Recession: What can negativity add?

ros244

It strikes me as a sad feature to this recession the shear volume of negativity being shown. Granted people are angry and rightly so, but I ask the question what can negativity add?

We’ve had strikes, proposals for strikes, possibly riots to come after April 7th, and I’ve even noted the extremes in France where some company bosses have been kidnapped due to job losses, etc.

We all feel this sense of annoyance, and its natural to feel this sense of animosity towards the government, etc. But, I ask the question again what can negativity add?

What prompted me today to make this post, is actually a little bit of annoyance at the media involvement in this recession. I know they say bad news sells, but in all honesty I’d prefer to see the positive stories at moment.

There is a particular Irish news website I frequent (not sure why), which relishes to show a picture of Brian Cowen with a look on his face as if he’d just had a little ‘accident’. The first few times I said fair enough. Months later and I’m now tired of this image and its intended effect. If you go to the front page of this website today you will see stories about the Ceann Comhairle not taking questions about RTE’s apology to Brian Cowen on the naked pictures issue (who cares) and about how the CSO have just reported biggest ever fall in economic activity. OK this is a big issue, and deserves to be front page, but not exactly a surprise. A little bit of navigation however into the Business section of this particular website (not even the Irish section) and you will find a story about a ‘Pathway to Recovery’ document which actually outlines what it says on the tin (ie. A pathway to recovery). It suggests tough measures, but actually praises the strong action taken by our government to date. More navigation (can’t even find it anymore) will bring up a story about callers to a radio station in Dublin making suggestions for the Government to consider in the upcoming Budget. Brian Linehan welcomes the suggestions and says he will consider them in his decision making process.

I for one think we need to change or negative mindset and create possitivity, and create positive steps such as this radio station did.

Maybe a national web-based database of suggestions with filters such as sector of the economy, and more specifics, etc. Perhaps someone else has more ideas here.

If I’ve learned one thing in my years, its that possitivity and support are a more effective way to motivate people and much more likely to create a positive outcome, than constant criticism.

And on an international level, this must be the image we portray to the outside world if we are to regain confidence in this little island of ours.

Possitivity adds!

CamperMan

I gave up reading this, it's giving me a headache, all that is confusing.

Shiny

ros244 wrote: »

It strikes me as a sad feature to this recession the shear volume of negativity being shown. Granted people are angry and rightly so, but I ask the question what can negativity add?

We’ve had strikes, proposals for strikes, possibly riots to come after April 7th, and I’ve even noted the extremes in France where some company bosses have been kidnapped due to job losses, etc.

We all feel this sense of annoyance, and its natural to feel this sense of animosity towards the government, etc. But, I ask the question again what can negativity add?

What prompted me today to make this post, is actually a little bit of annoyance at the media involvement in this recession. I know they say bad news sells, but in all honesty I’d prefer to see the positive stories at moment.

There is a particular Irish news website I frequent (not sure why), which relishes to show a picture of Brian Cowen with a look on his face as if he’d just had a little ‘accident’. The first few times I said fair enough. Months later and I’m now tired of this image and its intended effect. If you go to the front page of this website today you will see stories about the Ceann Comhairle not taking questions about RTE’s apology to Brian Cowen on the naked pictures issue (who cares) and about how the CSO have just reported biggest ever fall in economic activity. OK this is a big issue, and deserves to be front page, but not exactly a surprise. A little bit of navigation however into the Business section of this particular website (not even the Irish section) and you will find a story about a ‘Pathway to Recovery’ document which actually outlines what it says on the tin (ie. A pathway to recovery). It suggests tough measures, but actually praises the strong action taken by our government to date. More navigation (can’t even find it anymore) will bring up a story about callers to a radio station in Dublin making suggestions for the Government to consider in the upcoming Budget. Brian Linehan welcomes the suggestions and says he will consider them in his decision making process.

I for one think we need to change or negative mindset and create possitivity, and create positive steps such as this radio station did.

Maybe a national web-based database of suggestions with filters such as sector of the economy, and more specifics, etc. Perhaps someone else has more ideas here.

If I’ve learned one thing in my years, its that possitivity and support are a more effective way to motivate people and much more likely to create a positive outcome, than constant criticism.

And on an international level, this must be the image we portray to the outside world if we are to regain confidence in this little island of ours.

Possitivity adds!

fixed that for ya. :rolleyes:

ros244

Thanks for that Shiny. Dunno what I done to the font.

CamperMan

how can you expect someone to remain positive when they have maybe lost their job, home, etc. and with no prospects of even getting a job because jobs in this country are being lost at a fast rate?

How can you be positive knowing that your taxes are going up, services are being slashed??

I am not positive about the way things are, nobody is spending money so my business is just ticking over and this is the same with many other businesses in Ireland!

It's OK blaming the government of Ireland, at the end of the day, this is a global problem!!

Shiny

I have been fairly negative about the situation since it all kicked off around
September although recently I have become a lot more positive as it seems
that there are several EU countries much worse off than us.

There are 4 countries who now have accepted loans from the IMF and after
reading that post about the current state of the UK finances I'm starting to
think we aren't so bad after all.

At the same time I find it completely understandable with people who have lost
their jobs and simply cannot find a new one.

CamperMan

fortunately for me, the recession does not bother me!! as a friend recently said to me "it's OK for you Simon, you have fu¢k all anyway, so you have nothing to lose!!":D

This friend has seen his 6 houses devalue, his 100 + acres of nice land devalued, his stocks & shares devalued, several of his business are not making money, he has probably lost over half of his wealth already!!

CamperMan

here is something positive.

I remember Ireland before the boom, people had no money, drove around in sh!t cars, lived in humble cottages, people gave you the time of day and were so friendly, hopefully, those days will return, the days when strangers would offer you a lift even though you weren't hitch hiking, the days when you would go into a bar and a stranger would offer you a pint of Guinness, I can't wait!

jmayo

Shiny wrote: »

I have been fairly negative about the situation since it all kicked off around
September although recently I have become a lot more positive as it seems
that there are several EU countries much worse off than us.

There are 4 countries who now have accepted loans from the IMF and after
reading that post about the current state of the UK finances I'm starting to
think we aren't so bad after all.

At the same time I find it completely understandable with people who have lost
their jobs and simply cannot find a new one.

You see your comment about this kicking off last September betrays you, the economy was on the way down well before Spetember and unlike for instance Spain where the government came abck during the summer and came up with ideas ours did shag all, until their friends the bank executives called on them to bail them out.
That is one of the reasons we are negative and pessimistic.

People would be a hell of a lot more positive, ala USA, if we had a government that actually appeared to have an idea, you know a bit of a plan and didn't appear to be bending over backwards to help their buddies, whose hidden little dirty deals are coming to light every day.
That and the fact that nobody who helped get us into this mess and helped waste public money has stood up and had the balls to say I am sorry and I quit without any golden handshake.


BTW who are 4 countries that are much worse off than us and do you want to be compared to those now, rather than the Luxemburgs of Europe we were a few years ago ?

Shiny

jmayo wrote: »

BTW who are 4 countries that are much worse off than us and do you want to be compared to those now, rather than the Luxemburgs of Europe we were a few years ago ?

I was reading this only this morning. It says Romania is the 3rd EU country to seek
an IMF loan. The additional countries are neighboring Eastern countries but aren't in the EU.

Ukraine (EU?), Hungary, Romania and soon to be Bulgaria. From here.

Outside the EU Serbia and also Belarus.

So yeah, other countries are worse off than us and that is something to be
positive about in that we havn't been forced to ask for a bailout.

You see your comment about this kicking off last September betrays you

Perhaps it does but I genuinely wasn't aware of it until this point, at least not in
Ireland anyway.

ros244

Just to clarify one issue here as I think my original point or message (or at least intended message) has gotten lost.

I'm not saying we shouldn't be negative about what has happened.
I'm not saying we should be bright and cheery that jobs have been lost, or that we have seen our wealth drop, etc. Personally my wealth has dropped significantly and I currently live / work overseas as no work back home. I'm not positive about that. Who would be!

My only point is why not be positive that we CAN get this mess sorted, and try to make positive steps to help it happen, such as the radio station I mentioned.

We are all quick to rant at the government for decisions we don't like, but why not make the alternative suggestions we think will work beforehand. A bit like when a company runs a program along lines of suggestions to improve the workplace, etc.

I think the whole feeling people get when they can blatantly see a better way, is one of the things that gets them down. Why not vocalise the better way. And by this I don't mean on boards of a website, or on a radio station, but in some coordinated fashion where the may actually be considered.

Raiser

ros244 wrote: »

Just to clarify one issue here as I think my original point or message (or at least intended message) has gotten lost.

OP TLTR

- Is this due out in a brief and witty flashimation any time soon? Add a Politics context and it might even be in the right place.....

Dannyboy83

OP,
I'm not angry anymore, I'm emigrating.
Feeling quite positive even!:)

acontadino

where?

jmayo

Shiny wrote: »

I was reading this only this morning. It says Romania is the 3rd EU country to seek
an IMF loan. The additional countries are neighboring Eastern countries but aren't in the EU.

Ukraine (EU?), Hungary, Romania and soon to be Bulgaria. From here.

Outside the EU Serbia and also Belarus.

So yeah, other countries are worse off than us and that is something to be
positive about in that we havn't been forced to ask for a bailout.


Perhaps it does but I genuinely wasn't aware of it until this point, at least not in
Ireland anyway.

Right so you are comparing us to the former Soviet states of Ukraine (not in EU) and Belarus :rolleyes: You forgot Moldova maybe ?
As for the others, well Serbia is not the country it once was, afterall it did lose chunks of it's land in the last 10 odd years and had some wartime adventures.

Romania and Bulgaria only joined the EU recently and are both way behind in terms of living standards and rule of law and order, although looking at our little shady dealings we are doing our best to catch upto them.

Out of the list of countries you compare us to, about the only really valid one is Hungary.

Perhaps if you compare us to Zimbabwe we are in great shape. At least we don't have cholera and aren't starving.

If you want to comapre us to country along same lines, why not use Iceland ?

acontadino

i think latvia is a fair comparison, latvia was having growth rates not even china could match and now crash bang wallop.

my polish neighbour said things are real **** in poland atm, worse than here. there is much more gloom there according to him.

bobbbb

People in general think this recession is worse than it really is.
It suits us fine though to think that, because as the government can get us to take our medicine more willingly than we would otherwise.

People who werent around in the 80's , early 90's have no idea what a recession is really like.

jmayo

bobbbb wrote: »

People in general think this recession is worse than it really is.
It suits us fine though to think that, because as the government can get us to take our medicine more willingly than we would otherwise.

People who werent around in the 80's , early 90's have no idea what a recession is really like.

I finished school in mid 80s, most of my classmates that didn't go to college but had to f*** off out of the country.
The plus in the 80s was you could go over to London and get work. You could, possibly through acident of birth, get a green card and into states, while some others just chanced their arm and went illegal.
Other countries were not in the cr** like they are today, so we could emigrate and find work.

When we finished college most of the people emigrated again to work all over the world. Then in the late 80s Microsoft arrived finally putting us on the map, they were followed by Dell, Intel, HP, Gateway etc etc.
We had low corpo tax, had reasonably good educated cheap workforce and were in EU market.

Look at today, we no longer have those advantages going for us, we are losing the FDI. We are a high cost economy and there are more players in the hunt for FDI from US or Japaneses investors.
More worrying is the fact that the countries we once emigrated to have high unemployment and are experiencing recesssion.

Added to this personal debt in the 80s was very low, look at it today.
We are one of the most indebted natiuons on earth.
Back in the 80s we didn't have a collosal public sector sucking the exchequer returns dry as they are today.

Another important thing is we as a nation have gotten complacent and have become accustomed to higher standards of living and it will be a hell of a shock to our teenagers and 20 somethings.

bobbbb

jmayo wrote: »

I finished school in mid 80s, most of my classmates that didn't go to college but had to f*** off out of the country.
The plus in the 80s was you could go over to London and get work. You could, possibly through acident of birth, get a green card and into states, while some others just chanced their arm and went illegal.
Other countries were not in the cr** like they are today, so we could emigrate and find work.

When we finished college most of the people emigrated again to work all over the world. Then in the late 80s Microsoft arrived finally putting us on the map, they were followed by Dell, Intel, HP, Gateway etc etc.
We had low corpo tax, had reasonably good educated cheap workforce and were in EU market.

Look at today, we no longer have those advantages going for us, we are losing the FDI. We are a high cost economy and there are more players in the hunt for FDI from US or Japaneses investors.
More worrying is the fact that the countries we once emigrated to have high unemployment and are experiencing recesssion.

Added to this personal debt in the 80s was very low, look at it today.
We are one of the most indebted natiuons on earth.
Back in the 80s we didn't have a collosal public sector sucking the exchequer returns dry as they are today.

Another important thing is we as a nation have gotten complacent and have become accustomed to higher standards of living and it will be a hell of a shock to our teenagers and 20 somethings.

This recession is simply not as bad as the 80,s early 90's though.

People were far worse of in the 80's recession than they are now.
Back then, in general, people knew more people without a job than they knew who had a job. Thats not the case now.

Whatever about record numbers being unemployed now, the population is higher than it was then and there are still many, many more people with jobs than there were then.

Shiny

jmayo wrote: »

Right so you are comparing us to the former Soviet states of Ukraine (not in EU) and Belarus :rolleyes: You forgot Moldova maybe ?
As for the others, well Serbia is not the country it once was, afterall it did lose chunks of it's land in the last 10 odd years and had some wartime adventures.

Romania and Bulgaria only joined the EU recently and are both way behind in terms of living standards and rule of law and order, although looking at our little shady dealings we are doing our best to catch upto them.

Out of the list of countries you compare us to, about the only really valid one is Hungary.

Perhaps if you compare us to Zimbabwe we are in great shape. At least we don't have cholera and aren't starving.

If you want to comapre us to country along same lines, why not use Iceland ?

I was just trying to focus on the positive, which I thought was the point of the thread.

Sand

People are deeply negative about this recession because they dont see any light at the end of the tunnel.

Theres no leadership, the government are clearly miles out of their depth, the opposition are worse, the unions are feckless and the banks are simply incompetent.

The people practically had to beg the government to introduce a budget thats going to be horrific, yet wont even scratch the surface. Thats how terrible the leadership is.

If you want people to be optimistic, if you want people to go "Okay, we're down, we're taking a beating but we have a plan, we have got guys who know how to get us out of this...." then that confidence needs to be inspired by some leadership. Which has been desperately lacking.

For all the "Oh, we havent had to ask for an IMF rescue....yet", thats a very big yet. On the trajectory we are on the IMF rescue and the horrific terms that will be applied are only a matter of time.

NewDubliner

Sand wrote: »

People are deeply negative about this recession because they dont see any light at the end of the tunnel.

The levy on Public Sector workers has had a big impact on confidence in that sector. Now these workers realise that their jobs and pensions can vanish at a stroke of piece of emergency legislation, and that in the immediate terms, more pay cuts and tax impositions are on the way, they're not committing to non-essential expenditure.

It all feeds into a downward spiral based on the evaporation of confidence.

I'd doubt, at this moment, if anyone feels secure.

It will take strong leadership to convince people it's safe to spend again.

bobbbb

NewDubliner wrote: »

The levy on Public Sector workers has had a big impact on confidence in that sector. Now these workers realise that their jobs and pensions can vanish at a stroke of piece of emergency legislation, and that in the immediate terms, more pay cuts and tax impositions are on the way, they're not committing to non-essential expenditure.

It all feeds into a downward spiral based on the evaporation of confidence.

I'd doubt, at this moment, if anyone feels secure.

It will take strong leadership to convince people it's safe to spend again.

I agree. One of the worst moves in history was to single out public sector workers.

NewDubliner

bobbbb wrote: »

I agree. One of the worst moves in history was to single out public sector workers.

That might be putting a bit strong. It was a clever move to set workers against each other, but the side-effect is to depress spending.

IN&M is determined to demolish the morale of all workers so that they will roll over and not object when key public utilities are sold off to foreign vultures.

IN&M is making huge losses and is in deep hock to the banks.

gurramok

bobbbb wrote: »

I agree. One of the worst moves in history was to single out public sector workers.

Shiny wrote: »

I was just trying to focus on the positive, which I thought was the point of the thread.

NewDubliner wrote: »

The levy on Public Sector workers has had a big impact on confidence in that sector. Now these workers realise that their jobs and pensions can vanish at a stroke of piece of emergency legislation, and that in the immediate terms, more pay cuts and tax impositions are on the way, they're not committing to non-essential expenditure.

It all feeds into a downward spiral based on the evaporation of confidence.

I'd doubt, at this moment, if anyone feels secure.

It will take strong leadership to convince people it's safe to spend again.

To all of the above, Ireland cannot afford the public sector in its present form hence a hint of IMF coming in if things are not straightened out. The leadership on this from the govt is pathetic hence lack of confidence and 'possitivity'.

Thats why there is negativity. You cannot compare Ireland to the likes of ex-communist countries whose populations have a standard of living way below ours Albania style.

If we don't sort out public expenditure, we will be the first 1st world developed country and member of the original EU to call in the IMF and that is a sad state of affairs.

And you cannot expect people to spend money they do not have, we have one of the highest personal debt rates in the world.

Sand

The levy on Public Sector workers has had a big impact on confidence in that sector. Now these workers realise that their jobs and pensions can vanish at a stroke of piece of emergency legislation, and that in the immediate terms, more pay cuts and tax impositions are on the way, they're not committing to non-essential expenditure.

Please, public sector workers are in a far, far, far more secure position than workers are in the real economy. They lose a few % of take home [ a take home that is on average far higher than a private sector workers takehome to begin with] whilst private sector workers are considering the security of their jobs. I think the issue with having the confidence to spend comes more from private sector worries.

The lack of leadership and inability to actually recognise and react to the mess were in is best exemplified by the government refusing to go - "Right, every public worker earning over 40K Euro is taking a paycut of at least 10% - public pay is going to be capped at 150K Euro".

Instead, we end up with this torturous "Not a pay cut, but it is really!" public levy that pretty much ends up screwing the lower paid more than the higher paid public service workers because the government basically scrawled the numbers on the back of an envelope and never considered the issue with tax.

Thats whats causing the lack of public confidence in this government and its ability to lead us out of this recession - a mixture of incompetence and unwillingness to actually take the drastic sort of action required.

bobbbb

gurramok wrote: »

To all of the above, Ireland cannot afford the public sector in its present form hence a hint of IMF coming in if things are not straightened out. The leadership on this from the govt is pathetic hence lack of confidence and 'possitivity'.

Thats why there is negativity. You cannot compare Ireland to the likes of ex-communist countries whose populations have a standard of living way below ours Albania style.

If we don't sort out public expenditure, we will be the first 1st world developed country and member of the original EU to call in the IMF and that is a sad state of affairs.

And you cannot expect people to spend money they do not have, we have one of the highest personal debt rates in the world.

Stop scare mongering. The IMF will not be in here.

The problem is not the public sector.
Its that we dont take enough tax at the moment.
Its that we as a nation of people are not willing to all pay enough tax between us to get us out of this.
We all want others to take a higher share of the burden than ourselves.
This whole situation would be quite easily sorted out by everyone taking a large tax hike for a couple of years.
The answer is so simple, but in everyone scramble to get others to take a higher share of the burden than themselves, nobody is willing to take an equal share of enough of a hit to do the job properly.

If we al took a substantial tax it, yes spending would fall for a while. But people would get used to it. PRices would drop eventually enough to entice peopleback to spending. Everyones income would drop by the same percentage.

ejmaztec

I'd say that we need to be as negative as possible, to make damned certain that the message gets across to the leaders of this country that we are no longer going to allow them to carry on in their own sweet corrupt incompetent way. I'm not just talking about FF, I'm talking about all of them.

At the end of the day, WE pay their salaries.

jmayo

bobbbb wrote: »

This recession is simply not as bad as the 80,s early 90's though.

People were far worse of in the 80's recession than they are now.
Back then, in general, people knew more people without a job than they knew who had a job. Thats not the case now.

Whatever about record numbers being unemployed now, the population is higher than it was then and there are still many, many more people with jobs than there were then.

Did you read any of my post ? :rolleyes:
There was some hope in the 80s, we could leave and find work elsewhere.
We knew that we could atrract in FDI.
Ordinary people loosing jobs weren't saddled with massic debts :mad:
And as bad as some of our politicans might have been at least there were leaders.
The current shower haven't a clue and are like deer in the headlights.

BTW IMHO we are at the beginning and it's going to get a lot worse when cuts and tax hikes work in.

Shiny wrote: »

I was just trying to focus on the positive, which I thought was the point of the thread.

As sand say so well, most of us wish we could focus on something tangible that the government were doing to try and work us through this.
But they haven't a clue, they are used to having money to throw at problems and they have no concept of tight budgets.
They appear to want to save some of their backers and are living in denial in the vain hope that perhaps Obama turns around the US economy and by extension lifts ours.

bobbbb wrote: »

I agree. One of the worst moves in history was to single out public sector workers.

Why should public sector workers be immune from the fallout of an economic downturn, they wanted to share in the wealth created by the private sector, well now they can share in the flip side.
We have a bloated overpaid public sector whose defined benefit pensions are a huge drain on public finances.
They way the levy was done was perhaps unequitable but the principle is right and the cuts are going to have be much worse in the future.

Sand

The problem is not the public sector.
Its that we dont take enough tax at the moment.
Its that we as a nation of people are not willing to all pay enough tax between us to get us out of this.
We all want others to take a higher share of the burden than ourselves.
This whole situation would be quite easily sorted out by everyone taking a large tax hike for a couple of years.
The answer is so simple, but in everyone scramble to get others to take a higher share of the burden than themselves, nobody is willing to take an equal share of enough of a hit to do the job properly.

Let me guess - youre one of the economists at the Department of Finance?

The problem is the public sector - the cost of the public sector has accelerated away over the horizon, leaving our real economic ability to sustain it far behind.

Now the bills are coming due. We dont have the money to pay for the public sector in its current format. Raising taxes to punitive levels to pay for a vastly overpaid public sector is only going to finish off whatever chance the real economy [ the real economy that is taxed to pay for the public sector] has of recovering any time within our life times. You remember the 80s dont you when they practised your magic solution of high taxes?

Taxation needs to be reviewed - more people need to be brought into the tax system, and a third band for high income earners needs to be considered. BUT - the vast majority of the solution will be found by going through the government expenditures and saying "Nope, cant afford this. Gone. Cant afford that, gone".

jmayo

bobbbb wrote: »

Stop scare mongering. The IMF will not be in here.

The problem is not the public sector.
Its that we dont take enough tax at the moment.
Its that we as a nation of people are not willing to all pay enough tax between us to get us out of this.
We all want others to take a higher share of the burden than ourselves.
This whole situation would be quite easily sorted out by everyone taking a large tax hike for a couple of years.
The answer is so simple, but in everyone scramble to get others to take a higher share of the burden than themselves, nobody is willing to take an equal share of enough of a hit to do the job properly.

If we al took a substantial tax it, yes spending would fall for a while. But people would get used to it. PRices would drop eventually enough to entice peopleback to spending. Everyones income would drop by the same percentage.

Ah yes lets all pay huge taxes so that the inefficient public sector workers can continue to enjoy payrises and retired civil servants can have a nice defined pension whilst the private sector workers are looking at no pensions.

I have no problem paying higher taxes, if I know it is going to help a hospital patient get a bed, an early operation, a young girl get a cervical cancer vacination or if it is used to help educate a young child with special needs.
But I do have a big f***ing problem, if it is just going into the pot to pay for some unneeded admin staff to saunder around a hospital or HSE office appearing to look busy, whilst they kick their heels until retirment age comes around. :mad:
And these are just the basic examples of the deserved areas for taxation and the undeserved areas.