David Begg on how Ireland should react to globalisation

ionapaul

Anyone else see the comments from David Begg of ICTU on the front of the Times today on globalisation, and how Ireland should change to meet it? By increasing taxes and government spend to that of the Scandinavian countries, in his view. I would have thought that globalisation would exert pressures to move in the opposite direction - to reduce costs / taxes to compete with Eastern Europe, Asian and ultimately African and South American nations.

samb

I think the thrust of that argument is that we need to invest in people more and move up the 'value chain' to a 'knowledge economy', Rather than simply compete on grounds of cheapness. If we want to maintain employment by being cheap then our standard of living and quantity of disposable income will have to take a serous hit. If we want to 'compete with Eastern Europe, Asian and ultimately African and South American nations' then by all means cut taxes, but if we want a high standard of living we need to begin competing with the Scandinavian countries who are undoubtedly doing very well, and in my view are in a position to do very well in the future, thanks to thier investment in society over many years.

P.s I haven't actually read David Begg's comments but I would imagine this is his argument and it is one I would agree with.

Captain Trips

ionapaul wrote:

Anyone else see the comments from David Begg of ICTU on the front of the Times today on globalisation, and how Ireland should change to meet it? By increasing taxes and government spend to that of the Scandinavian countries, in his view. I would have thought that globalisation would exert pressures to move in the opposite direction - to reduce costs / taxes to compete with Eastern Europe, Asian and ultimately African and South American nations.

It will reduce costs and taxes for large corporations mate, but not for your or I.

If it did, you end up with third world scenarios like US/UK with grossly underfunded healthcare and education and public transport....oh hang on.......

ronbyrne2005

ionapaul wrote:

Anyone else see the comments from David Begg of ICTU on the front of the Times today on globalisation, and how Ireland should change to meet it? By increasing taxes and government spend to that of the Scandinavian countries, in his view. I would have thought that globalisation would exert pressures to move in the opposite direction - to reduce costs / taxes to compete with Eastern Europe, Asian and ultimately African and South American nations.

i think he is in fantasy land.
gloablisation will lead to all manufacturing being located to asia etc,many service jobs done by graduates such as finance IT jobs etc will/can be moved to english speaking india where theres millions of highly capable graduates.we expect to move up the value chain but the asians are at the same time moving uo the value chain and taking these value added jobs too!
we have to carve out niches and ways of keeping the big non manufacturing multinationals here and the only way i can see is through taxation and a much more highly educated workforce,even then it will be difficult. the scandinavian countries have had high incomes for centuries and have built up large infrastructure and wealth also many have high amounts of natural resources like oil gas metals minerals forestry fishing etc.the have their own large international high tech companies but we dont! if the big high tech companies were irish then we would have a better chance of keeping them in ireland!also scandinavians invest 3-4 times more in research and development and thats what will keep that high up the value chain.

The_Minister

The Scandinavian countries have recently begun to scale back their welfare

constitutionus

i think a more salient point is would you trust the gov. with the money? look at the health service , does a twentieth of the population really need to be employed in it

lucernarian

Roughly 100,000 out of 4,000,000 is only 2.5% I think you mean a twentieth of total employment or something like that.

ronbyrne2005

To_be_confirmed wrote:

Roughly 100,000 out of 4,000,000 is only 2.5% I think you mean a twentieth of total employment or something like that.

the workforce is 2 million so i presume this is what poster is referring too,would be interesting to compare amounts of workforce in health to other countries like france canada and uk,also privates healthcare adds substantially more to the 5% in publci healthcare total.

ateam

Higher taxes never work..Ireland had them before and look what that led to...emmigration etc. Modern countries should try to move away from the social welfare system and not towards it.

ronbyrne2005

ateam wrote:

Higher taxes never work..Ireland had them before and look what that led to...emmigration etc. Modern countries should try to move away from the social welfare system and not towards it.

you cant associate high taxes with emmigration,the uk had similar if higher levels in 70's and no one emmigrated. if taxes are spent/used efficiently higher taxes can be beneficial to population as a whole. socical welfare will always exist and if anything will increase as populations get older and more socially conscious.bertie claims he is now a socialist which is a way of saying that people want more socially inclusive policies.
look at america where social welfare is at a minimum,crime is high and social deprivation is rampant,this costs the populationas a whole in cost of prisons crime healthcare etc.
the scandinavian countries with higher taxes that are spent efficiently have happy socially inclusive societies with excellent public services low crime high living standards etc.

The Corinthian

ionapaul wrote:

Anyone else see the comments from David Begg of ICTU on the front of the Times today on globalisation, and how Ireland should change to meet it? By increasing taxes and government spend to that of the Scandinavian countries, in his view. I would have thought that globalisation would exert pressures to move in the opposite direction - to reduce costs / taxes to compete with Eastern Europe, Asian and ultimately African and South American nations.

He obviously has a very limited understanding the Scandinavian economies. There was a good piece done on Scandinavian labour economics, as an alternative European model, in the Economist a few months ago.

The reality of the Scandinavian economies, that no doubt Begg has neglected to take into account, is that while there is a high level of both taxation and welfare, labour law is flexible. This means it is far easier to hire and fire people there than in, say, France, Germany or Italy. This has been cited by many as the ‘secret’ of their success.

It is unlikely that Begg was also advocating that, so he was really only cherry picking those Scandinavian economic policies that suited his rather tired Marxist sound bite.

Akrasia

constitutionus wrote:

i think a more salient point is would you trust the gov. with the money? look at the health service , does a twentieth of the population really need to be employed in it

A twentieth of the workforce in Health care and health board provided welfare programs isn't that much actually, when you think about it. Is staying healthy not among our top twenty priorities?

MontgomeryClift

The Corinthian wrote:

The reality of the Scandinavian economies, that no doubt Begg has neglected to take into account, is that while there is a high level of both taxation and welfare, labour law is flexible. This means it is far easier to hire and fire people there than in, say, France, Germany or Italy. This has been cited by many as the ‘secret’ of their success.

It is unlikely that Begg was also advocating that,

He was. He said there should be reduced emphasis on 'job protection' and more emphasis on re-employability. In other words companies should be able to let people off and those people should be able to find employment again.

The Corinthian

MontgomeryClift wrote:

He was. He said there should be reduced emphasis on 'job protection' and more emphasis on re-employability. In other words companies should be able to let people off and those people should be able to find employment again.

I stand corrected. There's hope for the trade unions yet.

jd

The Corinthian wrote:

I stand corrected. There's hope for the trade unions yet.

Dave Begg would be about the most able of them though.
BTW Are you sure sure that he is, or was, a marxist?

He was GS of the CWU but later said..

"I think the staff of Eircom did extremely well but it was a bad deal for the country. I have to take responsibility in that I was looking after the staff. The congress position up to now is that these are matters for each company individually. Now I’ve come to realise that that is incorrect, that there are a lot more issues at stake than just the workers in each of these companies.”
"

bonkey

ateam wrote:

Higher taxes never work..Ireland had them before and look what that led to...emmigration etc.

Incorrect. Ireland had them and immigration at a time when the country was struggling to keep its head above water. Taxation didn't lead to emigration. Lack of employment caused both.

What it led to (indirectly) is where we are today.

jc