Is our Irish economy getting better?

KyussBishop

K-9 wrote: »

Ah, your EU/ECB hobbyhorse makes you miss this has been going on for decades.

Rural Ireland is finished, the Celtic bubble hid it, but even then people went on about it. Rural Ireland was drained of people in the 80's and early 90's, saw a brief respite in the late 90's and early 00's with estates being built everywhere, masking the bleeding of textiles and other manufacturing industries, fishing, farming etc.

Take my county, Donegal Town lost Magee and Abbots, nothing has replaced them, Letterkenny lost Unifi and a couple of others, Buncrana Fruit of the Loom, Killybegs went from a fishing boom town to a ghost town, Burtonport barely exists any more. Letterkenny's biggest employers now are the regional hospital and college, the public service. We get the odd job announcement and success story, but that's about it.

You stand a chance if you live in a city or large town, emigration is your lot in rural Ireland, getting a job in Dublin is being lucky.

I don't think that is all down to austerity, these problems existed in boom/bubble times, they just hid it better.

I agree with you that there have been big problems with where money has been spent (e.g. housing instead of manufacturing), but that doesn't seem related to what I've said, and austerity has certainly worsened those problems as well.

If we (the EU as a whole) had not undertaken austerity, but instead had driven our economies at 100% capacity (i.e. full employment), and put that capacity into sustainable areas (not housing bubbles or other wastes of effort like you mention), then there is no reason whatsoever, why all of Ireland (including rural Ireland) couldn't be employing people in useful industry/activity, and recovering much faster from the crisis.

The difference between how things are now, and how things could be, if politics was not overtaken by bad economics (causing the few policy options that can end the crisis, to be ruled out), is truly enormous and something to be very angry about.

Instead of being at the end of the current economic crisis (after having weathered it comfortably), we are only coming up to the middle of it, and our current policies mean the damage is compounded every day it continues (when that is totally unnecessary).


People don't seem to understand just how fundamentally wrong a lot of mainstream macroeconomics is, and how macroeconomics which actually fit reality better, is not part of mainstream thinking (and neither are people open to learning about it, more apt to discard it out of hand); people then negatively judge this more realistic macroeconomics, for not matching the completely false mainstream theories, and for not matching their personal political ideologies. There is no concept of judging theory based on how well it fits reality, within most economic discussion, it is mostly ideology.

KyussBishop

WanabeOlympian wrote: »

I see the platform for people highlighting positives they have seen in the economy has turned into 'let me tell you how bad things are' thread. Feck it anyway haha I know things are bad, i'm asking you what have you see that has been positive recently! aaaaaaaaargh

If you pretend things are positive, instead of learning about what is wrong about economics and the politics behind it, then you are deliberately blinding yourself to what is wrong; when that kind of thinking is prevalent, it actively prevents positive change, and is harmful.

It is hard to properly read up on and learn what is wrong with economics, but digging your head in the sand is actively harmful; pointing out what is wrong is not all doom and gloom, it should be encouraging people to push for change, once they see that the way things are now is not an inevitability, and can be made far better if knowledge of the problems and necessary reforms was made more prevalent.