Government brings forward budget to October

nesf

mike65 wrote: »

We can borrow 3% of GDP, however the ECB won't do anything to stop higher borrowing for capital projects. There should never be borrowing to fund day-to-day spends. That requires a government with balls and resolve to take on the public sector - ah we fupped then.

Mike

You can borrow more than 3% of GDP to fund current spending (day-to-day) in unusual circumstances (I can't remember the exact phrase they use). The UK and France have already done it if I recall correctly. Essentially if you can convince the ECB that it's a once off unusual situation they won't kick up a fuss in laymen's terms.

nesf

gurramok wrote: »

Talk about heads in the sand :mad:

'Tánaiste: 'Government will kickstart the housing market' http://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/mhqlgbcwmhid/rss2/


You see there, the economy is screwed now even further. Relying on housebuying for a sound economy is voodoo economics.
What about helping industry create export based productive jobs Mary???

It's simple populism. Some token efforts need to be made to "prop up" the housing market to try and boost general public confidence. I can't see them being stupid enough to plough large amounts of cash into propping it up though. They'll talk up their efforts to prop it up but they won't commit themselves financially to it, would be my prediction.

Heinrich

dresden8 wrote: »

I don't know why you people who carry on about the state of the economy don't just go off and hang yourselves.

Bitch, bitch, bitch, moan, whine, whine.

That you Bert?

miju

nesf wrote: »

It's simple populism. Some token efforts need to be made to "prop up" the housing market to try and boost general public confidence. I can't see them being stupid enough to plough large amounts of cash into propping it up though. They'll talk up their efforts to prop it up but they won't commit themselves financially to it, would be my prediction.

your joking right. this is Fianna Fail better known as the Builders Party we're talking about here.

nhughes100

gurramok wrote: »

Just look at the public sector wage bill nhughes100.

If they raise the excise duty, expect mass smuggling of the old reliables from the north as well as hordes of shoppers heading across the border.

Yes the public sector wage bill is high, so is the social welfare bill. I would much prefer to see social welfare taken on first. At least you get a service with the wages, the department of social welfare gets practically no airtime despite it's huge budget. There is an assumption that everyone in the public sector is on great money whereas an entry level clerical worker is on not much more then 20K and usually gets no overtime.

SkepticOne wrote: »

It's been done. The airport departure tax which was introduced in the 80's, when large numbers of people left the country in search of jobs, was considered by many at the time to be a tax on emigration.

Yes I know, I was implying that they'll simply increase it.

jmayo wrote: »

nhughes, air crash investigators should not be considered a nonsense job, unilke some of the jobs in public service or indeed within IAA.
They usually have to have a pretty good knowledge and understanding of their subject, at least in other countries, and you don't get good guys if you pay peanuts.

Would you not rather have good people do this job, so that they can get to the bottom of an air accident or would you rather you get the local guard do the job?

BTW I think the way of cutting public sector wage bill is to get rid of some of the employees, starting with the overpaid and overstaffed mid level, then working up and down the ladder. Too many people in our system, particularly health, with no apparent beneift to either their customers or employers i.e. us the taxpayers.

I do agree with you on how taxes come into immediate affect, but outgoings only come at beginning of new year is a con, but so is the level of contribution made by motorists to the exchequer.

Well considering how much actual work they'll have to do I think the salary is scandelous, as well as that I would have thought the Gardai(your local Garda comment doesn't really lend anything to the debate) would be the people to investigate this and no doubt the Irish aviation authority, the airlines and various international bodies.

It was nothing against air accident officers but merely an example of how extremely high salaries are paid to fairly obscure positions. To get 90-100K a year you'd want to be very senior exec in big business. Let me give you another example, a professer of medieval history in TCD starts on around 90 as well, this for 16 hours(max) lectures a week and about 10 weeks holidays. I could sleep quite soundly at night without this post hogging up the public service pay bill.

There is a huge amount of waste in government spending but people don't like messing around with the status quo so I reckon taxes are on their way up. The old reliables have their name well earned.

The_Minister

El Stuntman wrote: »

the first step into total desperation

thanks fianna fail, I hope people remember that this was totally preventable, self-induced and had very little to do with the 'international circumstances' that Brian and Brian will no doubt trot out as being the cause of the problem

I wouldn't trust these gimps to run a sweetshop

Are you seriously suggesting that the knock-on from the sub-prime crisis, and the global slump, had nothing to do with the current recession? Seriously?

gurramok

The_Minister wrote: »

Are you seriously suggesting that the knock-on from the sub-prime crisis, and the global slump, had nothing to do with the current recession? Seriously?

All this domestic crisis started in August 2006, a whole year before the sub-prime and credit crunch which started in August 2007.

Whats happening is a domestic housing bubble bursting along with the international credit crunch along with high euro currency which is strangling Ireland Inc.

jmayo

nhughes100 wrote: »

Yes the public sector wage bill is high, so is the social welfare bill. I would much prefer to see social welfare taken on first. At least you get a service with the wages ...

That last point is open to debate, just look at the increase in health service employee numbers and look at number of extra hospital beds or level of service offered to the patients :rolleyes:

nhughes100 wrote: »

Well considering how much actual work they'll have to do I think the salary is scandelous, as well as that I would have thought the Gardai(your local Garda comment doesn't really lend anything to the debate) would be the people to investigate this and no doubt the Irish aviation authority, the airlines and various international bodies.

It was nothing against air accident officers but merely an example of how extremely high salaries are paid to fairly obscure positions.

Oh dear God :eek:
Yes, lets get the airlines investigating themselves, better still we can get the manufactureres in on the job. Then of course you will find every accident down to pilot error :rolleyes:
And sure the guards have nothing much to do anyway so they can do that as well.
And sure we can ask the Brits to do for use like they used to do our air sea rescue.
BTW check out how long it can take to fully investigate an air accident.
Look at how many accidents or incidents have occurred in Ireland over the last few years.
I can think of numerours accidents all over the country (one in Clare, two in Galway, one in kilkenny to name a few) involving lost of life.
One of those was a major one that occurred in Connemara involving nukmerous deaths.
In fact an accident occurred in your neighbouring county the other day.
Just because something is an obscure position to you does not make it so to everyone.

Anyway this is getting off topic.
The government would be very stupid, but that has probably become evident even to most of their champions at the time of the last election, if they were to try and revive the residential comnstruction sector in order to bail out their building buddies. The last thing we need is our taxes going to prop up some over exposed developer.
Parlon keeps harping on about how much VAT is tied up in the unsold houses. Has it ever crossed his mind or the minds of his building buddies that they could sell a few by dropping the prices :rolleyes:

Once they have sold off their remaining stock I can't see many of them rushing out to build new units so employment is scuppered in the industry for a few years anyway.

The_Minister wrote: »

Are you seriously suggesting that the knock-on from the sub-prime crisis, and the global slump, had nothing to do with the current recession? Seriously?

The government were more than happy to take most of the credit for the booms, so they can equally take the blame for the fact we ended up with an economy based on the sale of houses, retail and availability of cheap credit. Sure who needs exports and anyway here comes the great knowledge economy just as soon as we can manage to make broadband available outside our major towns and cities.

Another thing I have noticed on this thread and a few others detailing the governments inaction and how bad the economy is doing, is the absence of a lot of their voiciferous flag waving supporters. At least there are some PD suporters around to as usual stick their heads above the parapet.
Are the rest still on holidays too :rolleyes:

nesf

miju wrote: »

your joking right. this is Fianna Fail better known as the Builders Party we're talking about here.

You're naive if you think there's anything other than coincidence that put the two together. If FG were in power during the boom, you'd have seen the same behaviour. Have a glance at how councillors of all stripes and creeds have been guilty of being "overly friendly" with builders etc if you don't believe me.

They're not stupid in that, the boom is over and the smart one's can spot that, and while they'll make loads of efforts to be seen to try and halt the correction, it'll be for show and political point scoring rather than from any idea of actually stopping the tide coming in.

I've no doubt that we might see a few measures to help the poor developers but it'll be getting them out of trouble rather than resurrecting the boom.

jmayo wrote: »

The government were more than happy to take most of the credit for the booms, so they can equally take the blame for the fact we ended up with an economy based on the sale of houses, retail and availability of cheap credit.

Personally I prefer to ignore their claims of credit and not overly blame them about the inevitable downturns that are going to happen and focus on the smaller areas they actually have some kind of control over. Blaming politicians for the business cycle going through a downturn or a bubble eventually bursting is a bit pointless, but what the herd gives the herd taketh away etc.

jmayo wrote: »

At least there are some PD suporters around to as usual stick their heads above the parapet.

Um, since the last election we've got little left to protect about the status quo. Bring on the changing of the guard...

The_Minister

jmayo wrote: »

The government were more than happy to take most of the credit for the booms, so they can equally take the blame for the fact we ended up with an economy based on the sale of houses, retail and availability of cheap credit.

Managing an economy is like sailing *Warning - Crap metaphor alert!*:)
When it's really, really stormy, all you can do is take in the sails and ride it out.
However, if the weather is good, then a good, experienced sailor will get far further than some gobsheen from Mayo who just got plonked in the boat for the first time.

When things get really, really bad, then even the worst sailor can drown, and that doesn't mean that he's a bad sailor - he just got bad weather.
When things are really good, the gobsheen from Mayo can seem like an expert if everything is going his way.
The way we check is to compare the boat to the other boats - and Ireland's economy grew far faster than those of countries starting from a similar base.

Yes we had good weather (no-ones denying that), but one of the lessons that has been observed over and over again is that its far easier for a government to mess-up an economy through intervention than to fix it. The fact that the boom lasted as long as it did (and despite what some people might tell you, while the last few years weren't as good as previous years, we were still booming) shows that the government did something right, even if all that was was yanking at the right rope now and again, and more importantly, refraining from yanking at another rope.


I'm not saying that I don't think that they could have done better, but I would limit the amount of blame that could be put on them. Counter-cyclical spending is never really an option in a democracy tbh.

gurramok

The_Minister wrote: »

The fact that the boom lasted as long as it did (and despite what some people might tell you, while the last few years weren't as good as previous years, we were still booming) shows that the government did something right, even if all that was was yanking at the right rope now and again, and more importantly, refraining from yanking at another rope.

I'm not saying that I don't think that they could have done better, but I would limit the amount of blame that could be put on them. Counter-cyclical spending is never really an option in a democracy tbh.

Thats just an unreal opinion.

The FF/ PD's allowed the overbuilding of residential housing for a tiny country hence this boom which was all down to housing and not a sustainable industry which swelled the coffers with stamp duty, CGT and VAT taxes as a result.

Selling houses to each other creating 25% of economic output is the root of todays problems and guess who was at the helm for the last 10 years and did nothing to prevent this asset bubble forming in the first place.

nesf

gurramok wrote: »

The FF/ PD's allowed the overbuilding of residential housing for a tiny country hence this boom which was all down to housing and not a sustainable industry which swelled the coffers with stamp duty, CGT and VAT taxes as a result.

Surely this was more down to the local Councils more than the national Government and a lack of foresight by City Planners?

gurramok

nesf wrote: »

Surely this was more down to the local Councils more than the national Government and a lack of foresight by City Planners?

Local councils are dominated by FF/FG politicians who voted to pass mass rezoning especially encouraged by Section 23 tax breaks.

We won't mention the Galway tent!

Go figure

Aodhfinn

the bottom line , and it really is , the bottom line , that the capitalist economy is dependent on consuming resources , it is the rate of consumption , ( be it building or consuming of raods , or designing the lattest hi tech ,) and the way of consumption ........ that is .. economically unsustainable in the long run , and ecologically unsustainable today. Untill there is a real switch to a zero carbon post industrial economy with the value shift entailed therein , rises and falls in economic growth will come and go . But the true price of not embracing the planet with the respect and sensitivity needed RISES .

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

Aodhfinn wrote: »

the bottom line , and it really is , the bottom line , that the capitalist economy is dependent on consuming resources , it is the rate of consumption , ( be it building or consuming of raods , or designing the lattest hi tech ,) and the way of consumption ........ that is .. economically unsustainable in the long run , and ecologically unsustainable today. Untill there is a real switch to a zero carbon post industrial economy with the value shift entailed therein , rises and falls in economic growth will come and go . But the true price of not embracing the planet with the respect and sensitivity needed RISES .

no.

nesf

gurramok wrote: »

Local councils are dominated by FF/FG politicians who voted to pass mass rezoning especially encouraged by Section 23 tax breaks.

Yup, it was politicians of all stripes who were doing it though. I'd lay the zoning problems at their feet rather than at the feet of Dáil politicians to be honest. The Dáil might have been quiet about it but these guys were actively enabling it.

djpbarry

gurramok wrote: »

Thats just an unreal opinion.

The FF/ PD's allowed the overbuilding of residential housing for a tiny country hence this boom which was all down to housing and not a sustainable industry which swelled the coffers with stamp duty, CGT and VAT taxes as a result.

Selling houses to each other creating 25% of economic output is the root of todays problems and guess who was at the helm for the last 10 years and did nothing to prevent this asset bubble forming in the first place.

Remind me who bought the houses?

jmayo

The_Minister wrote: »

Managing an economy is like sailing *Warning - Crap metaphor alert!*:)
When it's really, really stormy, all you can do is take in the sails and ride it out.
However, if the weather is good, then a good, experienced sailor will get far further than some gobsheen from Mayo who just got plonked in the boat for the first time.

When things get really, really bad, then even the worst sailor can drown, and that doesn't mean that he's a bad sailor - he just got bad weather.
When things are really good, the gobsheen from Mayo can seem like an expert if everything is going his way.
The way we check is to compare the boat to the other boats - and Ireland's economy grew far faster than those of countries starting from a similar base.
...
I'm not saying that I don't think that they could have done better, but I would limit the amount of blame that could be put on them. Counter-cyclical spending is never really an option in a democracy tbh.

Oh FFS our economy since 2001 has been based on selling houses to each other.
We were losing real jobs and it was being masked by creation of employment in construciton and retail.
Our knowledge economy is a joke, since you can barely get decent broadband access outside of our main population centres.
Any gob**** could see what was happening, but when some people chose to say anything they were derited as scaremongers, whingers etc.

A lot of people were doing alright (builders, developers, estate agents, bankers, shopkeepers, landowners, public servants), a lot of people were making fast bucks screwing others (builders, estate agents, landowners, speculators) and they chose to ignore the elephant that has been sitting in the corner.
The government just saw their building supporters doing well, the big chunk of money from VAT and stamp duty, sat back and let speculators and investors screw first time buyers out of the market.
We were being fed the myth that Ireland was different and our property bubble would be the worlds first one not to implode.

To use your sailing metaphor ... they didn't make best use of the winds when they had them.
They sailed around in circles, blowing money left right and centre.
Almost all big projects came in over budget and behind schedule.
Money was blown on pet ego projects like National stadium, new prison location, decentralisation, electronic voting, etc.
The public service numbers were bloated, public servants were given benchmarking increases, which in reality had no discernable effects on productivity and increased services to the end users.
Meanwhile private sector workers were facing wage freezes and job losses.

Face it we are now stuck in the doldrums and leaking water.
Some of us will have to jump overboard from mother ship Ireland (i.e. emmigrate again) in order to survive.
Meanwhile the connected few, the politicans, public servants with good pensions, have gotten the lifevests and are in the lifeboats.

gurramok

djpbarry wrote: »

Remind me who bought the houses?

The consumer based on easy credit facilitated by political inaction.

Are you trying to shift blame here?

See jmayo's excellent post. Politicians facilitated the housing transactions with inaction to stop the madness as they saw the Exchequer coffers been swelled by taxes from it so they can say 'we are doing a great job, look at the annual growth of the economy'.
The madness has stopped and thats why this budget is coming to try to cover a €5bn black hole and its the taxpayers, you and i who will pick up the tab to pay for balancing of the books.

nesf

jmayo wrote: »

Oh FFS our economy since 2001 has been based on selling houses to each other.
We were losing real jobs and it was being masked by creation of employment in construciton and retail.

Our economic growth since 2001 has been based on population growth not selling houses to each other, though it encouraged the influx of labour (if that labour didn't come in, we'd not have been growing by much each year). We didn't get any more productive but we got a large influx of immigrants taking on jobs that boosted GDP figures. This isn't a bad thing necessarily but it's a once-off boost that can't be repeated and can't be relied on for long term growth. There is nothing wrong per se with an economic boom fuelled by a construction boom, in our case it was on the cards after the infrastructure deficit (both public and private) that was left after the cuts and interest rates of the 70's and 80's. It was always going to end and without interest rates being dictated by purely Irish concerns it was unlikely to be a soft landing (not necessarily a price that's too high for the benefits we've got from the Euro in other areas). This doesn't mean that it was a bad thing in and of itself.

We won't be able to fuel long term growth off the back of the construction sector and no serious economist ever thought that. We could, and did, ride the wave off it, pay down our public debt and get our house in order by catching up on capital expenditure and other public issues. I don't for a second believe that the best possible course was charted, to keep the metaphor going but I don't think it was ever going to be charted because it would be very unlikely to be the most popular one politically and with the voters and politcians have to play the election cycle game if they're going to stay in power.

We haven't, no matter what the Opposition would like you to believe, squandered all the wealth, and we haven't, no matter what FF/PDs would like you to believe, done as well as we could have from the boom, but the boom wasn't in itself a bad thing. Also, bursting a bubble early can very easily trigger a recession just like what happens when one bursts if left along and no politician is going to be stupid enough to try and burst one early if it could easily hand a Government created recession into the Opposition's hands.

gurramok

News today that private sector pay is two thirds of public sector pay.
http://www.rte.ie/business/2008/0905/cso.html

In the public sector, average hourly pay was €25.47, compared with €17.11 in the private sector.

Average hourly earnings were highest in the education sector at €32.06, followed by the electricity, water and gas sector at €29.50. By contrast, average hourly pay in hotels and restaurants was €12.39.

Time for some trimming. The private sector cannot afford any more hikes in taxes to pay for wastage in the public sector.

nesf

gurramok wrote: »

News today that private sector pay is two thirds of public sector pay.
http://www.rte.ie/business/2008/0905/cso.html



Time for some trimming. The private sector cannot afford any more hikes in taxes to pay for wastage in the public sector.

Eh, the private sector is always going to lag by a fair bit in that because there are a lot more low wage jobs in the private sector in retail etc which will bias its average down by a fair amount. Not that I would disagree with a nice healthy pay freeze for most parts of the public sector or anything.

djpbarry

gurramok wrote: »

The consumer based on easy credit facilitated by political inaction.

Are you trying to shift blame here?

I’m not blaming anyone for anything. I just think it’s all too easy to blame the government for (apparently) relying on the construction sector and property sales to fuel our economy. Sure, there are some appalling examples of planning in this country, which is not going to help the economy in the long run. But, people were still prepared to pay extortionate amounts of money for badly-built houses in badly-planned developments. This demand effectively gave the thumbs up to developers and planners to produce more of the same crap properties. The “property boom” (and subsequent downturn) could not have happened without consumers willing to spend, spend, spend. We (as a nation) are collectively responsible for the state we are now in.

dresden8

gurramok wrote: »

News today that private sector pay is two thirds of public sector pay.
http://www.rte.ie/business/2008/0905/cso.html

In the public sector, average hourly pay was €25.47, compared with €17.11 in the private sector.

Average hourly earnings were highest in the education sector at €32.06, followed by the electricity, water and gas sector at €29.50. By contrast, average hourly pay in hotels and restaurants was €12.39.


Time for some trimming. The private sector cannot afford any more hikes in taxes to pay for wastage in the public sector.

Nice one. Comparing wages of hospital consultants, judges, politicians and ESB engineers with lounge boys in pubs.

That's a reasonable comparison.

irish_bob

dresden8 wrote: »

Nice one. Comparing wages of hospital consultants, judges, politicians and ESB engineers with lounge boys in pubs.

That's a reasonable comparison.

nice try yourself , the majority who work in the hse are employed in administration and a sizeable number of public servants in general work in the same area

a good number of public servant possitions exist simply as to keep unions happy and employment numbers apparently high , this was of course ok when there was plenty of money to throw at theese surplus to requirement posts

dresden8

Politician, Doctors, Nurses, Gardai, Prison Officers, Senior Civil Servants, Consultants, Architects, Engineers yadda yadda yadda bring those averages up.

Many civil servants are on crap pay.

Do you in the private sector not understand averages?

miju

obviously not dresden. To give you an example in my office the average wage is 43k which is great. except 2 of us are on 25k and the other on 80 odd

irish_bob

dresden8 wrote: »

Politician, Doctors, Nurses, Gardai, Prison Officers, Senior Civil Servants, Consultants, Architects, Engineers yadda yadda yadda bring those averages up.

Many civil servants are on crap pay.

Do you in the private sector not understand averages?

a guard is a very well paid job considering how little most of them actually do