Taxed to the hilt

If WhatsApp is social media then so is SMS.

Jesus christ, Im an environmentalist and while I agree some measures are essential, talking nonsense wont help, what is the alternative to your near fascist extremist green plan? is there a comprehensive public transport network? when is that going to materialise? what is the Green party solution? 2 wheels bad, 4 wheels baaaaad, We are better when Eamon Ryan is asleep, at least we hope he can do less harm that way, or does he wake up and realise how much he is paid and then foist some green knee jerk agenda on us. The world is screwed, we are way past how much CO2 has been introduced to the atmosphere and environment, but unless there is a viable alternative, crazy policies wont work.

So when we get rid of all the cars, will we actually be allowed on buses or trains, because the buses I see going about belch diesel smoke, maybe we should go back to an agrarian society like those nice chaps in the Taliban or ISIS want, extremist lunatics (I mean the greens).

we actually must embrace the perpetual deficit, as by not doing so, we become largely depended on credit to run our economies, which tends to lead to....(graph supplied!)

once again, governments are nothing like a household, period! by balancing the public books, it generally leads to, same situation as graph!

when a government runs a deficit, this money finds its way into private sector bank accounts, as this money is spent into the economy, pup payments etc. in an American context, this is what has happened when they ran deficits, its a similar situation here, again pup payments etc, again graph supplied

central banks are in a tricky position, if they raise rates soon, it will very likely induce downturns, maybe even recessions in many countries, i.e. rates may not raise too much in the very near future, i.e. borrowing makes far more sense than not borrowing right now, even though this can be problematic, as you explained austerity has been well proven since the dawn of time to be a completely reckless policy, doing astonishing damage to economies.

best of luck with taxing wealth, we re dead set on maintaining this status quo!

completely agree, and respected commentators have been advocating for such a fund for a long time, but it still hasnt been done, and it easily could be! theres very little will within our governments to truly change things

...again, running a government is nothing like running a household, when governments 'save', they in fact withdraw money from the economy, reducing the ability of the economy to engage in economic activities, i.e. transactions, it effectively slows the economy down, and then the economy requires the increase of the private sector money supply, the credit supply, to do the heavy lifting, which means the private sector must take on the debts to do so.

simply giving citizens more money to spend actually makes perfect sense, as it increases the public money supply, you ll actually find most, if not all of this money moves into private sector bank accounts, as its spent into the economy, hence why pup was so successful, as it kept many businesses open during covid, as the demand for new credit in the private sector dramatically fell, this public money kept things ticking over, it even created some jobs along the way, without which, many businesses probably would have gone bust.

yes, this new money, i.e. pup payments, came from deficit borrowing, but again, as explained above, if we didnt do this, the cost of not doing it, would have been far greater, i.e. business closures

best of luck with increasing taxes on higher earners, theres very little will to do that, as apparently, their gains trickle down, apparently!

@salonfire , well said.

Obviously most countries can't continue to run large fiscal deficits on and on.

Obviously public debt can't continue to rise and rise as a share of GNI.

Thankfully, the situation is not as bad as I feared, and the planned deficit is falling fast, thankfully.

I can't understand why some people seem to love more and more public debt.

We all know public debt is not the same as household debt.

That is not a rationale for supporting ever rising public debt.

You have the option not to use the private sector if you think they are wasting money cant say the same with our public sector now can we. Also most private sector companies would have hit the wall and have disappeared in the wind if they had anything like the debt and deficit that the last 3/4 governments has hoisted onto us and our kids and grand kids and quite possibly our great grand kids.

The difference being if a private sector remains inefficient the company will spot it and try to change it as in updating a process , firing and hiring and if that doesn't happen eventually the company hits the wall as the private sector is open to competition and in age where this is now global instead of just local if a company is not on the ball there not going to last long. The same cannot be said for the public sector change is way too slow in a lot of areas. A public sector employee can literally watch the clock for an entire career and come out with a nice little pension at the end further suckling at the public purses. Even with the numerous scandals and phuck ups we have seen in the public sector over the years we have seen very few sackings from the public sector.

Once again it wont change as the alternative of a decent transport network is not there for people to change to. They have put the cart before the horse. They should of built up the transport network then up the tax to give people the choice of a cheaper public option or a more expensive private option

Are you kidding the HSE has had an annual overspend for at least a decade and a half and the service has gotten worse I will leave the exception of Covid aside but the likes of queues for beds and treatments have gone through the roof (once again this was before covid hit) its like a bottomless pit, it needs to be re-organised root and branch to see where the money is going. Like one other poster put up the children's hospital build is snapshot of the overall mishandling of public monies that go into the public sector where no one knows why its the most expensive medical facility ever built globally and we apparently cant ask why it costs so much its all smoke and mirrors.

Anyone looking for more taxation just want the trough to be remain full for piggies to be eating from it. Time to get our spend in order as the middle to high income earners are paying too much for a p1ss poor return

Just your own opening paragraph about vested interested keeping their own interests going and asking the tax payer to pay more for the status quo to remain is exactly what is wrong with the country when it comes to our spend and our tax take. Until these vested interests are told to phuck off we should not be upping taxes in any area. The rest of your post is irrelevant with the exception of a comparison to Eir, who I agree offer a poor service but guess what you have a multitude of different vendors to change too as well as the option of not paying Eir for their service, now compare that to the HSE in how the general public interact with it we have not got the option not to use it or not to pay for it and we have no alternative. The Unions and other vested interest have for too long held way to much power in this country it has to be stated none of these people were elected by anyone in the country

I never said the private sector was bad or good I made the point you have choice. Your completely misunderstanding the role of the private sector property owners/developers/builders with a nations need for housing. This need should never have been the remit of the private sector to supply housing for poorer people that chunk of work should always have sat with the government of the day and they dropped the ball over the last decade and half. No one planned for the additional 1/2 million increase in population over the last decade in population we have living here. This is squarely the fault of successive governments and trying to demonize the private sector builders/renters for making a profit while playing by the rules that the government has set down is wrong. The government can change this with the stroke of a pen BTW. The main difference between both public and private is the choice. The choice of not having to pay for a service. I mean if you don't want to pay a certain rate of rent in a certain area of the country they can move to an area that is lower it may not be ideal for the person but we cant all just pick and choose where we want to live, unless you are on welfare of course and then you can request a place 15 mins from Mum or to be in house with a south facing garden. It beggars believe that the more money you pay in tax the less support/services and selection you seem to have.

Oh really?

"Ireland has the second-highest health spending ratio in OECD area which comprises of 34 mainly developed countries but it has some of the worst health outcomes among advanced countries." http://www.finfacts.ie/Irish_finance_news/articleDetail.php?Ireland-second-highest-OECD-health-spending-poorest-outcomes-506

"Ireland’s highly paid civil servants have been targeted by European Union bosses bank-rolling the country’s attempts to save the economy.

EU and IMF chiefs have launched an extensive probe into the outlandish wages earned by top Irish public sector workers.

...

The Sunday Independent reports that a series of recent surveys by government bodies has revealed that Ireland’s doctors, nurses, police and teachers are among the highest-paid public servants in the world." https://www.irishcentral.com/news/overpaid-public-servants-targeted-for-crackdown-by-imf-bosses-118733379-237378601

As a lifelong left thinking pot head i think it's time we went conservative right wing for a while, i recently got the dream job i've always wanted and it's f**ing useless , i should be loaded but Ireland is too expensive , this is not normal and we are accepting it as normal.

...and now we re back to the fundamentals of modern political and economic ideologies, light touch, self regulation, lassie faire, whatever you want to call it...

how far do we really want to push this? how wrecked do things need to be, for us to say enough!

I call it for what it is the fact that we are paying for a bloated, outdated and in a lot of areas not fit for purpose public sector. For years the taxpayer has seen their tax dollars diminish in the services that it once covered as an example refuge collection was a service you got for paying your income tax now we have to pay for that out of after tax monie. We see services to the poor that were once covered by your income tax also diminish - the current housing crisis. Yet people like you think the private sector are the ones doing this when nothing could be further from the truth. The government have the power to stop vulture funds buying up all the properties, they have the power to make insurance companies lower premiums, they have the power to put controls in place for finance companies. The government is supposed to be keeping an eye for the greater good but instead its all about power and how if they get into government their pay and pensions will shoot up. I said it on here many a time. Nothing will change until the sh1t politicians speak when they are trying to be elected is tied to their pay and what they get for a pension. As an example Sinn Fein will probably be in power next time and they are lying through their teeth with regards to having a solution to the housing issue.So we should be saying to Hairy Lou and Piercey that if they dont do it in the 4 years they get zero pension. But turkeys dont vote for xmas and as long as people like yourself think the private sector is to blame for our current situation when the watchdog and the people with the power to change it (the government) are not doing their job properly.

far :)

joking, i actually don't know , i just found out i've covid

sorry about that, wish you well

no we re not, we re a typical free market economy

swf's are a great idea, but based on the sale of fossil fuels is beyond dump, how does burning of oil not lead to increasing CO2 levels, this is beyond human dumbness!

yes, moving off fossil fuels is gonna be damn hard

central banks are currently stuck, they may not be able to increase rates for some time, as it would probably induce economic slow down, even recessions in some nations, and they know this, so...