Our Taxes are far too low for Our Expectations of Public Services

WE could cut the waste from our public services there is quite a lot our health service has had money thrown at it year on year and its still fecked, more money being thrown at it is not going to solve the issue, some accountability for money being spent needs to be applied

I was not aware that VAT, excise duty, VRT, motor tax etc had been abolished. I even pay a tax for having certain facilities on my bank account. The latest scam is the sugar tax.

You are correct that FF/FG have an obsession with cutting income tax. It’s essentially vote buying done in a slightly cleverer way than it used to be.

The tax burden in this country is very high and increasingly cleaves to a regressive right wing agenda. Indirect taxes are the most unfair on the poor.

I agree with you as regards getting rid of the welfare subsidies for Big Tech.

Yeah its 40billion its not insignificant I agree, but people pointing at banks who have incurred 1/6th of our debt and blaming banks on all of it paints over the reality that we have borrowed an awful lot of money for day to day spending and when that is added to the increase in taxation and we are over taxed the question has to be asked where is this money being spent

Those people are often getting thousands per month from the government in HAP, dole, child allowance, single parent etc.

They're not going to find jobs. Even if they were, it's unlikely they have skills or experience that would make them more employable than other applicants.

The govt won't reduce HAP. We had protests for months over rising homelessness, which is why you have councils up and down the country buying houses for those on the housing list.

We have protests over the costs of childcare, so child benefit is only going one way. Same with cost of living and dole payments.

Cutting welfare to the bone won't make people become model citizens. The best the govt can do is put the training and education there, then hope some take it. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink.

In the scheme of things we do get better and better each year.

Ireland's GDP.

Irish GDP is the most misleading/dishonest statistic going. Even our own CSO no longer uses it as a metric as its so far removed from economic reality.

"Leprechaun economics" is what the EU called it.

Here is the CSO's modified GNI

Way way off GDP which is almost 200% what it was in 2007. GNI* has gone up to ~120% of the 07 peak.

And the most recent surge is largely due to EU covid stimulus (wait till you see 2022s figures)

Regarding GDP or GNI, that is not a reflection of life in Ireland.

You can't say that Ireland in the depths of the 2012 recession was the same as Ireland in 2003, or that Ireland in 2019 was boomier than Ireland in 2007. Although the GNI says it

The experiences of people in no way reflect these charts.

24 hr public transport? dream on! Even in countries like France and Germany, considerably wealthier than us, they don't run PT for 24 hrs. Urban rail is usually stopped or severely limited for noise reasons/maintenance/security in the early hours of the morning.

With regard to water charges in European countries, they evolved because a lot of European countries had their water infrastructure destroyed in wars and had to rebuild them from the ground up. So, after their countries settled down to rebuild, water charges were brought in, even in socialist countries. Our water system was not destroyed, merely neglected. Same with public housing; most of Europe has had mass housing for decades and restarted such housing after WW 2 laid waste to so many cities and they were trying to cope with huge populations and masses of displaced persons. So, they literally started from the ground up. We didnt and the resultant mishmash of new and old housing in Ireland is the consequence.

Most people wouldn't begrudge the taxes they pay is if as you say they were getting the services for what they pay. Actually I would say people would pay a bit more if it meant that they could turn up at a hospital A&E and get seen and treated within a 2 or 3 hours instead of the 24 hour wait we have now. All people can see is wastage of their tax, it seems that by the time the money has been filtered to the actual service it is a pittance because of other vested interests getting their cut first.

there was a bust in the late 90s early 2000s also, and had it not been for covid and stimulus we were about to have one in 2020.

We may well still have another bust coming soon as warehoused VAT and rates and other debts begin to put pressure on SMEs