high earners, with 294 staff enjoying six-figure salaries. This means almost one in 10 of UCD’s 3,012 staff (9.7%) are being paid €100,000-plus.”

If Flann O’Brien did industrial relations, he couldn’t have produced a better soup – An Beal Bocht San Bailout

@Gavin
Well I ain’t no oil expert – but I presume you are talking about their pension fund surplus.
I am not a fan of sovergin wealth / Pension funds – they are a artifact of the post gold standard world.
Although I am in favour of Goverment money creation rather then private money creation, Gold would be needed to balance external trade in a more efficient manner.
The western world would not be subject to gross over investment and underinvestment in such a world in my opinion.
This takeover of domestic utilities is a direct result of this monetory madness – the Greek situation is perhaps the most dramatic example.

Oil is both a blessing and a curse.

“Vapid, shallow thinking like this usually comes from the celebrity economist”.

Or the DoF. Or Peter Bacon. Or anyone involved at a senior level in Irish finance since 2007 .

How much did NAMA cost ? That bank guarantee was real joined up thinking par excellence.

In the Canadian Province I live in, anyone who makes over 100 grand including overtime from provincial or municipal funds has to have their salary published, whether they be a bus driver, a police officer, a judge or a university lecturer.

Oh and that’s 100 grand Canadian, so in Euro shekels that’s 71 grand (although it has not been indexed since the legislation was first enacted in 1996).

in case linking directly causes hassle just google “Ontario Public Sector Salary Disclosure 2011”

@John,

Oil and gas exploration and production (E&P) is a high cost, technology intensive, risky business. Mostly it’s financed by equity which the firms generate themselves or raise from the market. The risks are simply too great for any sort of structured finance to be secured. Quite simply it is not a business for governments.

Once a find is declared commercial some account must be taken of the costs incurred up to that point. It is not enough to say that all the costs incurred prior to the declaration of commerciality are sunk. The difficult task is to ensure appropriate recovery of the full life cycle costs of E&P with any surplus accruing to the state.

@MH

‘End The Siege On Gaza’

I would take issue Michael with your cynical dismissal of the Gaza Flotilla activities as ‘wedge issues’ to fire up the base.

People lost their lives in the attempt to break this inhuman Israeli blockade.

They have my respect for their continued efforts,and the way I see it, people in Ireland should be proud of them, seriously!

Fwiw, I am not affiliated with any political party, as I am rather convinced that post cold war political categories are no longer useful, but debates on specific policy issues instead. It means that I would be willing to work with anybody, except die hard dogmatic extremists, regardless their overall political views on specific and important policies.

I really hope that this second freedom Flotilla will not cause more lives, and brings them back home to Ireland, safe and healthy.

Good Luck to them!

Best
Georg

@Michael Hennigan
“How many of these people ever created a job or ran a pony show?”
@Desmond Brennan
“What exactly is this chap a professor of?”

One of the notable aspects of academic debate is the respect with which varied views are received. Respect that on occasion flirts with brown-nosing, given the narrow spectrum within which the debate takes place.

It is remarkable that when a truly different approach to the problem is raised, the immediate response is one that is not only insulting, but is insulting in precisely the same language employed by the venerable Sir Herbert Gusset, spluttering his All Bran into his Daily Telegraph.

Some object to this or that suggestion, which is fair enough. Others, remarkably, are most upset that such matters are discussed at all.

Breathtaking Sarko quote that demonstrates the strength of the European union and the power of international co-operation, the hallmark of the project

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2011/0628/breaking1.html

“Pledging to exercise control over France’s own debt, he said: “I wasn’t elected so that France would experience the agony of Greece, Ireland and Portugal.”

Alors Irlande, vous me faites chier!

@ Georg

probably best to leave the Freedom Flotilla debate off here. It’s a complex issue that has many internet forums elsewhere to be discussed on. I think MH’s point was that rather than focus on basic, boring but necessary issues relating to the gradual improvement of our economy, the ULA likes to focus on the complex and ‘loud’ issues that get lots of headlines and very few solutions. One could argue that the ULA are deluded dreamers who do very little for the constituents who elected them, other than offering false hope at the prospect of leaving the Eurozone and nationalising everything. They appeal to the disparing and disillusioned, but generally have few real answers or suggestions.

@GB

no chance that our intrepid seafarers would stop off in some Libyan port of their choice en route to Israel and then sail on tp Syria. These govts are killing people as well and in greater numbers. You don’t see my local TD Ricky Boy Barrett protesting on this issue.

@Eoin,

agreed. However, I did not bring this point up, MH chose to use it as ammo for his cynical dismissal, so perhaps you should have addressed him instead as the originator.

I felt the need to reacted to this.

@ GB

he brought the issue up to show where their priorities lie – on eye-catching headlines made abroad, rather than real boring issues at home. Do you deny that issues like that aren’t wedge issues? Look at the reaction on here straight away! QED. It’s a classic Irish thing to want to solve all of the worlds problems whilst ignoring our own. Anyone who ever read Ross O’Carroll-Kelly can’t but laugh at the somewhat ridiculous but somewhat true joke about all the Southside girls wanting to work for Amnesty Intl and adopt starving African kids, but at the same time hating the sight of the poor and destitute of Dublin. As a social observation, its spot on.

I think MH’s basic suggestion/question would be, as i read it, whether a small political party, which has been granted a, in relative terms, chunky political mandate and a chance to create a new political dialogue in this country, should be devoting its time to such issues at the moment?

@Bond Eoin Bond

Passengers departing to the USA are now subject to very intimate body searches. Their credit card and other details are furthermore passed on to the US government by the airlines which files them indefinitely with their biometric data. Many other countries both free and unfree have equally onerous provisions.

All this is the result of the 9/11 attack on the US, an event which can hardly be disentangled from either the colonial history of the middle east or the history of Israel. Do some research on the colonial and post-colonial histories of Lebanon, Syria or Iraq and you’ll find a story of cynicism and brutality to rival any. Each was designed specifically to foster internal division with consequences that reverberate to the present day.

Each was furthermore destabilised in the post colonial period. Syria was subject to repeated coups engineered by the CIA until it finally turned to the USSR which was more than happy to prop up the Assad regime. The Baathist coup in Iraq was also US sponsored and Saddam Hussein was given the job of murdering suspected communists, hundreds of people named by the CIA.

Countries like Syria and Iraq had plenty of decent, peace-loving and democratic politicians; their most usual reward was a 9mm round in the neck.

If, as is often claimed, Iran is a dangerous threat to all our lives and liberties, how can it be simultaneously true that Israel is a wedge issue of symbolic importance only? On the contrary, these issues have repeatedly spilled over into the (domestically) democratic and free Western world.

This morning I see Irish Life is coming to the trough for 4 Billion.
At some point as we grasp for straws attractive options will be to default on our sovereign debt and leave the Euro Zone to become a Cayman Islands or Panama.
There is no indication that the people or the Gov’t have the intestinal fortitude to deal with the problem in a forthright way. As long as the ECB pumps in the funds to float our boats it continues to be business as usual. When the ECB stops pumping the politicians will enter their usual helpless, complaining mode as they blame everybody but themselves. The ECB for the fourth year now have given us ample opportunity to deal with the problem. The opportunity was squandered by the previous and present Gov’ts. I am not surprised that ULA has taken the stance it has and I expect to see even more radical groups come out of the wood work as time progresses. 20% ten year bonds beckon.

Regarding saving the world, I don’t think protesting against the Gaza siege prevents the ULA from protesting against things like water charges. And I don’t think does protesting against the Gaza siege (which include people from across the political spectrum, not just the left) are ineffectual either. Apartheid South Africa in the past, and Israel in the present, both want to be considered as normal ‘democratic’ countries, and so are sensitive to international criticism, such as the strike in Dunnes during the 1980s. In contrast Kim Jong Il doesn’t really care, so sending a both to North Korea wouldn’t have much of an impact on him.

@ tull mcadoo

I doubt the Israeli ambassador will be happy though that you put Israel in the same category as Syria and Libya. Syria and Libya are already under various sanctions (especially with regard to weapons). Egypt was complicit in the Gaza siege, but luckily that, and much in the Arab world, is changing.

@ Adrian

eh, was there a point there? And who called Isreal a “wedge issue of symbolic importance only”??? MH has given us his perfectly valid and accurate reasons for bringing it up, i’ve given my own. Israel/Palestine is frequently brought up by both sets of supporters simply because its a nice n simple, black and white, good guy vs bad guy (for both points of view) debate that raises the profile of anyone who mentions it. Would that life was so simply explained.

@BEB

Well MH said that “Karl Rove would call these wedge issues to fire up the base” and you asked “do you deny that issues like that aren’t wedge issues?” and questioned its current relevance. It seems to me that the quotation you cite is a fair reflection of these remarks.

@Disgruntled observer

“So, what you propose is to reduce wages, and then reduce welfare by an even bigger margin? Is that about right?”

What is the choice that will aid recovery?

Welfare rates in Ireland are about the most generous in the EU. Unskilled married-with-families claimants are unlikely to get any employment that can better their welfare benefits – leaving a host of people to a life on the dole. For some unfathomable reason, even ‘workfare’ proposals haven’t been thought out for fear of upsetting the trade unions in their social partnership guises.

Wage reduction, personal debt restructuring and mortgage repudiation (in some form) need to be simultaneously thrown together into the pot for resolution. As I have said many times here: default begins at home.

@BEB

Fair enough, it’s just that the original argument made falls apart if it’s conceded that the issue is of genuine significance.

@disgruntled observer

“Mortgage defaults, and budget deficits are not the problem, they’re symptoms of the problem. It’s called unemployment!!! Talk about deflective thinking!”

To me this aptly explains the chicken and egg economic dilemma that we’ve boxed ourselves into.

On the one hand everyone agrees that over the long term solving the unemployment problem will ultimately go a significant way in solving the housing/ mortgage debt nightmare but on the other hand unless Mr. Noonan’s call for a shopping spree comes to fruition then no significant domestic service related jobs are likely to be created so you’re back to square one.

Therefore the question is which one actually comes first (if such a thing were possible at all) – sorting the mortgage/ personal debt problem or trying to stimulate some sort of ’employment’ opportunities as the Govt have tentatively done.

There can only be one answer in my view – one sorts out the real problem and that’s the shocking lack of domestic demand in the economy and that can only be stimulated by putting additional cash back in peoples pockets.

Cash in this instance is where the citizens feel they can afford to spend it without having the worry of saving for fear of job losses or additional tax charges or additional fees etc down the line. So its micro economic forecasting on a grand scale and unfortunately the current forecasting is suggesting ‘safety first’ – for those who have jobs. For those who have suffocating debt concerns – tough it out.

Neither of the two solutions works – so we need a change.

This seems so terribly basic but for some reason we don’t seem able to devise solutions that gets to the root of the issue and that to me is the excessive debt overhang – plain and simple.

I watched the Frontline programme last night to see if in fact there were any bright ideas emerging as to how we can begin to sort the debt issue out.

Sadly I feel the issues/probelms debated are the same as we’ve being listening to for the past 3 years. We need to move on as a country, and as indicated above what’s going on at the moment is simply not working.

My suggestion in relation to mortgage debt is I believe sane, workable and affordable.

The single biggest issue I believe which has yet to capture the nations thought process is that this issue is fundamentally about mis pricing – there are many other issues noted, mooted, suggested, rumored etc etc but when push come to shove residential housing was mispriced as an asset class by the banks in Ireland for the best part of a decade. Fact.

Until we recognize this mis pricing error we do not solve the wider economic woes an ‘L’ shaped recovery noted above in an earlier post will beome the norm.

It’s not difficult to rectify this mispricing error. I disagree with the contributors on the programme last night in suggesting otherwise. Why?

We know the long term rental yield for residential assets in the country from both Govt numbers since 1976 and other proxy risky asset classes. On average the long term yield for Irish residential property assets is 7% – recent auction results suggests this has moved out to c9% but to fix the problem work off the long run average as the demand supply dynamic will eventually do its job in this regards. The long run yield number is indisputable and not subject to bias or favour.

Method: From 2000 reprice ALL residential assets off this long run 7% capitalisation metric using actual rents or proxy rents where none available. Get the correct house price on that basis. This is fundamental to the process because it recognises the extent of the mispricing error at the time of the original sale.

The terms of the mortgage are known for each transaction be it 90% LTV etc when it was agreed. Calculate what the ‘correct’ mortgage should have been against the ‘correct’ house price at the time. The repayments since the origination of the mortgage are known. Deduct the actual repayments against the ‘corrected’ mortgage balance and calculate what the model balance should be today and compare it with the actual balance and write off the difference.

This achieves a number of things. It prices property against the only valuation metric known that works i.e. the long term rental yield on the property – all other metrics are inferior, and it recognises that banks were at fault as their house price lending models simply failed to do the job required i.e. protect the long term stability of the market and their own balance sheets.

Up to now the banks have failed to recognise in monetary terms that they had a significant part to play in this mispricing debacle and consumers were being asked to should 100% of the mispricing error which – this is clearly daft.

Who pays: By recapping the banks to the extent that we have we’ve already paid – This process simply crystallizes the mispricing error.

I appreciate its crude, unfair, lacking elegance etc etc – but it gets the job done. Fixes are generally unfair ask the friends and relatives of those killed and injured in the North and then to see the people who committed these crimes walk early from jail under the Good Friday Agreement. Fixes are unfair, it’s a fact.

@BEB

“the original argument was that politicians use wedge arguments to create easy headlines and fire up the base, especially when there’s little chance of any actual solution. Is that inaccurate?”

This is phrased so generically it could hardly be wrong; it doesn’t even refer to the ULA specifically. I’m sure they’d love headlines but I’m not aware of them receiving any.

If it’s accepted that the issue is relevant then I don’t understand how anyone could begrudge a TD the few minutes needed to express a point of view on Israel that has probably changed little over the years.

How much debt does ILP bring to the table now that the market has given up on it? How much will the taxpayer pay in lieu of breaking the company up and giving the bondies the scraps?

On Gaza I think there is a feeling that popular action has a chance of forcing a breakthrough. You could look at it as short selling, Tull. There is no hope of changing policy on the bank collapse but Israel is going the way of South Africa.

@ Adrian Kelleher

Lenin apprently never dismissed the Western apologists of the brutality of the Bolsheviks in their quest for a Utopia as “useful idiots” but they were.

To link NATO with Israel and the Palestinian issue is a joke.

Adrian,

At least the voters of the 7th district get to choose who is going to represent them. Hopefully Assad ends up in the dock, along with a few HAMAS guys and a couple of Israelis as well. And while we are at it, we could send a few apologists for ME despots from the IRsh left as well.

@ Michael Hennigan

“What I was reacting to in passing, is the apparent need for an American involvement in an issue directly or indirectly to motivate people; In the ME, the Kurds are the largest ethnic group without a state and have been treated badly in 4 countries over many decades but their cause evokes no interest; Darfur, West Sudan? China in Myanmar/Burma and China maintaining North Korea, China in China and so on.”

I sort of agree with this but find the examples odd.

The Dafur conflict has hardly evoked no interest.
Aung San Suu Kyi and the struggles in Burma are very often front page news / subject or protest and solidarity and rightly so.

The China reference is outdated. What are China’s supposed misdeeds in North Korea in the post Mao era? From my experience there they are have mostly tried to contain the madness in NK for fear of famine and refugee crises, much like the south has. If you had said why is the NK regime not subject to such protests I might agree, and this even backs up your point due to US involvement on the other side.

As for China itself are you seriously suggesting people take to the streets to protest 500 million people dragging themselves out of poverty in whatever imperfect circumstances.

I see. So it was just a smear then.

I presume you protest outside the Syrian embassy on a regular basis? By your definition, the world consists almost exclusively of apologists for the Assad regime.

I think from now on, I’ll mark down 4:15pm today as the time when the English language lost all meaning.

What you describe does not satisfy the definition of “apologist”.

“You rarely see the usual suspects outside the Syrian/Iranian/Libyan (tick as appropriate) embassy or consulate.”

Ireland never moans about countries that supply it with petrol. Better the devil you know and all that. I never saw the Sindo lay into the Emirates.
Israel is the only country in the region running an apartheid system. And it has no oil.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=882aK1LPkT4&feature=player_embedded#at=10

Richie Boy Barrett comes in for stinging attack from an unusual source

@ Yields or Bust,

“Sadly I feel the issues/probelms debated are the same as we’ve being listening to for the past 3 years. We need to move on as a country, and as indicated above what’s going on at the moment is simply not working.”

It’s not, but you wouldn’t know it by reading some commenters here. I like your proposed solution to the mortgage problem. As far as I’m concerned the house price boom was a scam, straight up, pure and simple. Even now, to this day, I consider the property obsessed media as one of the chief architects of our problems – one of.

@ Alchemist,

I suppose you know that Irelands number of High Net Worth Individuals increased by over 5% last year, and 10% the year before. Some people are having a “great” depression.

The policy recommendations of leaving the Euro, of defaulting and of instituting a standing offer of a minimum wage job for anyone who wants one are from the body of work being developed under the heading Modern Monetary Theory.

Here is a Modern Monetary Theory analysis of Ireland using experimental data sets from the CSO: http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=14662

@Terrence McDonough

Three out of Five ain’t bad. I’d hold off on the revolution in Mayo for the mo … need to get a bit more organised on a comprehensive Statoil model first. The ‘Euro’ question remains open – default within it remains an option.

@tull mcadoo, Michael Hennigan

The original Irish Times article (reproduced here) stated that “Richard Boyd Barrett of the Irish Anti-War Movement told attendees that it was ‘entirely legitimate’ to argue that ‘Israel has no right to exist’ because ‘it is not a normal state but a state built on violence, oppression and apartheid'”.

The youtube video quite dishonestly turns this conditional statement that links Israel’s right to exist with specific behaviour into an unconditional statement which denies Israel legitimacy regardless of what it does. In the actual speech, the conditionality of the claim was underlined by a call to “convince people that [Israel] has no right to exist as long as it denies rights to Palestinians”. You’ll find that people like Gideon Levy write things no less emphatic from within Israel on a daily basis, but your youtube buddy has transformed remarks linking legitimacy with behaviour — not controversial in itself since the Second World War — into statements that are unconditionally anti-Israeli in all circumstances.

The dishonesty does not end there; the quote from ‘The Socialist Worker’ was not written by Boyd Barrett and was not a general endorsement but a comment specific to the 2006 Lebanon war. Likewise, the attempt to associate him with Al-Qaida is blatantly misleading; the quote was part of an article entitled “Hear the World – a collection of quotes from friend and foe”, and it’s fairly safe to say that Trotskyites are included among its foes. Boyd Barrett said in response that he had “nothing but contempt for al-Qaeda and its ideas.” (link).

Anyway, for the purposes of argument I’ve no problem with Boyd Barrett being characterised as anti-Israeli. This is not the claim that was made here repeatedly, however. I’m still waiting for the evidence — any evidence — to support the claim that ULA is an apologist for dictators or that I myself am their “useful idiot” (classy stuff, by the way, MH).

@The Alchemist

The thread concerns ULA and the claim was made that ULA is an organisational apologist for Middle Eastern dictators, a smear that has not been backed up by evidence and to which it is not reasonable to deny a right of reply.

Who is engaging in “bash-Israel rants”? I didn’t see any.

@Yields or Bust
Is this offer of sensibly low house prices retroactively open only to those who decided to buy at stupidly high house prices? Or is it also open to those who thought house prices during the boom were ludicrous and decided not to buy at stupidly high house prices?

Cos, you know, gee, I’d love to get a refund of the years I spent in rented accomodation and be able to live in any of the many houses I would have liked to buy during the boom but couldn’t/didn’t because the price other people paid was too high. Instead, under your proposal, I feel myself being set up to pay for other people’s houses and being further directly prevented from buying my own.

I’m all for clever solutions to the debt crisis and full of compassion for those in bad situations but screwing other people shouldn’t be the solution.

As for the parallel discussion on Welfare, I again refer people to the OECD tax/welfare engine at http://goo.gl/WpPKz which shows that Irish unemployment benefits for a family with two kids are superior to working on the average industrial wage in either France or Germany (among others). Note, better than the AVERAGE industrial wage not the minimum wage.

@Hugh Sheehy

BTW that OECD database you link to gives bizarre results. I very much doubt that a single person in South Korea on 0% of the average wage and without children gets $7,488,000 in government assistance annually for example.

@Stephen McNena

ty

Examining the results in euro terms for 2009, the last year available gives…

Married couple, 2 children, neither employed:

Housing Benefit: 6,828
Other benefits: 24,861
Total: 31,689

Average Wage (Germany): 40,383
Average Wage (France): 32,943

Note that the average industrial wage is normally rather higher than the average wage, so I don’t know where the “average industrial wage” claim comes from as the tables make no mention of it.

Assuming social housing or a family that owns its own dwelling, we’re left with 24,861 p/a or €119.19 each.

Housing benefit of 6,828 annually is not adequate to house a family of four and in fact anyone who tried to house a family for that amount of money would likely see their children taken into care, so in most instances actual disposable income will be well below the €119 figure.

@ Hugh Sheehy

Good luck in the next election

@Adrian Kelleher
When there are policies proposed that are so assymetric then the “screwing someone else” charge is fairly accurate. That isn’t a point I’ve heard made very often when talking about free education.

@disgruntled observer
Thanks.

@Hugh Sheehy

I don’t understand how monetary adjustment (which is what ULA proposes) is any more asymmetric than a free university education. Remember that the fees charged in the old days were only around 30% of the actual cost.

This website lists current fees for non-EU students as follows:

Medicine and related €31,000 – €45,000
Engineering €9,100 – €20,300
Science & Technology €9,100 – €16,500
Arts & Humanities €9,100 – €15,500
Business €9,000 – €15,500

…pricing an engineering degree at €40,000-€80,000 and a teaching degree in the humanities at around €46,000 including the HDip year.

Of course, like all direct services, income taxes payable on the earnings that would otherwise be needed to pay for the service are obviated (just as refuse charges, water charges etc are in effect 100% levies on the income needed to pay for them, as these were previously paid for from public funds). In many instances, parents would need to save around twice these figures before tax to pay for a child’s university education.

The large majority of this government largesse goes to the higher socioeconomic groups, a very asymmetric proposition from the point of view of a childless couple or a low earner.

McDonough’s proposed devaluation would solve your posited welfare trap in a very direct manner, by the way.

Incidentally, Michael Hennigan was mistaken in claiming ULA only has info about a protest to the Israeli embassy on its website. He went to the wrong site. The “national forum” is listed #1 on the ULA website which makes no mention of any Palestine protest.

@Hugh Sheehy

The topic is the justice of public expenditure. This is how you have styled the issue, not I.

It seems that you were in receipt of certain generous public subsidies in your time(*) yet it is a great injustice if others receive similar generosity…

(as I certainly was, though my family had to pay fees as PAYE earners whereas a classmate of mine got a grant even though both his parents were self-employed, upper middle class, professionals in health care. I won’t specify as I don’t want to make them identifiable.)

@ Adrian Kelleher
I don’t see that Yields or Bust’s proposal would be “similar” generosity to university funding. In my view it would be different. It would be unjust and ungenerous.

It would be more akin to the injustice of your parents paying for both your subsidy and paying the subsidy of your classmate whose parents were able to unjustly game the system. That was unjust, IMHO, but you are free to disagree. I’ll be on another thread.

@Adrian Kelleher

“It’s only a matter of time before people start organising, and when that starts there’s no telling which way things might turn;”

…and pigs might start flying.

The only successful opposition to emerge from ‘the people’ recently was the pensioner revolt against proposed medical card bars. No other country in Europe has so passively accepted external adjustments as Ireland. And in terms of getting ‘the people’ onto the streets, the Left don’t have the ability and the the trade unions lack the appetite.

Action on employment won’t come from street protests but from wage reductions, exports and tourism.

@The Alchemist

BTW, anytime you feel like backing up with some evidence your baseless claim that it was I rather than Michael Hennigan who raised the topic of Israel or that I engaged in “Israel-bashing rants” go right ahead.