Socialist Party's policies

marienbad

Jolly Red Giant wrote: »

You asked for evidence that the elites pay feck all tax - I provided it.

The fact that Google use a variety of tax avoidance measures does nothing to mitigate the fact that they are paying feck all tax in this country.

No I didn't actually - but no matter . The reality is that the Irish Government with the consent of the vast majority of the Irish people are conspiring with American multinationals in massive tax avoidance schemes .

There is no amount of massive lost revenue here. That is the incentive we offer them to come here - an island in the middle of the Atlantic instead of the heart of their marketplace like Germany . If you don't understand that then there is little point discussing it .

And I am still waiting your answer on Dell or is that another one to ignore ?

Permabear

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Jolly Red Giant

Permabear wrote: »

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The old - we can't tax the rich because they will take away their money - chestnut.

Isn't it wonderful how the neo-liberal hacks are so willing to bow to the blackmail of the rich - I am sure if you bend over a little further they would be more than happy to **** you harder.

Iwasfrozen

Jolly Red Giant wrote: »

The old - we can't tax the rich because they will take away their money - chestnut.

Isn't it wonderful how the neo-liberal hacks are so willing to bow to the blackmail of the rich - I am sure if you bend over a little further they would be more than happy to **** you harder.

Demagoguery and homophobia, nice.

Permabear

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VinLieger

Jolly Red Giant wrote: »

Here you go -

http://www.independent.ie/business/irish/google-pays-just-014-tax-in-seven-years-28945199.html

Actually you specifically referenced the rich as in rich people, are companies people now in your socialist paradise as well?

CramCycle

An employee for Google in Dublin who earns more than me pays more tax than me FACT

Nothing that Jolly Red Giant has said changes this or even hints at it.

Valmont

Jolly Red Giant wrote: »

The old - we can't tax the rich because they will take away their money - chestnut.

Isn't it wonderful how the neo-liberal hacks are so willing to bow to the blackmail of the rich - I am sure if you bend over a little further they would be more than happy to **** you harder.

I don't think it counts as blackmail when someone threatens to keep what is rightfully theirs in the first place.

alaimacerc

coolemon wrote: »

Saying the fractures are over hyped is quite different than saying they have no influence.

The problems of the left are less to do with "the split" (which is a second-order concern in a PR system) than with not enough voting for them. That's a pretty fundamental difficulty that voting for a "more radical" left party does little to address.

The right can fracture and still hold power. The left need unity even to become a significant quantity.

The multiplicity of parties on the right serve them the usual psychological end of allowing people to think "enough of this shower! I'm voting for radical reform!" ... and then vote for essentially the same thing, with a different Civil War hangover, or "trading as" makeover.

Beginning to think we're less likely to see a "realignment" into meaningful left-right choices as a contest over the next couple of elections between the CW two to be at least nominal "anchor tenant" in government, and another between various ad hoc groupings (not necessarily the Ross or Creighton ones, but they certainly seem to continue the trend) to prop them up.

Permabear

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BoJack Horseman

Permabear wrote: »

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Indeed, lots of faux anger & noise, terrifying alternative vision though.... (But they keep mute about the nitty-gritty).

It's worth wondering what will happen to these parties when the economy recovers. If they couldn't gain an electoral foothold during the biggest financial crisis in the history of the state, what can they do under normal economic conditions?

Well, in real terms, they have increased their vote.

2007 GE: 26,082
2009 LE: 40,292
2011 GE: 60,195
2014 LE: 62,997

So, the 2014 locals may well be the nadir of their efforts, time will tell.

If they are going to break 4% of the vote, several more name changes may be needed!

PopePalpatine

So, I take it dodging corporation tax isn't something to be worried about, because of the magic of trickle-down economics.

marienbad

PopePalpatine wrote: »

So, I take it dodging corporation tax isn't something to be worried about, because of the magic of trickle-down economics.

You are not dodging it if it didn't exist in the first place.

Yiikes

Is there anywhere to view the Socialist Party's policies online?

BoJack Horseman

Yiikes wrote: »

Is there anywhere to view the Socialist Party's policies online?

I thought it would be an easy find on their websites, but (not surprisingly).... Quite tricky.

AAA: No policies.... Just anti-water crap.
SP..... Nothing.
SWP: Some articles on Marx, that's about it.
Sinn Fein: Slim pickings, a few sections, a couple of hundred words each & little detail, the best of a bad bunch.

But.... They are noisy, so that makes up for it.. doesn't it!

SwiftJustice

Yiikes wrote: »

Is there anywhere to view the Socialist Party's policies online?

They want to nationalise the banks, jack up Corporation Tax, eliminate entrepreneurship and somehow create 1000's of jobs.

http://socialistparty.ie/2011/02/socialist-party-election-manifesto/

BoJack Horseman

SwiftJustice wrote: »

They want to nationalise the banks, jack up Corporation Tax, eliminate entrepreneurship and somehow create 1000's of jobs.

http://socialistparty.ie/2011/02/socialist-party-election-manifesto/

Everyone should read this.

Its a work of art.

hmmm

BoJack Horseman wrote: »

Everyone should read this.

Its a work of art.

Is there any other Socialist party, anywhere in the world, that wants to write off property debts for private owners?

For Forks Sake

SwiftJustice wrote: »

They want to nationalise the banks, jack up Corporation Tax, eliminate entrepreneurship and somehow create 1000's of jobs.

http://socialistparty.ie/2011/02/socialist-party-election-manifesto/

You know what that needs?

More !

Exclamation !

Marks!

Yiikes

BoJack Horseman wrote: »

I thought it would be an easy find on their websites, but (not surprisingly).... Quite tricky.

AAA: No policies.... Just anti-water crap.
SP..... Nothing.
SWP: Some articles on Marx, that's about it.
Sinn Fein: Slim pickings, a few sections, a couple of hundred words each & little detail, the best of a bad bunch.

But.... They are noisy, so that makes up for it.. doesn't it!

Sinn Fein do have a budget (sinnfein. ie/files/2014/Pre-Budget_October2014. pdf Sorry new user remove spaces) . If supply in the rental market was bad now this budget would destroy any incentive to actually be a Landlord, reintroduction of the second home tax at €400 and a deduction of mortgage relief from 75% to 60%.

Its a give away budget.

SwiftJustice wrote: »

They want to nationalise the banks, jack up Corporation Tax, eliminate entrepreneurship and somehow create 1000's of jobs.

An economics transition year student could write a better socialist manifesto. It has no figures not even for their much loved wealth taxes which seem to pay for everything. I have heard P.Murphy say that multinationals are already heavily invested here so they would have no choice other than just put up with increased taxation. Wishful thinking and no evidence to back up this claim. Along with the idea of simply nationalizing Dell's Irish division, they seem rather... out of touch.

Yiikes

hmmm wrote: »

Is there any other Socialist party, anywhere in the world, that wants to write off property debts for private owners?

There was an interview between Paul Murphy and Pat Kenny on a similar question of "where do you have to go to find your model?" at 9 minutes.

newstalk. com/player/home/The_Pat_Kenny_Show/The_Pat_Kenny_Show_Highlights/71657/is_it_time_for_antiwater_charge_protesters_to_pay_up

(sorry space in link)

BoJack Horseman

Interesting interview.

Free houses, free food.... All paid for by someone else.

As a relatively low income earner I should rejoice..... That or laugh at what kind of chumps does this Murphy chap take us for.

SwiftJustice

I don't know why anyone would vote for these nutjobs and why they would let them anywhere near their bank accounts.

It must be driven by a rejuvenated, democratised public sector, together with public ownership and democratic control of the banking system to fund public works and direct credit to small businesses.

http://socialistparty.ie/2013/10/budget-2014-the-socialist-approach-2/

alaimacerc

SwiftJustice wrote: »

I don't know why anyone would vote for these nutjobs and why they would let them anywhere near their bank accounts.

Because private sector has worked so well of late! (Wait, do we even have a private banking sector? More like "semi-state", given the government's shareholding...)

Iwasfrozen

alaimacerc wrote: »

Because private sector has worked so well of late! (Wait, do we even have a private banking sector? More like "semi-state", given the government's shareholding...)

Government socialization of private debt is the cause of our current problems.

VinLieger

SwiftJustice wrote: »

They want to nationalise the banks, jack up Corporation Tax, eliminate entrepreneurship and somehow create 1000's of jobs.

http://socialistparty.ie/2011/02/socialist-party-election-manifesto/

The complete lack of any specifics on how this will all be achieved just fascinates me.

Permabear

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CramCycle

VinLieger wrote: »

The complete lack of any specifics on how this will all be achieved just fascinates me.

It reminds me of what life was like before Google and smartphones. I could walk into a pub with no knowledge or background in the topic of conversation, listen to the conversation, pick out key words, names and phrases. Then I could join in, sounding like an educated scholar on the subject, so long as I didn't stutter and said it with conviction, and I didn't need anything to back me up when I spewed forth hyperbole of epic proportions.

Unfortunately for them (and myself) such behaviour doesn't cut it anymore,

FreudianSlippers

Permabear wrote: »

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I have no objection to our corporate tax rate personally; I would however, like to see that tax actually collected rather than this situation where the buck gets shifted around the globe and they pay nowhere. That isn't a unilateral decision by Ireland though.

BoJack Horseman

FreudianSlippers wrote: »

I have no objection to our corporate tax rate personally; I would however, like to see that tax actually collected rather than this situation where the buck gets shifted around the globe and they pay nowhere. That isn't a unilateral decision by Ireland though.

No fan of avoision either.

However, Ireland's effective corp tax rate is something like 11.5% vs the effective rate of 7.8% paid in France.

The Irish situation of foreign earnings funneled through Ireland earns little, but also costs nothing so is of benefit (though the gov said those loopholes are coming to an end).

Yiikes

BoJack Horseman wrote: »

No fan of avoision either.

However, Ireland's effective corp tax rate is something like 11.5% vs the effective rate of 7.8% paid in France.

The Irish situation of foreign earnings funneled through Ireland earns little, but also costs nothing so is of benefit (though the gov said those loopholes are coming to an end).

The Knowledge Box will replace the Double Irish . irishtimes.com/business/economy/knowledge-box-tax-rate-likely-to-be-5-1.2064954

alaimacerc

FreudianSlippers wrote: »

I have no objection to our corporate tax rate personally; I would however, like to see that tax actually collected rather than this situation where the buck gets shifted around the globe and they pay nowhere. That isn't a unilateral decision by Ireland though.

The tax level is, though, and "competitive" tax levels and "competitive" facilitation of creative accountancy are of a piece, to my mind. The first step being part of the multilateral solution is to stop being part of the unilateral problem.

Permabear

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alaimacerc

Permabear wrote: »

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Obviously quotes because There's No Such Thing, so by definition "contributing" to it is excessive! (And logically impossible, but no more of that.)

To paraphrase Jon Stewart from last night: remember, corporations are people, too. Just that they're sociopaths.

Why's the thread on the SP filled with ardent Randroids, and the thread on Libertarianism has nothing but bleeding-heart socialists? (I suppose because it's more full to slag off one's ideological opponents than it is to hang around when you're the one taking the beating...)

Dyr

The nice thing about this thread is that you have trotskyites and libertarians arguing about economics

It's a bit like watching two wolves arguing about sheep farming.

alaimacerc

Bambi wrote: »

The nice thing about this thread is that you have trotskyites and libertarians arguing about economics

It's a bit like watching two wolves arguing about sheep farming.

That's the odd thing, the Trots left the building a while ago. When was the last post here by a died-in-the-wool (boom, boom) SP supporter?

FreudianSlippers

Permabear wrote: »

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I'm not sure I'd go 0% but I'd certainly go very low if we collected it 100%.

Permabear

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Yiikes

Found these online after a bit of looking. Pretty hard to come by and only found by fluke on reddit ireland.
"Real Jobs programme by Paul Murphy"
d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/paulmurphy/pages/56/attachments/original/1393242432/Real_Jobs_Programme240214.pdf?1393242432

"2014 budget of the SP"
issuu.com/socialistparty/docs/budget_all_in_one_layout_1

What do you guys make of them?

alaimacerc

Yiikes wrote: »

Found these online after a bit of looking. Pretty hard to come by and only found by fluke on reddit ireland.
"Real Jobs programme by Paul Murphy"
d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/paulmurphy/pages/56/attachments/original/1393242432/Real_Jobs_Programme240214.pdf?1393242432

"2014 budget of the SP"
issuu.com/socialistparty/docs/budget_all_in_one_layout_1

What do you guys make of them?

Good find! Terrible format, though. Seriously, an eight-page brochure as a *Flash* file? Crazeh. Kudos to anyone that manages to convert it to PDF, or to plain text. (If it's in Google's (irony!) cache, it might have been autoconverted by them.) As it stands it's extremely hard to read.

But on a quick skim through:- they have four main measures: a wealth tax, more income tax, corpo tax, and a transactions tax. The second one is fair enough, though memo to anyone in a couple each earning €55K: you're The Rich. And they're not just saying "third band", like SF, they're proposing a range of measures on people above that household income level. Unspecified, though: I guess they don't have SF's lavish toner and researcher budget yet.

The other three might as well be "tax a ball of smoke". If you want to tax mobile wealth, you'd have to do it on an international basis. Granted a somewhat less cookie-cutter right-wing government in Ireland could stop being such a notable example of the problem, but there is no unilateral solution on those.

Oh, and they're repudiating debt according to the cover, but I'm not find the detail on that in the leaflet. Compare and contrast to Greece, as and when we find the specifics of this.

feargale

While not totally agreeing with Joe Higgins, and being wary of his Trotskyite history, I thought he had many pertinent things to say. However, his acolyte Murphy has shown himself to be a totally immature àrsehole a propos the water protests, and the bad behaviour attaching to same, and Ms. Coppinger hasn't been far behind. I now see them, not as part of the solution, but as part of the problem.

jank

13 euro Min wage.. WTF?
They may as well rebrand themselves as the unemployment party with that carry on.

Putting "Democratic" or "Democratised" before a word does not defuse that word.

Also, "taken out of private ownership". Do they mean the state issues CPOs for the toll roads and IFSC HEDGE FUNDS? Or does the state steal them?

Icepick

Yiikes wrote: »

Found these online after a bit of looking. Pretty hard to come by and only found by fluke on reddit ireland.
"Real Jobs programme by Paul Murphy"
d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/paulmurphy/pages/56/attachments/original/1393242432/Real_Jobs_Programme240214.pdf?1393242432

"2014 budget of the SP"
issuu.com/socialistparty/docs/budget_all_in_one_layout_1

What do you guys make of them?

Does he actually think that defaulting and then collecting additional billions from people and companies would work? That the economy wouldn't just implode and all these rich people and corporations wouldn't just avoid paying said taxes in the given fiscal year and leave asap? Does he not realize that this would quickly stop foreign investments from the corporations and people he wants to get all this money from?
Or is it just a lie for the simpletons that may vote for him?

Cisco100

Socialist party policies......it''s like taking religious beliefs seriously in a scientific debate.

Permabear

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Iwasfrozen

Permabear wrote: »

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".org.uk"?! Well, they've lost the Shinner vote. :P

For Forks Sake

Permabear wrote: »

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phantom_lord

In a country where 1/3 of workers don't pay income tax, 1/3 of the population in receipt of social welfare payments, 50% of the population are beneficiaries of social welfare payments, and workers on the AIW are taxed at a marginal rate of over 50%, surely there's no need for a socialist party?

Ren2k7

The Socialists and their genetic clones the Socialist Workers Party really are quite insane. Nationalise Dell?! I loled quite a bit when I first heard that. These people if they ever got a sniff of power would utterly destroy Ireland, just as Syriza are in the process of doing to Greece at present. Thankfully they splinter and fracture so often there is very little chance of them entering government here any time soon. We should be thankful they continue to be utterly inept and useless.