Do we pay too much tax for crappy services?

kippy

markodaly wrote: »

Do you not concede then that Unions and other stakeholders block reform and the ability to make the HSE and the health service at large fit for purpose?

Yeah, unions make it more difficult to reform because:
1. It's much more difficult(impossible almost) to fire staff.
2. It's much more difficult to redeploy staff en masse.
3. It's generally more difficult to reduce wages.
4. It's more difficult to amend employment contracts.
These are all standard in unionised environments.
But they do not "Block Reform" en masse - as I have already shown.

The electorates expectations (which would include union members and every other joe soap) are a big issue. Everyone wants a hospital in their back yard. Everyone wants a doctor within walking distance. This in turn drives policy and politics.

beggars_bush

I looked at my payslip this morning
28% gone on tax, prsi, usc.

I don't mind paying it once I know it's going to actual services and not to paying for national debt or some piece of art installation along a main road or something.

E.g. that the local library can buy books, the hospital is open and can treat me, the potholes are fixed etc


The people who complain about public services mustn't realise that you need admin people supporting all the frontline staff. Schools are probably the one public sector job where the vast majority of staff are frontline.
The amount of paperwork and other duties is increasing exponentially every few years it seems to me.
Paperwork and other duties just increase inefficiencies

markodaly

kippy wrote: »

You asked for examples of change. I gave a small portion of them. If the unions werent "interested" in that change - it wouldn't have happened

Now you're moving the goalposts. That's grand.
It's a pointless debate.

There is a lot of historcal revisionism going on.
Remember, this was the period of the crash, circa 2011.

Changes were forced in and negotiated in part. The increase of the working week was brought in and was negotiated in exchange with the agreement of the Unions to not cut pay further.

Now, the same Unions want to revert to the old style 35 hour week. Hardly the hallmark of a forward-thinking dynamic and modern organisation that wants to impliment the best standards in work and recruitment.

micosoft

kippy wrote: »

What's a 'business person'?

Somebody like Bill Cullen or Alan Sugar or Donald Trump.

Because delivering public services => Selling second hand Renaults.

kippy

markodaly wrote: »

There is a lot of historcal revisionism going on.
Remember, this was the period of the crash, circa 2011.

Changes were forced in and negotiated in part. The increase of the working week was brought in and was negotiated in exchange with the agreement of the Unions to not cut pay further.

Now, the same Unions want to revert to the old style 35 hour week. Hardly the hallmark of a forward-thinking dynamic and modern organisation that wants to impliment the best standards in work and recruitment.

You asked for examples, I gave examples. Of course there was negotiation - thats the point of a union.

I provided far more examples than just the working week one although that is the most straightforward one to point out.

Why wouldn't they want to revert to the 35 hour week. This is a change they are initiating and of course they are receptive to change once negotiated.

markodaly

markodaly wrote: »

There is a lot of historcal revisionism going on.
Remember, this was the period of the crash, circa 2011.

Changes were forced in and negotiated in part. The increase of the working week was brought in and was negotiated in exchange with the agreement of the Unions to not cut pay further.

Now, the same Unions want to revert to the old style 35 hour week. Hardly the hallmark of a forward-thinking dynamic and modern organisation that wants to impliment the best standards in work and recruitment.

you seem to think that unions should only want what you, a standard-issue small govt advocate (from the face of it on this thread) wants

now, its a fair way away from what the thread is about, although yes the fact that the public service is unionised is a factor in change being slow.

the fact that the public service is huge, not run by any one entity, based on non-profit measurables, obliged to provide services based on full coverage need and not what is profitable/efficient, subject to strategic planning over the course of decades where the vision must survive changes of government as policy drivers, yadda yadda yadda

you want it to be simple because all of your points are simple.

its not simple. that may never suit you, im sorry.

for current thread topic purposes, nobody is going to argue with you that the unions dont serve the public good, thats simply not their function.

their function is to represent members at the meetings where the other social partners are represented in turn

your focus on the union not playing any other part would be akin to me complaining that you arent volunteering to pay more taxes to cover public sector pay rises.

id like it to happen. you are against it. the govt aint asking me, but i have the union at the table.

you get a vote, you get lobby groups like IBEC and others, its all in the mix.

markodaly

kippy wrote: »

Yeah, unions make it more difficult to reform because:
1. It's much more difficult(impossible almost) to fire staff.
2. It's much more difficult to redeploy staff en masse.
3. It's generally more difficult to reduce wages.
4. It's more difficult to amend employment contracts.
These are all standard in unionised environments.
But they do not "Block Reform" en masse - as I have already shown.

You listed 4 compelling reasons as to why unions block reform just there, yet you think that unions have zero responsibility in the way our public service or run or should I say badly run.

Getting back to the OP here, this is what we are faced with. Paying tax for substandard services like health. We know it needs reform but for reasons outlined by you its neigh on impossible to reform it up to standard, so we just shrug and accept it, as the way it is.

The electorates expectations (which would include union members and every other joe soap) are a big issue. Everyone wants a hospital in their back yard. Everyone wants a doctor within walking distance. This in turn drives policy and politics.

This I can agree with. Everyone wants an airport, a hospital or a post office right next to them. Everyone wants reform and change until of course its their turn to be reformed or changed. Then its out on the picket line.

markodaly

Deleted User wrote: »

for current thread topic purposes, nobody is going to argue with you that the unions dont serve the public good, thats simply not their function.

This is the standard rebuttal to any questioning of union involvement in the public sector. That they are only representing their members' interest.

It is a way to absolve morally and politically any responsibility from the unions in regards to the state of our public services.

I note of interest that everyone is in agreement that the health service (to take an example) and HSE are not up to standard and that it needs work. Everyone agrees that unionised work environments are slow to change and reform.

But when it comes to the crunch, we get the same pandered response, that well unions do what unions do. "So what?"

To achieve better public services we need to neuter the power that unions hold over the government of the day to enact and execute reform when needed.
This is not 'small government' mentality, this is actually a pro-government mentality to deliver the best public services it can for the tax we contribute.

markodaly

markodaly wrote: »

This is the standard rebuttal to any questioning of union involvement in the public sector. That they are only representing their members' interest.

It is a way to absolve morally and politically any responsibility from the unions in regards to the state of our public services.

I note of interest that everyone is in agreement that the health service (to take an example) and HSE are not up to standard and that it needs work. Everyone agrees that unionised work environments are slow to change and reform.

But when it comes to the crunch, we get the same pandered response, that well unions do what unions do. "So what?"

To achieve better public services we need to neuter the power that unions hold over the government of the day to enact and execute reform when needed.
This is not 'small government' mentality, this is actually a pro-government mentality to deliver the best public services it can for the tax we contribute.

the parts you decline to respond to are very telling.

where does one even get a soapbox in this day and age

markodaly

Deleted User wrote: »

the parts you decline to respond to are very telling.

where does one even get a soapbox in this day and age

I am laying bare the hypocrisy at play here by all. Politicians, the electorate and Unions.

I lay the blame with the electorate really at the end of the day because they want opposite things at the same time, politicians lie to us and tell us that yes we can have everything we want all the time, and Unions stand in the way of any meaningful change and reform, unless we pay them off but sure they are only standing up for their members.

We had a classic example of speaking with forked tongues on this very thread by one of its most prominent contributors and I took him to task on it. Seems to have gone quiet lately with not much else to say after the fact though.

anyone else you want to blame aside from politicians, the electorate and the unions?

i dont think you are laying anything bare tbh man.

anytime somebody engages with you, you slide away from the complexity of the topic and pick the narrowest easy interpretation to attack in another broadside.

i dunno is that the vital service you seem to consider it, but i dont blame whichever poster you refer to above from tiring of it pretty quickly.

Sir Guy who smiles

johnnyskeleton wrote: »

The focus of government should be on slowly and proportionately making things better. If people are too dismissive of how the country is run, nothing will change IMO, as each fresh scandal will be met with shurgged shoulders and an "ah sure what do you expect" attitude. Which is kind of what got us here in the first place

Nail on the head.
Slightly more of us are slightly better off then people in a lot of countries. When you consider our small scale and lack or resources this is better again than we think.

Things could be better, yes, but a lot of places they are worse. We do like to feel hard done by!

Sir Guy who smiles

keithm1 wrote: »

Sorry I can’t personally fault any 1 person.every one feels there busy.
It’s the business model that’s inefficient.
I’ve worked as a subcontractor to both public and private sectors for many years,
If you brought me into an office floor blindfolded with no signage 9/10 times I could tell you if it was public or private within minutes

I don't know what kind of subcontractor you are, so this is not a personal attack, but one of the inefficiencies in tax spend is because suppliers to the public sector will charge a lot more than they would to private sector clients.

The most egregious ones I've seen are builders and associated tradesman doing work for the OPW. Once they know it's an OPW job the price shoots up, because they know they will get it.

Sir Guy who smiles

quokula wrote: »

Having lived in other parts of Europe, Ireland does have a pretty poor tax-to-service ratio. However I don't think I've seen any evidence that the public sector or projects are generally any more wasteful here, or that more privatisation would magically solve anything. Every country has its issues with projects over running and services not meeting expectations.

I think it's mostly down to circumstances, like the legacy of being a colony. We'd have far better public transport for our money if an army of slaves had built a network of rail tunnels under Dublin in the early 20th century, but that didn't happen. Really we've been playing catch up from no adequate infrastructure over the last half a century. On top of that we're a fairly sparsely populated island at the edge of the continent, which doesn't lend itself to getting good value for money either.

Your last line is a huge point; economies of scale are not available to us.

And that applies to the private sector too; things are cheaper in the shops in UK because more people are buying them.

James Brown

Sir Guy who smiles wrote: »

Nail on the head.
Slightly more of us are slightly better off then people in a lot of countries. When you consider our small scale and lack or resources this is better again than we think.

Things could be better, yes, but a lot of places they are worse. We do like to feel hard done by!

You contradicted your own message there. Nail on the head is seeking to improve not 'sure it's worse elsewhere' (paraphrasing) which was a disgusting sentiment coming from Varadkar regarding homelessness IMO.

Vast amounts of tax payer monies are wasted year on year, if I were a right wing, fiscal conservative I'd be looking for government to change tack and fast.

kippy

Matt Barrett wrote: »

You contradicted your own message there. Nail on the head is seeking to improve not 'sure it's worse elsewhere' (paraphrasing) which was a disgusting sentiment coming from Varadkar regarding homelessness IMO.

Vast amounts of tax payer monies are wasted year on year, if I were a right wing, fiscal conservative I'd be looking for government to change tack and fast.

I don't disagree but what do you mean by "Wasted"

James Brown

kippy wrote: »

I don't disagree but what do you mean by "Wasted"

Emergency accommodation; Hotels, rent subsidies, Children's hospital over run, Irish Water, Reilly's clinic allocation, broadband plan, Sitserv deal, selling houses to vulture funds and buying back off them, shady inappropriate behaviour by Noonan, (details may come out over the years) buying houses at market rates to use as social housing because we've no stock, Garda using tax payer money for paperless contracts... I'm missing a few I'm sure but all possible to address or avoid.

none of that is good. not sure how it compares to anywhere else but its not defensible, obviously

now, in context, why do you think it is that ireland continuously votes in the type of public servant that seems prone to this type of thing?

because wishing we had perfect people in a perfect system is not as useful as looking st what we have, what is actually normal in a country like ours, and analysing where we are different and why.

that would be an interesting thread/topic.

markodaly

Deleted User wrote: »

anyone else you want to blame aside from politicians, the electorate and the unions?

i dont think you are laying anything bare tbh man.

anytime somebody engages with you, you slide away from the complexity of the topic and pick the narrowest easy interpretation to attack in another broadside.

i dunno is that the vital service you seem to consider it, but i dont blame whichever poster you refer to above from tiring of it pretty quickly.

Well, turning back to the OP's question then, do we pay too much tax for crappy services.

Are you for example happy with the health service, and if not why not?
What would you change?

Sir Guy who smiles

Matt Barrett wrote: »

You contradicted your own message there. Nail on the head is seeking to improve not 'sure it's worse elsewhere' (paraphrasing) which was a disgusting sentiment coming from Varadkar regarding homelessness IMO.

Vast amounts of tax payer monies are wasted year on year, if I were a right wing, fiscal conservative I'd be looking for government to change tack and fast.

By that I didn't mean "Ireland isn't the worst, we don't need to get better".
I meant "we have problems, which we should try to cure".

The whole attitude of "Ireland is the worst country in the world and I won't get involved or try to help because one shower is as bad as the other" leads to people not getting involved, just moaning online and in the pub about how they would sort things out, but never getting up off their fat arse and implementing their wondrous solutions.

Johnnyskeleton said " If people are too dismissive....nothing will change" and that is what I said "nail on the head" to.

James Brown

Sir Guy who smiles wrote: »

By that I didn't mean "Ireland isn't the worst, we don't need to get better".
I meant "we have problems, which we should try to cure".

The whole attitude of "Ireland is the worst country in the world and I won't get involved or try to help because one shower is as bad as the other" leads to people not getting involved, just moaning online and in the pub about how they would sort things out, but never getting up off their fat arse and implementing their wondrous solutions.

Johnnyskeleton said " If people are too dismissive....nothing will change" and that is what I said "nail on the head" to.

The trouble with 'it's not the worst' is it makes way for sub-par politicians and parties, who get voted in because they are deemed the lesser of two evils or a safer bet than the unknown. It has us in the boom and bust cycle with a liberal sprinkling of cronyism and sweet deals occasionally peppered with fraud.
We waste an awful lot of money and we do shrug it off eventually once the lights stay on.

beggars_bush

markodaly wrote: »

Well, turning back to the OP's question then, do we pay too much tax for crappy services.

Are you for example happy with the health service, and if not why not?
What would you change?

Anytime I've used the health service it's been perfectly fine
Now, if I needed elective surgery for something I might find it different due to the ability of citizens with private health insured to skip queues to see specialists and access the hospital servicea

Old diesel

Matt Barrett wrote: »

Sir Guy who smiles wrote: »

By that I didn't mean "Ireland isn't the worst, we don't need to get better".
I meant "we have problems, which we should try to cure".

The whole attitude of "Ireland is the worst country in the world and I won't get involved or try to help because one shower is as bad as the other" leads to people not getting involved, just moaning online and in the pub about how they would sort things out, but never getting up off their fat arse and implementing their wondrous solutions.

Johnnyskeleton said " If people are too dismissive....nothing will change" and that is what I said "nail on the head" to.

The trouble with 'it's not the worst' is it makes way for sub-par politicians and parties, who get voted in because they are deemed the lesser of two evils or a safer bet than the unknown. It has us in the boom and bust cycle with a liberal sprinkling of cronyism and sweet deals occasionally peppered with fraud.
We waste an awful lot of money and we do shrug it off eventually once the lights stay on.

THIS - exactly this......

We have a culture where we complain about but in terms of politics and how we view politics - we are not creating a pathway to create change.

We get more upset over say the county GAA team underperforming then we do about the health minister underperforming.

Literally the only thing keeping Leo in office at the moment is the strong public support for the backstop.

markodaly

Old diesel wrote: »

THIS - exactly this......

We have a culture where we complain about but in terms of politics and how we view politics - we are not creating a pathway to create change.

We get more upset over say the county GAA team underperforming then we do about the health minister underperforming.

Literally the only thing keeping Leo in office at the moment is the strong public support for the backstop.

Only if you think the health minister actually runs the show in honesty? The Dept. of health is just one stakeholder of many who runs the Irish health service.

If you want the health minister to actually run things, then give them carte blanche to fire and change things completely.

Sir Guy who smiles

Okay so Matt Bennet and Old Diesel, you both agree "someone" should do "something",
what have you two done?

James Brown

Sir Guy who smiles wrote: »

Okay so Matt Bennet and Old Diesel, you both agree "someone" should do "something",
what have you two done?

I vote every time I've the opportunity, I've marched on issues I felt strongly about and I was activate in local politics, but so what? I pay taxes and don't repeatedly vote for the same party despite any obvious failings.
'What have you two done?' is apologist for the actual policy makers isn't it really? It's a step below, 'sure the others are worse' isn't it?
We have poor professional policy makers paid well, who canvassed for the honour, who seem no more interested than giving a passing interest to major crises IMO for fear it may disrupt 'the way we do business'.

Old diesel

What you want is a wider cultural shift that'd far beyond what I as an individual can do...

Just this morning a local radio newsreader specifically referred to Corks "subpar" performance against Kilkenny yesterday.

He wasn't even quoting anyone - he literally just reporting the fact Cork are out of the hurling following the loss to Kilkenny.

This reflects the fact we literally have higher expectations of GAA county players in Cork then we do of say Simon Coveney who is a minister.

McGiver

Folks, an outsider's view, just a constructive criticism, I strongly believe that outside POV is highly beneficial, especially for 'insular' circumstances. Apologies for a long-ish post.

The notion of "we pay high taxes in Ireland" is a myth.

Irish Tax-to-GDP ratio (incl social security payments) is the lowest in EU27 at 25% (see first attached screenshot - the red line).

Now, as we know Irish GDP is grossly inflated due to institutionalised tax avoidance facilitated by Irish Governments and the Gov itself (as well as the EU and IMF) had to strop using GDP as a base indicator for measuring other economic indicators because of this, hence modified GNI (gross national income is used) is being used. Current GNI is roughly 33% lower than GDP i.e. Irish GDP is about 150% of Irish GNI. In all EU countries bar Luxembourg GDP is roughly (+-10%) the same as the GNI.

So if we recalculate the ratio to Tax-to-GNI, this moves the figure to about 35% which is still about average in EU (see screenshot - green line).

Just an example of direct taxation including social security and medical insurance, let's look at one example of a single earner, average salary, no special tax credits.

Ireland - €45,000 gross, €33,500 net, total tax to employee is 26%; if I add decent private medical insurance to compare with other public/free of charge EU healthcare systems then we are at 28% total 'tax'

That's not high in EU standards at all. In fact, it's still one of the lowest. See the attached Real Income Tax screenshot calculations which also estimates VAT impact - Ireland is 3rd lowest after Malta and Cyprus, two tiny economies of British descent and hence, surprise, surprise, low-tax, laissez-faire quasi-tax havens, so Ireland is clearly one of the lowest taxed. In the report they calculate the tax burden to be about 31% in Ireland, which is not far off from my estimate above, because they include VAT impact. Compare that with Germany at 52%, but they get superb public services incl free healthcare & education, infrastructure, public transport.

The thing is that there is a lot of nonsensical talks in Ireland about Irish gov giving free money to unemployed etc, which is in large scheme of thing in terms of budget impact negligible. Ireland Gov is posing as a social democracy, but in fact isn't. It's a corporate tax haven organising large scale tax avoidance (estimated as the highest globally by some economists) and compensating that loss of revenue with average personal income taxes, higher VAT and other hidden stamp duties and/or taxes directed at individuals, and ending up with both quite low revenue/budget and below average public services for the tax payer. No, I don't say corporate tax should be higher and that it would yield higher tax revenues, just that Ireland isn't a social democracy and that corporate taxes should be fair i.e. all corporations should pay the same % rate, even if low, it's not OK for an SME to pay higher % effective tax rate than for an MNC.

So the personal taxes are not high in EU comparison at all. The problem is governance and how they are used. For example, HSE is a total shame, second highest spending per capita in OECD and way below average in overall performance, in fact on the European Health Consumer Index (very decent assessment based on several criteria) Irish healthcare is on 22nd place amongst the Balkan countries. Corruption, mismanagement and inefficiencies are the core issues in Ireland, not income tax rate. These are in my opinion all due to socio-cultural issues and will take long time to fix. Transparency and overall e-Governnace approach is way behind Northern Europe at least.

Overall, one could say that for what we pay we don't get much, but we don't really pay much in fact either, so one can't expect much, but on the other hand we get bad value even for what we pay overall. Some say "because government is wasteful with our taxes, it's better not to give them more and actually give them less so that they can't waste it" - but this "Reaganomics"/"Thatcherism" are also not a solution; "small state", very low-tax, deeply privatised, laissez-faire Ireland wouldn't work well and result in socio-economic breakdown in Ireland and it's not the way forward. The US and the UK were permanently damaged beyond repair by this attempt and I think Ireland should stay away from this concept. If you think Bus Eireann and government are bad in managing services then go to the UK and look at the mess and high prices in privatised public transport or higher prices in privatised water supply, and then compare with Germany.

Moderate social democracy with reasonable market regulation and limited government intervention, with a balance between employee, employer and government in the labour market, with focus on transparency and efficient governance is the way forward for Ireland. That's what has been proven successul in Nothern and Central Europe. Thatcherism and ultra-neo-liberalism has failed.

One exception of the otherwise generally low taxation is Capital Gains Tax (CGT), now this is totally highest in Europe and a total joke at 40% - that's short of robbery. Just to compare, Denmark 28% and tax heaven (not haven ) France is 34.5% and Sweden 30%; UK is at 18%. The EU average must be around 25% or so. Irish CGT should be either reduced or be progressive with a lower rate capped for individual low scale investors (i.e. for people not for corporate funds).

TLDR: You pay less, you get less. You vote in incompetent, corrupted people, you get mismanagement. Unless ingrained institutionalised political corruption is eliminated, evidence based approach and general efficient approach in governance is adopted, we are unlikely to get significantly better public services even if we pay more taxes. If people want better public services, it needs to start with a political culture reform, be directed at transparent governance, eliminating corruption & inefficiencies and then increase in personal and/or indirect taxes. Higher taxes without filling the holes in the budget and removing corruption won't work - that's my take on it. Also, I think RoI governance is too centralised and more autonomy, esp. budgetary, should be passed to local authorities.

Disclaimer: I hold a degree in business and I'm a Social Democrats member. Just so that it's transparent.

McGiver

Old diesel wrote: »

What you want is a wider cultural shift that'd far beyond what I as an individual can do...

Just this morning a local radio newsreader specifically referred to Corks "subpar" performance against Kilkenny yesterday.

He wasn't even quoting anyone - he literally just reporting the fact Cork are out of the hurling following the loss to Kilkenny.

This reflects the fact we literally have higher expectations of GAA county players in Cork then we do of say Simon Coveney who is a minister.

Very true. I think that some part of the "political fatalism" in Ireland as I call it i.e. ranting but then voting the two parties in again and again, is the direct result of the FG/FF duopoly itself. It leads to political apathy and disillusionment. Also, I think political engagement is generally low in Ireland, beyond participation in GE.

markodaly

McGiver wrote: »

TLDR: You pay less, you get less. You vote in incompetent, corrupted people, you get mismanagement. Unless ingrained institutionalised political corruption is eliminated, evidence based approach and general efficient approach in governance is adopted, we are unlikely to get significantly better public services even if we pay more taxes. If people want better public services, it needs to start with a political culture reform, be directed at transparent governance, eliminating corruption & inefficiencies and then increase in personal and/or indirect taxes. Higher taxes without filling the holes in the budget and removing corruption won't work - that's my take on it. Also, I think RoI governance is too centralised and more autonomy, esp. budgetary, should be passed to local authorities.

Disclaimer: I hold a degree in business and I'm a Social Democrats member. Just so that it's transparent.

Seeing as you fairly and honestly state that you are a Social Democrats member, and the SD's favour Scandinavian services (from the last election), would they also favour Scandinavian taxes, especially income taxes and property taxes?
It's a genuine question, as I do not want to pick fights about this.

Ireland has a very odd and unbalanced income tax system. Almost 45% of workers do not pay any income tax, yet for earnings over €34,500 are taxed at the guts of 50%. It means that low-income people pay virtually no income tax and the income tax burden is worn especially by middle income and higher income people.

If we are to follow a Swedish system as an example, everyone would be paying income tax and the lower income people would actually be worse off, than middle-income people.
This is another example of finding an Irish solution to an Irish problem when you step back and look at it, it makes no sense at all. But no TD is going near it cause, votes....