Work and Poverty in Ireland

A new report commissioned by the Department of Social Protection and undertaken by the ESRI is available here

The focus of the report is on the very low work intensity (VLWI) measure of social exclusion with which Ireland is a significant outlier.  In Ireland 22.8% of people under 60 live in households with very low work intensity compared to an EU27 average of 10%.  The report looks at the trend in this measure over time and the characteristics of households that comprise this group. 

92 replies on “Work and Poverty in Ireland”

What seems to be not understood by most of our economists is that the Euro itself destroys a domestic economy (this is where most of the jobs are)

External Capital replaces labour because capital is cheap……..
A domestic firm replaces labour with capital because the books state it is cheaper.
However when all firms do this they export hard currency out of the country and collapse domestic demand……
The pub trade dives for example ……….more jobs go……..

The social welfare then pays a person to be a consumer as he is too expensive to be employed relative to capital in private or public firms.

Alan Aherne in a quite extraordinary interview fails to grasp this very elementry point
http://www.rte.ie/radio1/todaywithpatkenny/

listen to Farming friday 7 th december
Alan Aherne , talks about how the economy is affecting the farming industry………..

Farmers tell him the cost of diesel feeds through to almost all intermediate costs……..
He like a robot then declares we must be cost competitive (which means attack labour)
When labour (handling) can reduce diesel inputs

But a reduction of wages as in the UK will merely reduce domestic demand , which means the economy must become even more absurd and export even more………..

This is crazy………
The function of a economy is not to export.
It is to increase wealth.

The country is a colony.

The above paper talks about the lower class job crisis but the entropy process is moving up the jobs food chain…..

It moving up the social ladder because the problem is a structural monetary crisis
Not a class problem.

“But a reduction of wages as in the UK will merely reduce domestic demand , which means the economy must become even more absurd and export even more………..”

What if there was not an over all reduction in wages in the public but a wider distribution?
What they did in the UK was to reduce wages of those that are working during a recession but they have used the savings to prevent the alternative mass job losses.
The alternative would be to take the route of the Irish government ICTU and labour policy) Keep real wages up but then also reduce employment. This is despite the fact that our civil service is not overstaffed by European standards but is over paid.

If in a recession you use wage reductions to offset job losses I think that the UK have made the wiser choice. Obviously this is not in the immediate financial interests well paid civil servants including academics so little is made of our insane policy that is a noose around the neck of the domestic economy.

If Employers and employees in both private and public sector took the correct action they could give a massive boost to the economy without even having to spend an extra penny on wages. Unfortunately Private and public companies are going the other way. The ideology of Paying handsomely for “quality people” continues, despite the lack of evidence to show it is effective. It is increasing inequality in the economy dramatically.
But how can owners and directors justify their quality people salaries if they do this? So I guess we continue on this road to surfdom. The structural reforms have become unavoidable the quicker employers get on with realising it the better.

@
Eamonn

Both the UK & Ireland share one characteristic ……..

They both import capital which displaces labour
Ireland has the multinationals , the UK has the city.

After the Big bang ……(both the Big bang and the single european act were part of the same large monetary event) the UK put its industrial workforce out to pasture.

The Uk is not a colony as it also imports via a large trade deficit real goods from the rest of the world…..
And I am not talking services, £100 billion deficit of real goods in 2011.

But when the input costs of capital goods (oil expressed in $) rises these capital goods become net extractive.
Then its best paying wages in a national unit of account again.

PS capital goods displaces labour as that is its job.

Alan Aherne wants “domestic growth”
But we need more capital goods to create growth (to pay off this no sov currency) in the eurozone.
Problem is we can’t afford the inputs (diesel) in these job displacing machines.

We need more labour intensity in Industry , obviously we cannot do this within the eurozone as the eurozone was designed by the machines.

So we eject from the eurozone

So more car mechanics , forklift drivers to move goods from truck to rail , taxi drivers etc etc……..

This will reduce the hard currency export which means more jobs in pubs which was also destroyed by the hard but brittle Euro as it was a labour intensive rather then capital intensive service industry.

The reason why we have not ejected already is probably the former GPA /Ryanair crowd of the past which seem to have a hold over government policy since the big bang days when they were greatly enriched via this hard currency export policy

People going on holidays to Youghal rather then Marbella will not serve their business interests.
So they are likely to resist this even if it means Irish society will decay even further.

If you incentivise the formation of VLWI households, it should be no great surprise that Ireland tops the list.

There’s no way I’m going to flick through 133 pages of this report, but I’d suggest that the role taken by wider family members in other countries is replaced by state support here.

@ Dork

Instead of leaving the euro, would it not be a simpler to introduce a 2nd national currency? A labour/time based one perhaps? If you build, drive, help, care, dig, clean, advise, serve, teach for an hour you get an ‘uair’ and can buy similar services with ‘uairs’. 10% of taxes must be paid in ‘uairs’. All state ‘increments’ from here on in are paid in ‘uairs’ etc… We could have a national ‘uair’ exchange site. Where rates are set. Similar to with international currencies today eg ‘Today one hour of Chinese language learning from a qualified teacher privately = 0.8 of an hours work from a qualified builder’ Etc etc etc

@John
Perhaps
But I think you are in or you are out……..

If 10 % of taxes are paid in this secondary currency it would erode confidence in our Euro bond debt….

Anyway the multinational sector completely distorts real domestic activity…..

The import figures paint the real picture…….

In 2005 fuel imports exceeded food imports………
In 2008 oil imports alone exceeded food imports…..
The crash of 2009 made our fuel imports = to our food imports again
In 2010 the upward cycle continues
In 2011 oil imports exceed food imports again.
The domestic economy grinds to a halt……..

The cars are not paying for themselves

Y2003
Oil imports : 1,593m
Road vehicles : 2,809m

Y2011
Oil imports : 5,168
Road vehicles : 1,706……….

A complete reversal of the system

Reexport of oil affects the numbers but you get the picture……..

You cannot solve this problem without a sov currency and the correct polices.
Simply taxing cars will take money tokens out of the economy , people will not have tokens to spend on public transport etc as the country is non sov and cannot produce domestic tokens…

The recent history of Youghal is the history of the Irish euro adventure in miniature.
Domestic demand went somewhere else ,
Malaga

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BODbJlTUcFw

both during the 70s boom bust and the post 1986 super boom bust.

This “Austerity” is a bigger version of the mid 80s austerity as they wish to create a even bigger boom bust when the banks are again capable of releasing their free banking poison.

It’s when the words “work” and “poverty” aren’t mutually exclusive that I start worrying.

@ em: “If in a recession you use wage reductions to offset job losses … ”

That might have worked 5 decades ago (pre 1971) but not when you have a ‘financialized’ economy where the burden of taxation (and deflationary debt repayments) falls dis-proportionately on waged-labour income.

You must do the following. Remove all tax write-offs (or whatever you wish to term them) – without exception. Tax non waged-income in exactly the same manner as waged-income. This will not cure your recession (ie. provide a ‘recovery’) but it should arrest the recession – which is actually in the PC economy sectors rather than the FIRE economy sectors. Recovery is a whole different ball-of-wax. You have to tackle the debt overload head-on.

The matter of ‘overpaid’ folk is a matter for another time. But I would begin my cull at the Head, not the Tail.

I have the exec summary of the paper on my desk and will read through it.

@Brian Woods / @Eamon Moran

“You must do the following. Remove all tax write-offs (or whatever you wish to term them) – without exception. Tax non waged-income in exactly the same manner as waged-income.”

+1

That there are better policy options than those currently being applied is clear to most non-vested-interest observers.
But getting those options onto the table seems to virtually impossible.

In which we discover that Ireland is an incredibly progressive society relative to our fellow EU States, with incredibly impressive poverty statistics in the midst of a huge downturn, while (not included in the above report but can easily be seen from http://www.oecd.org)

http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/taxation/taxation-key-tables-from-oecd_20758510;jsessionid=6osmmgfqjcoli.x-oecd-live-02

We pay less than average taxation for the benefit of this pretty well functioning safety net…yet Ireland in 2012 is apparently a hellishly unequal society and a horrible place to live.

@Aisling

The hint is “restoring public finances”

There is no public finances in the eurozone ,its a fully private operation.

The Fiscal Responsibility Board is responsible for insuring the banks get paid in full.

Money should be a commons thingy…

Negative money supply as the banks get paid back destroys the real physical economy.

Just saying like.

@Dork But you have to admit that when it comes to both poverty stats and average tax rates we’re well below the EU average for both.

Do we need to balance the budget? Yes.

But the current numbers suggest that we’re neither excessively suffering from poverty (relative to our peer nations), nor are we relatively over taxed (again relative to our peer nations). But to hear the outcry at the budget one could only assume that, contrary to the actual evidence, we were both!

I’m not saying things are not worse than they were before, I’m just pointing out that relative to our peers (including the Eurozone core) things are really not all that bad here in terms of keeping society progressive and protecting the most vulnerable.

@Aisling
Have you seen our Peers lately ?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPqKOfCzN20

They want us to suck more diesel or at least Alan wants us to do this as that is the only method of “growth” in the eurozone as bank credit is very very wasteful of resources.

PS
I don’t hold poverty stats in high measure……..

Consumption , imports etc have all tanked except diesel for our precious cars.
Private car and home eating oil remain the great suckers of life from my town and others even more so.

@Dork
You are making more sense every day.
Ban private cars and make woodburning stoves mandatory. The country would have so much money that we would not know how to spend it.

@Dork Not for one moment disputing issues with the oil price or our reliance on oil importation, both of which are truisms.

Simply pointing out that the numbers suggest we’re really (as a society) doing okay at the moment relative to “richer States”, contrary to the popular rhetoric.

Ever even…
What do you think happens to a economy when you produce Greenbacks ?

You get some rational flow back into its joints

http://www.rail-reg.gov.uk/server/show/ConWebDoc.11062

Dec 6
“The total number of kilometres travelled by rail passengers in Q2 2012-13 was 14.8 billion kilometres – more kilometres recorded within any quarter since records began and an increase of 4.0% compared to the same period last year”

The Euro tactic of simply taxing activity rather then producing more base like (almost) monetary units merely exports activity elsewhere…..

tax it seems will merely transfer activity elsewhere (see Italy)

The Euro boys have more concern for their Asian plantations rather then their domestic slaves in the Big Euro plantation house.

The EU is one big gigantic Folly.

http://dataportal.orr.gov.uk/displayreport/html/html/e1305639-6147-4f64-af62-c8d78477c685

@Aisling
I don’t see it …..

Get back to me after Christmas when the Budget will extract more tokens from the economy…….

More Cork pubs will go to the wall in January I imagine – people will sit home sipping their can of cold Heineken in their nice oil fired home and feel richer somehow.

This is a deliberate social modification experiment on the part of the euro Soviet.
They want to atomize us down into compliant gombeens rather then real people who can afford to interact with each other.

The money supply is getting crushed – many people feel rich because they have money claims on a declining economy , in the end they will be very poor.

So 20% of Irish people live in “jobless’ households, but the rate of employment is only 14.7% so the unlucky 1/5th of the population have managed to squeeze themselves into the households of the 14.7% that are unemployed?

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

80 % of Monaghan homes have oil fired central heating (the highest ratio in the country)

http://www.cso.ie/en/media/csoie/census/documents/census2011profile4/Profile%204%20The%20Roof%20over%20our%20Heads%20Full%20doc%20sig%20amended.pdf

Back in 1991 it was 2,966 oil fired homes relative to a stock of 14,512 homes…..

http://www.cso.ie/en/media/csoie/census/census1991results/volume10/C1991%20Vol%2010%20T15.pdf

Just saying like.

Why don’t they get real and solve real solvable problems ?

The low hanging fruit is not insulation over a certain standard – its the type of fuel burn.

I guess the Fab EU also means no Turf as well as no pints………

80 % of Monaghan homes have oil fired central heating (the highest ratio in the country)

http://www.cso.ie/en/media/csoie/census/documents/census2011profile4/Profile%204%20The%20Roof%20over%20our%20Heads%20Full%20doc%20sig%20amended.pdf

Back in 1991 it was 2,966 oil fired homes relative to a stock of 14,512 homes…..

http://www.cso.ie/en/media/csoie/census/census1991results/volume10/C1991%20Vol%2010%20T15.pdf

Just saying like.

Why don’t they get real and solve real solvable problems ?

The low hanging fruit is not insulation over a certain standard – its the type of fuel burn.

I guess the Fab EU also means no Turf as well as no pints………

@rf

Did you read it?

Data ex CSO Income Survey
by ESRI
for Minister Dept of Social Protection

The report recognizes the crucial role of employment in preventing poverty.

Indicators related to work and poverty;

Indicators related to work and poverty

1: Household joblessness
2: Low Income

Basically, unemployment leads to poverty. Specifically a form called “Very Low Work Intensity (VLWI)” leads to poverty.

Also low wages leads to relative poverty as well.

Apparently VLWI was 13% of the population under 60years old in 2004
and had risen to 22% of the under 60’s by 2010. It has accelerated in the last 3 years.

Part of the problem here in Ireland is that we have too many children in poorer households.

Neither parent working is bad but both parents working is not so good either.

The report offers some policy recommendations.

1: Government needs to pay attention to household joblessness
2: Government needs to have Social Targets for poverty reduction
3: Labour market activation of adults in jobless households needs to be emphasised.
4: Training and assistance needed plus childcare and services or support specific to people with disabilities.
5: Need to reconfigure existing profiling models …profile the jobless population as to their “work-readiness”
6; Do not withdraw benefits from people once the become employed in order to avoid inadvertently contributing to an increase in “in-work poverty”.
7: Need for a multi-agency approach to children in jobless households so as to avoid inter-generational poverty.

To my mind this is an abject disgrace of a report. Anyone who is an adult and has some degree of intelligence does not require a government department to commission a report from a government economics research unit that concludes that unemployment contributes to poverty.

This is a typical self serving make work exercise that exposes in my eyes the complete uselessness of the two institutions in question. Socialist institutions justify themselves with a flurry of such so-called policy recommendations that have the effect of expanding the size and reach of the state but which are solely for the benefit of those that make the recommendations. The achieve nothing towards the end of reducing poverty

In case anyone is interested poverty can only be eliminated in large measure and in the long term through free markets and the rule of law. Central banking and excessive government need to be eliminated. We could start with these two. The State competing with the citizen for scarce capital and other resources only leads to manifest wastage. This is what causes poverty. Inefficient use of resources and capital, corruption, theft and coercion.

Before the post office took in workers for Christmas to get them off the dole for a few weeks.
They made handy money tax free…….

Now the Permanent workers get a bit extra for the extra work while the part time workers sit on the hole the entire year.

I guess many atrophy …..

Also Rural people must travel to the post office to collect letters

Why not young 18 year old lads to deliver the mail on a push bike or something……..

But they can’t do this stuff

WHY

BECAUSE THE GOVERNMENT HAS NO MONEY POWER

Which means it is not a government.

Stuff like the above saves real resources

But the banks want you to burn it……..

@ Robert Glynn

“Labour market activation of adults in jobless households needs to be emphasised.”

The Law Society in Blackhall Place recently advertised two jobs, each job 40 hrs a week, as Human Resource Administrators. These posts are internships and the princely sum our solicitor friends are willing to pay these interns? 50 Euro’s a week. In other words they get 80 hrs. work for 100 Euro.

We reported in September 2007 on the finding of high unemployment in the Census 2006 returns – – the year of the peak of the property bubble:

“Ballina in County Mayo had the highest unemployment rate among large Irish towns, with 15.8% of its labour force out of work. Tralee (14.2%) and Dundalk (13.9%) also had high unemployment at the time of the 2006 census while at the other end of the scale Malahide (4.3%) and Leixlip (4.4%) had the lowest rates.”

http://www.finfacts.ie/irishfinancenews/article_1011063.shtml

@ RG: “Anyone who is an adult and has some degree of intelligence does not require a government department to commission a report from a government economics research unit that concludes that unemployment contributes to poverty.”

You do if you are a ‘wanker’ (a la Michael D).

It is possible to reduce gross poverty but eliminating it becomes very difficult as these folk exist at the far margins and are not easy to identify and reach. This is NOT an excuse for sitting on your arse and comissioning reports. Just do not expect the formal sector to do it. They would be looking for extra milage allowances, etc. The voluntary sector is your best hope.

There is this quaint notion that some intellectually challenged folk have that an income has to be conditional – irrespective of the circumstances. Something like – no work, no pay. Fine, but our modern (financialized) economic setup is a tad complex and such simplistic slogans just do not cut it.

“Socialist institutions justify themselves with a flurry of such so-called policy recommendations that have the effect of expanding the size and reach of the state but which are solely for the benefit of those that make the recommendations.”

TASC comes to mind. They have this wonderful centrally-heated sepulchral (infrequently visited) web-site with a nice line in ideological progressive sh*ite – one of which asserts that there is Left-wing statistics and Right-wing statistics; the former being more truthful and honest than the latter. Seriously. Do these bozoes (and their ideological counterparts) not have any capacity to realise that conducting a mass economic experiment that causes widespread human misery is a moral obscenity? Guess not.

For what this is worth. I am aquainted with three couples (two with teenage families) who would be classed as AB – professional and business types. None of the six adults is now employed. Living on savings – and charity. One family has already surrendered their home, a second will do so in the New Year. Poverty (like a social dry-rot) has infested the previously immune classes. And the most ironic thing; only two of the adults know how to prepare and cook a hot dinner starting with fresh produce! Its mindboggling.

Work and poverty in Ireland? Prepare for less work and more poverty coming soon to an Ireland near you.

@Robert Browne

“These posts are internships and the princely sum our solicitor friends are willing to pay these interns? 50 Euro’s a week. In other words they get 80 hrs. work for 100 Euro.”

It’s happening all over the place. I’m aware – in both Ireland and the UK – of PR companies ‘churning’ interns i.e. when the current one starts to moan about not having a ‘real’ job after a few months, they turf that one out and get a new one in. It’s a similar story with newspapers. I’m aware of at least three in this country who are printing the stories of unpaid graduate interns who are quite literally doing the job of a full time journalist and have taken that job otherwise paid job off the market. The NUJ either hasn’t spotted it or doesn’t want to spot it.

I also know a lot of lawyers and they think the majority of the population are serfs and morons anyway.

@Brian Woods Snr

I also know similar couples in similar situations. This is not exceptional in Ireland and I was just reading the story about how the government have agreed with the Troika to ‘fix the loophole’ (“The Government has agreed with the EU-IMF troika that it will fix the legal loophole preventing banks seizing the homes of defaulting borrowers, raising fears of a wave of repossessions in the new year.”)

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2012/1212/breaking3.html

I’m sorry to have to tell you that my ‘friends’ in banking think that the property market will bottom out during 2013 and are currently seeking the best ways to hoover up as much property as they can after valuing it (where the mortgage is in arrears) ridiculously cheaply, repossessing it and having the borrower on the hook for the balance for the rest of their lives while they hang on to the stock for a bit and gradually unload it onto a rising market – personally I think there’s a flaw in that plan but hey ho. Meanwhile, prepare for more guff about ‘on a case by case basis’………. This is a real plan.

@The Dork of Cork

“They want to atomize us down into compliant gombeens rather then real people who can afford to interact with each other.”

The interaction is becoming controlled too. Facebook, Twatter, Linkedin, newspaper website comments and other such ‘social media’ is where the PTB are herding people. God forbid they should ever figure this out and start campaigning as independents outside the whip of the main parties or worse still, start protesting en masse.

“Social media distress is at the same time the expression of real distress and the protest against real distress. Social media is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of social media as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusion about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions.” – obviously, a play on the words of K Marx but quite appropriate I think.

@Aishling

That Gurdgiev guy’s a smart feller. I was just reading his latest posts on the construction industry and how recoveries and rebounds are not quite all they are spun to be.

Long post – you can tell I’ve taken the morning off. Hi caramba. There’s some murky looking stuff coming down the line. I wonder if it will break before Christmas?

@PR
Mindless consumption of resources they call “growth”

They need this waste to pay the interest………

If they have to dump people and force them to not consume so that the remaining smaller rump can consume then so be it.
They stick this non consumption sect on facebook farms…..

Just produce the greenbacks however and consumption will flow to its least wasteful activities……without throwing people off monetary cliffs.

“Basically the scheme works like this……………..”

@Robert Browne

“These posts are internships and the princely sum our solicitor friends are willing to pay these interns? 50 Euro’s a week. In other words they get 80 hrs. work for 100 Euro.”

Good post.

@All
And now that Robert Browne has mentioned our esteemed legal profession, is there any information on the cutbacks suffered by tribunal lawyers etc. and other legal professionals since the recession started.
For example, reductions in retainer fees, refresher fees, daily rates, or other across the board cuts in rates paid for legal fees by government departments.

I would be interested in a clear answer, if anybody has the information.

@ PR: Thanks for the mention. Best wishes for the holiday – and all.

“I’m sorry to have to tell you that my ‘friends’ in banking think that the property market will bottom out during 2013”

Nope. 2015 – at the earliest, maybe even out as far as spring 2017. Those bozoes are full of Crapola. Some lenders are still offering salary x 4 loans!!! That’s verging on the fraudulent. They ‘goosed’ the res property market during the summer/autumn (being immune to Moral Hazard). Brick, table and elastic come to mind.

Its like the early part of 1940: a phoney war. Is there a Plan B??

@Brian Woods Snr
“Its like the early part of 1940: a phoney war. Is there a Plan B??”

Interesting you should say that. It is a thought that occurred to me several times.
I don’t think anybody had a plan B in 1940, but one country sure had a hell of Plan A.

@Joseph R

“IMF has yet to have any meaningful impact on legal services reform. The Bill is on hold, one year after its publication. The reforms in the Bill are very limited, and in some instances envisage a further period of two years post-enactment before they come into effect.

On a related note, the HSE is currently undertaking a tender process for legal services by barristers. Bizarrely, the barristers have not been asked to tender on price.”

http://namawinelake.wordpress.com/2012/10/01/imf-is-frogmarching-this-government-into-delivering-reforms/#comment-40645

@Joseph

cf carers are told what their reduced terms and conditions are on the basis if they don’t like it they can FO.

@Grumpy

Thanks for that. I suspected as much but did not have the info.
A great little country for some!

Grumpy,
One of Troika’s bugbears is the implications of relatively generous Social Protection and low rates of income tax paid by low to median paid workers. Hence we saw a reduction in JB duration and the abolition of the PRSI credit along with the property tax. An additional problem with SP is a maze of schemes which can boost cash income far above that available to a median earner in certain circumstances. Against that background is a cut in respite grant not in line with Troika mentality. They just want welfare cuts. Up to us to do it.
Of course, what should have happened first was a proper case review to see how many carers are really caring.

@ Dork
Chill
He who knows not and knows not he knows not – he is a fool…
Limited experience, insulated but opinionated – there’s a lot of them about

Dork,
So the state should not routinely check that all recipients of all payments should not be checked.
That said , this is the first time I understood anything you wrote.

@Tull
This fiscal stuff is the only money tokens in the economy………..
There is much less waste in this economy then during the credit boom (its just that the banks can’t earn much money out of them)
They are numbers on a board to them.
A bit like the first world war thingy , indeed very much like the first world war thingy.

Something similar happened in Ireland after the Napoleonic war……..

People who worked on busy farms during that first global war were turfed out as the economy was expected to pay off the war debt.

The debt was used to build English industry as that is debts function (kind of)

They became “useless eaters”

20 + years later – the death of a million and another million leaving these shores – this was not a very big economic event when compared to the monetary loses of the 1820s……
As these people were no longer on the books so they could be exterminated without much loss.

The same stuff is happening today.
Its just that the Core has replaced Great Britian
History is repeating itself.

You seem happy to be one of its agents.

PS

There can be no conventional energy / credit”growth” in this domestic economy (energy is defined as the ability to do work)

Whats happening is very simple…
The money supply is being deducted from these poor unfortunates to pay very fortunate sov debt holders interest.

Its worse then pointless – its not quite mindless cruelty but in the end it is very very pointless when looked at from a functional balanced hunter gatherers brain

If Pay them Punts and they will be fine.
People will have jobs again as they replace the machines.

Tull
Your master is calling

“Pay them Punts and they will be fine”.

Don’t worry Tull , you are in good company.

@tull

Hey, they aren’t protected by the Croke Park Agreement (excl. 1:28 ‘nach), they don’t mix in the right social circles (a lot of them are probably too knackered and disillusioned to mix much at all), and they can’t inconvenience anyone much but themselves and those they care for (even if they aren’t making much of it up) by going on strike – so I suppose its only right the gov should square up to them each year and show them whose boss. S’pose they have to be able to tell someone what to do…

(Never pick on someone your own size).

Any comment on the apparent lack of price being an issue in government spending on Irish barristers?

@Grumpy
You are not dealing with the core issue………..

With respect its not really a question of barristers vs the rest (unless of course they hold money claims)
In the final analysis the economy cannot grow………….

How can you expect its to pay interest ?

Machines makes a economy “grow” as they do almost all of the work now……….not people – but we can’t afford to run the machines.

Its not even a Catch 22
Its a retarded debate.

Grumpy,
Yes, a cut in fees commensurate with the carers and the TDs exes would be in order for starters. Not as if we are short of barristers.

@ Grumpy

there must surely be great potential in a paper written by anyone who is willing to research what the Government pays for services rendered . It would be of immense interest to the plain people. Lawyers are only the tip of the iceberg.

The deficit is whatever bn and every little helps.

Many Barristers have house maids………..

Cut their pay and you have less house maids

A disaster for the barrister

But also possibly for the house maid…….

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEgaLVp66Z4

This is a crisis of capital (energy)
Why attack labour ?
Even barristers & their housemaids ?

How many maids does a barrister need ? More than one ?

Even with a cut they’ll still have the spons.

@Seafoid
They are trying to do this class war thing on us…….

The same thing happened in the 1820s with the Church of Ireland – they wanted tithes but could not get them all ……..as the money was not there.

Creating massive social friction between the Irish times set and the bogmen

The society of Ireland went into a terminal dive.

YOU PRINT NATIONAL MONEY

The waste is in the cars – believe me – its legacy is showing up all over our import figures…..
Crowding out all other activity – destroying jobs.

@Robert Glynn

“To my mind this is an abject disgrace of a report. Anyone who is an adult and has some degree of intelligence does not require a government department to commission a report from a government economics research unit that concludes that unemployment contributes to poverty.”

Brillo. Keep it coming!

Y1995 Euro
Food imports : 1,873.2m

Total fuel imports : 851.0m
of which oil : 688m
of which gas : 18.2m

Y2011
Food imports : 4,999

Total fuel imports : 6,788m
of which oil : 5,168m
of which gas : 1,354m

http://www.cso.ie/en/media/duplicatecsomedia/newmedia/releasespublications/documents/statisticalyearbook/2002/trade_2002.pdf

Do we need rocket scientists to figure this out ?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nfz9O_mSY1U

The domestic economy is a rump so therefore these figures overpower it.

If we go back to work (building stuff , any old stuff) as we knew it we will merely suck in more imports.

This blog is becoming a nasty little place…cut the barristers, cut the teachers, cut the doctors, cut the carers…..
Blog is becoming like Ireland – full of mean spirited little misanthropes – legends at their own key boards.
Dork is right – this place will sink until we face up to the debt merchants with balls and stop burning money.
It’s disgusting, absolutely disgusting

@Eureka
“This blog is becoming a nasty little place …” etc
OK here at least is my human side:
Since the quality of mercy is not strained and droppeth as a gentle rain from heaven, just a few compassionate words on the poverty report after 20 minutes fast reading — kangaroo court judgment I admit but it’s hardly worth even that. Somewhere the authors seem to have had a brief Hayekian or commonsensical moment where they intimate, albeit through a fog darkly and euphemistically, that the welfare system may be part of the problem in that if you pay people to be poor and unemployed they are more likely to be
poor and unemployed than if you don’t. Of course they don’t follow this up — if they did, they would be lynched by the Michael D. fanclub, so one can hardly blame them — but at least it demonstrates that they are not totally brainless.
I recommend a 6 months’ suspended sentence and an STFU order.

I don’t really understand your ire and I think there is an inherent contradiction between your desire for us to stop burning money while at the same time kowtowing to the vested interest groups. I met a barrister friend of mine recently who is practically unemployed, who came first place in his exams a few years ago at Kings Inns but in his own words, “is not in with the right people”.

Nobody, is saying cut barristers remuneration indiscriminately but what I would say is that the level of remuneration cannot be such that it effectively prohibits peoples access to the law. These people have chosen to practice law the fact that they practically own it must not have escaped your attention. Neither can there be any doubt that the Tribunals of inquiry dragged the whole legal profession through the mire as the public watched module after module being dreamt up. These inquiries that were to be carried out “expeditiously” dragged on interminably and have done enormous long term damage to the institutions of the state.

Teachers likewise, and two of my sisters are teachers, through their unions choose to endorse the Croke Park agreement, safe in the knowledge that only “new teachers” would be discriminated against. No groups in Ireland, even within so called professions, seems to mind if members of their members are discriminated against, as long as their own particular pay and benefits are off the radar screen.

Teachers never complained about rat infested schools, teaching in prefabs costing 63 million a year to the state or leaky classrooms during the boom. At least if they did I certainly don’t remember any I especially don’t recall any of them turning up outside the Dail not even their long summer breaks, demanding a share for their schools of the embarrassment of riches that Ahern etal had at his disposal.

I believe the reason for the dearth of protest was they were doing very, very nicely, thank you very much, and so were keeping their heads below the radar screen. Then the bubble bursts and they were being asked to share the pain of adjustments. Immediately the beal bocht kicked in. That, is when we got the “poor old us doing such a heroic job with limited resources teaching in these horrible schools. They don’t seem to mind about their colleagues whose little contracts for a few hours a week were terminated dispatching them to the dole queue.

When it comes to doctors, consultants and other medical staff they are very, very careful, not to allow reforms that might employ more doctors, more consultants cut waiting lists etc because that too might impact on their salaries and exclusivity rights to treat patients in our hospitals. It is supply and demand more supply usually means lower salaries unless you have a very powerful trade union saying over our dead bodies you will cut services not pay! Two junior doctors committed suicide recently because of the inhumane pressures but this issue has been going on for decades i.e. mistreatment of junior doctors. While the matter is under investigation there is a fair probability that the pressures they were under at work contributed to their deaths.

Carers are the odd one out in your short list and just seem to have been thrown in for good measure. Carers are being discriminated because they are weak have no trade union to support them and are unlikely to be able to sustain any prolonged campaign against the government by virtue of the job they have to do. Hence they are an easy target. I am sure you have heard Dr. Edward Walsh say that if people in Ireland paid themselves the same salaries as they would earn in the UK we would save over 7bn annually. The main defense of this is that the cost of living is higher here and that they are all in hock for several mortgages taken out during the boom. Is that good enough seeing that we are still living vastly beyond the wealth we are creating. 20% of the population are currently living in households with no income I think you might find it hard to explain or indeed justify your view of Ireland becoming full “of mean spirited misanthropes” to these households.

Yes teachers ,even barristers……

Yes yes , they must make a cut so “we” have a surplus to invest in capital goods……..but not in Ireland – the money for capital goods goes to the core now anyhow , not Ireland

Even so – But what if capital is eating capital ?

No one ever talks about the school run madness ?

Why is that ?

Anyway without a positive domestic money supply domestic suppliers cannot grow…….they cannot supply domestic food for example

They are overpowered by imports……

That means less jobs……Dahhhhhhh

This is very simple stuff.

I will say it again

Capital goods replace labour – thats their function baby.

One problem – we cannot afford their input costs.

PS
Machinery & transport equipment peaked in Y2001 at 30,177m
in Y2011 ?
12,453m

What is the advantage of being in the EU again ?

They just take our exports now , not a good deal
Exports is domestic consumption sacrificed.

“This blog is becoming a nasty little place…cut the barristers, cut the teachers, cut the doctors, cut the carers…..
Blog is becoming like Ireland – full of mean spirited little misanthropes – legends at their own key boards.”

Amen to that. The amount of knee jerk anger, (mostly by people quite shelterd from the crisis, i would imagine), over the top denunciations of all and sundry, visions of apocalypse married to a dinner thats left them feeling bloated is, well, a right pain in the ass

“Carers are being discriminated because they are weak have no trade union to support them and are unlikely to be able to sustain any prolonged campaign against the government by virtue of the job they have to do.”

Yes! So lets make it so everyone is in the same boat! Hurray for Ireland

“Teachers never complained about rat infested schools, teaching in prefabs costing 63 million a year to the state or leaky classrooms during the boom.”

Because this is largely a make believe problem, and when it was a reality they did? (Maybe to their spouses or friends rather than Matt Cooper)

“who came first place in his exams a few years ago at Kings Inns but in his own words, “is not in with the right people”. ”

Of course, but what are we two year olds? Since when have connections not made things easier. (And wealth etc) So whats your solution, mass govt regulation, angry letters….

“the problem in that if you pay people to be poor and unemployed they are more likely to be
poor and unemployed than if you don’t. ”

Maybe. And maybe if there are no jobs and you pay people to survive, it mitigates long term issues, (health problems, structural deficits, LT unemployment once economy kickstarts)….if done correctly

@ Eureka 6.25pm

How is your sentiment ‘cut the debt merchants’ any different from ‘cut the carers etc’? It seems to me that almost everyone on this blog wants ‘someone else’ to pay, your targets are just harder to identify and farther away.

“On a related note, the HSE is currently undertaking a tender process for legal services by barristers. Bizarrely, the barristers have not been asked to tender on price.””

One further thought on tenders that omit a request for price. It reminds me of the old song’
‘A pub with with no beer’
There’s nothing so gentle, so generous, so nice,
As to sent out a tender and to *uck with the price.

All together now for barristers refresher fees etc

@ All

Is not the answer to the conundrum mechanisms which establish a market price for the services rendered? Abuses occur where no such mechanism exists.

@Edward

How does a economy with a negative money supply work ?

Not very well me thinks.

Deflation wastes a epic amount of real capital.

Its redenomination of all euro debts or we enter the event horizon although maybe we have entered another universe already.

Its not about DIS or DAT
Its the system itself

PS
On one side of its face the government stops taking on part timers in the post office for Christmas and on the other it comes up with this report wondering why so many people are sitting on their hole !!

Sweet Jesus.

@ Brian Woods Snr

“And the most ironic thing; only two of the adults know how to prepare and cook a hot dinner starting with fresh produce! Its mindboggling.”

Not at all mindboggling unfortunately. Mrs B works with disadvantaged children (and by extension their parents) and we have a friend who works with MABS. There is practically an entire generation of Irish people now who (ironically) would not know what to do with a bag of spuds. Quite literally they would not know how to peel them, cook them, or bake them having grown up on take-aways and ready-prepared meals. The level of ignorance of basic cookery skills among many Irish people is quite shocking. A tenner spent in Dunnes, Tesco, Aldi, or Lidl on a 2.5kg bag of potatoes, vegetables, mince, and say some cheese would make a nutritious and filling meal for a family with leftovers for microwaving the next day. Mrs B sees children coming to school every day who are hungry – not from poverty – but because the parents forgot or was too rushed to stop off at the local Centra, Spar, or Lidl to buy the usual muffin and can of coke for the child on the way to school.

@ Paul Quigley

If you think that the phenomenon is confined to MNCs, I suggest that you look around you.

To illustrate the point, I will take the liberty of reproducing the following letter in today’s IT.

Sir, – I was surprised that in his Budget speech Minister Brendan Howlin ignored the very sensible recommendation of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) in its report published on November 22nd to have an independent review group to set and amend politicians’ salaries, expenses, allowances and pensions.

Instead the Minister made token deductions to the present unacceptably high allowances and reduced by 50 per cent the monthly issue of Oireachtas prepaid envelopes. Politicians make the rules that govern their own conditions; a clear conflict of interest and it is taxpayers’ money. They want to keep it that way; to use an old cliche, turkeys don’t vote for Christmas. – Yours, etc,

JAMES CASEY,

Cowper Village,

Rathmines, Dublin 6.

To make matters worse, the salaries of politicians and public sector workers – with cast-iron relativities across the board – are now linked. In short, both those charged with raising revenue and those charged with spending it have a common interets in breaking down the door to the public treasury.

Until this blatant example of national moral hazard is corrected, how can anything else be?

@ Dork

Fair enough. Conflicts of interests of interest are endemic, but at least the PS workers don’t pretend they are promoting a ‘free market’.

@Paul
The attack on Labour both public & private is a farce…….

Even Barristers must go home at night……..

Who is going to protect their homes ?

“Jesus we have only got each other lads”

Dork mentions the school run – 30 odd years ago when I went to school, myself and my peers used public transport and/or our own legs. If the Government somehow banned the use of private cars for ferrying children to school, would the public transport system be able to cope?
Also, I suspect parents would trot out the excuse that it’s “not safe” for their children to make their own way to school. I’m not convinced there’s any more ‘Stranger Danger’ now than at any other time. I am convinced that the media make mountains out of molehills because it sells though. And surely no school run would mean fewer cars about to squish the little dears?

@ Docm
Market pricing mechanisms are for small people. You open taxi driving to competition. It is vulgar to do this in the legal business.

@ rf

The amount of knee jerk anger, (mostly by people quite shelterd from the crisis, i would imagine), over the top denunciations of all and sundry, visions of apocalypse married to a dinner thats left them feeling bloated is, well, a right pain in the ass

It’s interesting that an anonymous individual would question the motives of those who do not hide their identities.

@ All

In the UK the biggest growth in employment since 2010 is professional occupations – which include lawyers, accountants and management consultants

At the bottom end, there has also been growth in so-called elementary jobs – – a category that includes waiters, bar staff, kitchen assistants, security guards and cleaners.

Lord Turner, a former director general of the CBI, in 2009 attacked the then current head of the employers’ body for refusing to concede that parts of the City were “socially useless.”

What jobs are “socially useless”?

UK underemployment rises by 1m; Most new jobs growth at top and bottom of economic pyramid

http://www.finfacts.ie/irishfinancenews/article_1025332.shtml

@Addmagnet

No need for something so Soviet.

Just increase the VRT to something crazy until we get 1957 like private car import figures.
Leave stew for 5 years
You could even reduce the motor tax on stuff……
But you need a sov currency to fill the demand /energy hole on something more rational in the meantime.
Domestic Fixed capital formation (rail)

But for kids who grew up in the austerity 1980s it can be difficult to imagine the new problems of the car boom 1970s …

@ Bunbury. Thanks for that update.

This problem (lack of domestic economy skills) was initially addressed by Vocational Education Committees and in Dublin, a school of Domestic Science was established in Cathal Brugha Street. Very progressive for its time. The Irish Country Women’s Association had/have a similar idea for more rural based skills. God rest my mother, but she did show me how to cook all sorts of dishes. Fantastic skill to possess. Once learned, never forgotton!

Looks like we have have progressed technologically, but regressed socially.

This thread is about the ‘link’ between work (whatever this term means) and poverty (whatever this term means). A waged-labour income? An insufficient (or no) level of income to live somewhat above a ‘decent’ treshold? The basic assumption is that some class of an income is absolutely necessary for modern human existence.

The focus question is now … “Whence that income?” Given that people, their situations, skills, resources etc. are so varied you are going to have to engage in a lot of hard, slow, meaningful thinking. Quick reactive responses will not cut it.

Unfortunately, great strides have been (and are being made) to undo many decades of progressive social work. The drive to create less unequal societies has been halted and is being reversed – with a vengence. You can put your own label on these sort of cruel behaviours. Suffice to say, that if you attempted to subject animals to similar levels of cruelty – you would end up in jail!

“To-days debt-ridden economies from Iceland and Latvia to Greece and Ireland are suffering the demographic consequences of austerity: emigration, falling family formation and birthrates, shortening lifespans and rising suicide rates.” [Michael Hudson: ‘The Bubble and Beyond’]

This is a a tad melodramatic. But is this what we want? We need? We will tolerate? Perhaps we should re-learn the skill of throwing well-aimed stones. Words no longer cut it.

Ireland’s many believers in the “Because you’re worth it!” school of labour economics (excl carers, new recruits, short term contractors etc, ‘natch) should make sure they don’t read this 😉

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-13/kiehl-s-cucumber-toner-at-18-euros-shows-luxury-weakness-retail.html

“The cuts make Kiehl’s an outlier in an industry that has equated quality with price ever since beauty magnate Helena Rubenstein found that raising prices boosted demand of her poorest-selling products. Those that have bucked the trend — as premium fragrance makers did during the first financial crisis in 2008 and 2009 — damaged their exclusivity, according to Oru Mohiuddin, an analyst with Euromonitor. “

@ Eureaka

It is the nub of it. However, remind me again WHO it was that dreamt up and negotiated the PN’s scam? You see I have a terrible feeling that it was these people whose salaries are “untouchable”, but I’d be glad if you could prove me wrong. Who prepared all the clever legalese for the late Brian Lenihan or was it all his own idea? Who advised the minister and stood by his side while he delivered the coup de grace to the Irish economy? Was our economics professor from Galway not whispering in the wings and what about Mr. Kevin Cardiff and other economic and financial advisors at the DoF? Many of whom were later promoted. Strange the way we find a lot of manure outside the doors of the DoF and the Taoiseach’s office where the cosseted and protected work? Remind me of who it is that dot’s the i’s and crosses the t’s to make it all perfectly legal?

@ All

Dan O’Brien’s article says it all, or nearly all, and succeeds in bringing out the fact that something is radically wrong in this area.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/finance/2012/1214/1224327835566.html

Two key elements.

“(Total spend on disability and illness benefits tripled in the 2000-07 period).”

“Big increases in single-parent benefit rates during the boom reduced want in many of these households, but in the absence of childcare and – again – better-designed training programmes, the perpetuation of joblessness down the generations is almost guaranteed.”

Both these occurences are common knowledge in the wider community. As is the reason why (i) they occurred and (ii) they are perpetuated; the beneficiaries vote.

His pessimism about any radical action in the short term is therefore justified.

@ Eureka

You may have missed the PK interview with the author of the article in question. He was caregorical in all his views other than when replying to the question of who will pay if Ireland refuses to do so.

Eurostat’s Actual Individual Consumption (AIC) per capita, a better measure for the standard of living in Ireland than GDP, has Ireland ranking just above the EU average with Italy while Irish GDP per capita is 29 % higher than the average.

Both countries are below Eurozone average.

Eurostat says indicators reflecting directly the situation of households are more adapted than GDP to reflect welfare.

Germany is at 20% above the EU average and the UK is 18% above.

http://www.finfacts.ie/irishfinancenews/article_1025346.shtml

We do not need to have so many workless households

Dan O’Brien

Nearly one in four people under 60 years of age lived in a household without a working adult in 2010, a far higher proportion than in any of the 31 European countries for which figures are available. This is shocking. But in the context of the biggest decline in employment in the OECD in the three years to 2010, it is perhaps a little less dramatic than it might seem at first.

What is astounding is that before the crash – in 2007 – Ireland had the second-highest rate of jobless households among the same countries, after Bulgaria. These figures point to Ireland having one of the largest, if not the largest, permanently workless underclass in Europe.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/finance/2012/1214/1224327835566.html

@David
Dan O Brien really cracks me up….

I was in the trenches in the early 2000s when the willing working class lad was turfed out by hungry labour from abroad.

He or she from the so called honest working class could not compete with your average middle class guy from Prague…

They were stuck on a farm.

It was a policy decision baby.

It was a simple extraction of labour surplus value from the domestic population.

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