Fiscal Treaty: Alternative reason to vote NO

But its never going to happen quietly even though its what we HAVE to do....
Pity really...

there are several billion left in low hanging fruit, that could be cut! Now we all know the politicians dont want to get their hands dirty and lose potential votes, in fairness holding onto power, is all it is ever about!

http://www.independent.ie/national-news/sick-leave-in-civil-service-falls-by-68pc-when-pay-is-cut-3104659.html

http://www.independent.ie/national-news/bid-for-greater-scrutiny-of-councils-spending-blocked-3105328.html

why arent all politicians expenses vouched?

We love to complain, we love to ring joe duffy and blame enda for everything whilst at the same time going out and voting Yes. The Irish people you see are never wrong.

Nail on the head.

A no vote would be a kick up d arse for the establishment, and god knows we need one now more than ever!

Villa05 wrote: »

A significant portion of people are going to vote No, not for any of the reasons outlined already, rather, to cut off the funds to Ireland so that we cut the deficit immediately. A sharp shock as opposed to death by a thousand cuts. There is still a woeful amount of money being wasted by the establishment as you are well aware.

Why do we need a national consumer agency in the worst recession since the 30's, If you are not offering value you are out of business

Limerick regeneration: 140m spent already and not a housing unit built. 140m would go along way to refitting and upgrading the existing houses (providing much needed stimulus for the area) These regeneration areas have much greater green areas than what was built during the bubble. Use our criminal laws to deal with the known criminals that roam these areas.

Taxes are still too low, people are in trouble because of the debt they incurred not because there salaries are too low, Salaries are too high in most areas. Compare internationally

Let property prices crash and stop using taxpayers money to try and delay the inevitable. Houses are for shelter, one of the first in Maslov's hierarchy of needs. Lower house prices aid competitiveness and will offset the debt we are passing on to the generations to come who will have to pay for it.

These are just some, You will be aware of many more.........

Would it be such a disaster if we had to cut the deficit overnight, It would put us in a far better bargaining position against our "masters" who, lets face it, have displayed little understanding of the problem.

Before I get lambasted as being a far right, well heeled developer/banker or such likes. I work in the private sector in a predominantly exporting company earning well below the average industrial wage.

My vested interest is my children and their future in this country, if there is to be one.

I agree.
As I said elsewhere a No Vote is about a chance to force fiscal resonsibility upon the government.
It's not about political persuasion, it's about balancing the books. And more debt is never the answer.

Zamboni wrote: »

I agree.
As I said elsewhere a No Vote is about a chance to force fiscal resonsibility upon the government.
It's not about political persuasion, it's about balancing the books. And more debt is never the answer.

I think many of us would like far more fiscal responsibility in this country but I've yet to see a believable argument that a no vote will actually achieve that.

golfball37 wrote: »

Excellent OP- Its my reason for voting NO also. Borrowing money to overpay politicians is bordering on criminal imo.

How much of the 14 billion deficit this year is going to pay politicians? 10 million? 20 million?

golfball37 wrote: »

Icelands grandchildren will not be tied to ridiculous austerity in perpetuity unlike our own. A clean break with a few years of hardship is the only patriotic thing we can do in the name of future generations.

I can't imagine someone understanding why we tied oursleves to this in 100 years time to pay Brian Cowan & Michael Fingletons pension.

I'd like my own grandchildren [please god] to be proud of me and not class me as a lackey.

For the love of jebus can we stop comparing a country that wasn't in the same position as Ireland to Ireland.

meglome wrote: »

I think many of us would like far more fiscal responsibility in this country but I've yet to see a believable argument that a no vote will actually achieve that.

A Yes Vote certainly won't bring fiscal responsibility. A No Vote might.
When nobody else will lend to you you don't have any choice but to sharply reduce expenditure.

Zamboni wrote: »

A Yes Vote certainly won't bring fiscal responsibility. A No Vote might.
When nobody else will lend to you you don't have any choice but to sharply reduce expenditure.

..or sharply increase income through taxes.

Villa05 wrote: »

A significant portion of people are going to vote No, not for any of the reasons outlined already, rather, to cut off the funds to Ireland so that we cut the deficit immediately. A sharp shock as opposed to death by a thousand cuts. There is still a woeful amount of money being wasted by the establishment as you are well aware.

Why do we need a national consumer agency in the worst recession since the 30's, If you are not offering value you are out of business

Limerick regeneration: 140m spent already and not a housing unit built. 140m would go along way to refitting and upgrading the existing houses (providing much needed stimulus for the area) These regeneration areas have much greater green areas than what was built during the bubble. Use our criminal laws to deal with the known criminals that roam these areas.

Taxes are still too low, people are in trouble because of the debt they incurred not because there salaries are too low, Salaries are too high in most areas. Compare internationally

Let property prices crash and stop using taxpayers money to try and delay the inevitable. Houses are for shelter, one of the first in Maslov's hierarchy of needs. Lower house prices aid competitiveness and will offset the debt we are passing on to the generations to come who will have to pay for it.

These are just some, You will be aware of many more.........

Would it be such a disaster if we had to cut the deficit overnight, It would put us in a far better bargaining position against our "masters" who, lets face it, have displayed little understanding of the problem.

Before I get lambasted as being a far right, well heeled developer/banker or such likes. I work in the private sector in a predominantly exporting company earning well below the average industrial wage.

My vested interest is my children and their future in this country, if there is to be one.

Then, personally, I would suggest a rethink of your analysis. The SF/ULA/Union claim that "austerity isn't working" may be both silly and startlingly irrelevant to the Treaty (or, if relevant, having exactly the opposite effect to their claim), but it's not based on fiction.

Austerity - that is, cutting the budget deficit - does have a negative effect on the economy. If the government is borrowing €15bn - thereby racking up public debt - it is also channeling that money first and foremost into the Irish domestic economy through spending, public sector wages, and social transfers. The €15bn it borrows, then, is a direct €15bn stimulus to the Irish domestic economy.

Removing that stimulus all at once results in a sharp contraction of GNP - that is, in more business closures, as businesses lose government contracts or the spending of PS wages or welfare cheques. That, in turn, means more job losses and a fall in tax take. Even assuming a straight 1:1 correspondence between the fiscal deficit and the resulting stimulus, you're looking at a roughly 10% fall in GNP. That's a bigger fall than we experienced as a result of the collapse of the construction sector.

What that means should be obvious - a new deficit. The new deficit should be smaller than the old deficit, but without further deficit cutting, it will not be stable - the effects of the original sharp contraction will knock on for a while, as businesses reliant on contracts or wages from the first round of failures go out of business in turn, and the domestic economy continues to contract. So the deficit will need to be balanced again, and then again.

The deficit is, in fact, a moving target. It's not something you can just balance as if it were a household budget and then that's that - instead, when you cut government borrowing and spending, you're cutting into the economy that supports state spending, and which state spending supports.

The "balance the budget" mantra makes exactly the mistake the anti-austerity mob like to accuse the government of making, and which the government is not in fact making - state budgets are not the same as household budgets. Come to that, even household budgets aren't without their effects on the wider economy - part of our problem at the moment is exactly that households are doing the same as the government, cutting their deficits and trying to reduce their debt.

I agree with the intention of balancing the State's budget, but it can't be done all at one go - not because there isn't the will to do it, or any of the other reasons usually trotted out, but because it simply cannot be done.

Both the anti-austerity position and the balance-the-budget-immediately positions are unrealistic. Both want things that cannot be done - the former cannot happen because we are already borrowing as much stimulus as we can, and there just isn't any further money for extra stimulus, the latter because sharper deficit cuts lead to sharper economic contractions lead to renewed deficits, not balance. The current gradual reduction path is the way between Scylla and Charybdis.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Taking the pensions of Mahon named crooks will save lives of people on trolleys or waiting lists, now that may be populist rubbish to you but its also true.

from today's indo...

HSE Cuts funding for life-saving heart patient programme

By Caroline Crawford
Monday May 14 2012
4 Comments
AN INNOVATIVE programme that has cut the mortality rate in heart patients by two-thirds is having its funding cut, a GPs' conference heard yesterday.

Findings from the Heartwatch initiative, which were recently published in the 'American Heart Journal', revealed that patients who participated in the programme had a much better chance of living.

It also resulted in a significant drop in the rate of hospitalisation among patients with established heart disease.

Set up in 2002, Heartwatch was expected to be rolled out nationally by 2009. However, despite its positive outcomes only 20pc of GP practices around the country are involved in the programme to date.

It is a GP scheme focusing on secondary prevention for patients who have suffered a serious heart issue or from significant cardiovascular disease (CVD).

It was set up in partnership with the Department of Health and Children, the health boards, the ICGP and the Irish Heart Foundation.

The initiative is now under further threat after funding to a number of practices in the Mid-West was pulled by the HSE, according to Prof Andrew Murphy of NUI Galway.

Prof Murphy told the Irish College of General Practitioners Conference in Galway that the initiative was "being gradually dismantled" by policymakers.

Insisting he did not accept that funding for the chronic disease programme was not available, he added: "Ireland's current approach to chronic cardiovascular disease management is uncoordinated, chaotic and inchoate."

The study involved 35 GP practices with 1,600 cardiovascular patients, 15pc of whom participated in Heartwatch.

After five years, 5pc of the study patients in Heartwatch practices had died compared with almost 15pc in the non-Heartwatch practices.

- Caroline Crawford

Irish Independent

fianna saor wrote: »

vote no, tell the bondholders to fvck themselves, say goodbye to the euro and bring back the punt, and be the rulers of our own destiny good bad or indifferent

Huh?

1. The bondholders have already pretty much been paid and replaced with official sector debt to our sovereign which we cannot default on without leaving the EU.

2. The six-pack already means that we have to follow the rules laid out in the treaty so we no longer "rule" our own destiny and voting No to the TCSG will not alter that, and

3. All a no vote does is makes the "bad" more likely than the good or indifferent.

Watch Greece - and how desperate they are to avoid a Grexit at the moment because they've done the math and realized that there's no good, only bad and ugly.

beeftotheheels wrote: »

Huh?

1. The bondholders have already pretty much been paid and replaced with official sector debt to our sovereign which we cannot default on without leaving the EU.

2. The six-pack already means that we have to follow the rules laid out in the treaty so we no longer "rule" our own destiny and voting No to the TCSG will not alter that, and

3. All a no vote does is makes the "bad" more likely than the good or indifferent.

Watch Greece - and how desperate they are to avoid a Grexit at the moment because they've done the math and realized that there's no good, only bad and ugly.

swampgas wrote: »

Rulers of our own destiny? What kind of drivel is that? Why not close the borders while you're at it, we can go back to subsistence farming and poverty.

Heaven forbid a small island stuck in the Atlantic with few natural resources should actually take advantage of EU membership. Yeah, let's throw away all the advances Ireland has made in the last 40 years and go back to something DeValera might have dreamt up on a bad day.

now your talking, leave the eu and put a clamp on immigration

SMASH THE UNIONS wrote: »

Okay, I see your point. But why does the above (in bold) have to be the case? We wouldn't need to borrow money if the necessary cuts were made. There is a phenomenal amount of wastage through quangos, public service wages, politicians' expenses, tribunals etc etc. I won't accept any tax increases until I see this wastage addressed.

If we vote Yes and Europe loans us the money, it will still be wasted on the above.
If we vote No, the government will have to pay astronomical interest rates on loans from the IMF, under their conitions. Therefore they are forced to address the wastage already occurring.

I'm all for more efficiency but this idea that I'd only pay my taxes if... (insert reason here) is nonsense. We are not a highly taxed nation and those who pay the majority of our income tax are the wealthy. So are you wealthy? If we take all that money out of the economy it would actually hurt us. Read Scofflaw's excellent post here.

Even if I accept (which I don't) for a moment that a no vote would lead to a cut in politicians salaries it would hurt those with the least the most. The people you want to suffer the most are the most insulated from the impact, it's be the low lying fruit that will suffer.

fianna saor wrote: »

dont forget foreign aid

Damn those actually poor and actually needy people. How dare they.

KyussBishop wrote: »

I'm still at the early stages of reading up and understanding of Ireland's position economically right now, and some parts of this article make good points (not specifically about Ireland) regarding what courses of action do/don't work:
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/05/michael-hudson-paul-krugmans-economic-blinders.html

It seems like the primary thing that needs to be done for Ireland, is a debt writedown to reduce the burden.
I don't think this has been done yet for Ireland, so what is the situation here and what would need to happen for this to become viable?

Also, how would the Fiscal Treaty affect the potential for this in the future? (if at all)

For a debt write-down, we would need it to be recognised that our debt is unsustainable, as Greece's debt was (and probably still is). Unfortunately, our debt is at the limits of sustainability, but is probably sustainable - admittedly, I've been saying this for a couple of years now, but it seems to remain the case.

"Unsustainable" isn't just a word meaning "painful", though. It means two things, one more than the other - first, debt in excess of an arbitrary limit of 120% of GDP is regarded as sort of unsustainable, although Japan has sustained levels of debt higher than this for decades.

Second, and more importantly, 'unsustainable debt' means debt that's on an upward trajectory with no expectation of reversal.

While Ireland's debt trajectory remains fragile, according to the IMF, it is not currently expected to be unsustainable in either sense:



So the short answer to your question is that if that graph changes as a result of external or internal events, and shows a constant upward pathway, we have unsustainable debt, and will require a debt write-down.

As to how the Fiscal Treaty affects this - directly, it doesn't. Any decision to write down debt would most likely, in Ireland's case, be the result of a decision to use ESM to recapitalise banks directly.

cordially,
Scofflaw

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

Wealthy or not, it is not unreasonable to object to taxation not on grounds of amount or proportionality, but on grounds of what it's being spent on.

I'm not saying it unreasonable. I'm saying most of us are under taxed now so whatever about efficiencies we are still going to have to pay more tax. We need to be going to our TD's about these efficiencies not voting against a treaty which won't do it.

meglome wrote: »

Damn those actually poor and actually needy people. How dare they.

you really think we can afford to be paying out around 700m?

fianna saor wrote: »

you really think we can afford to be paying out around 700m?

It depends whether you view international aid as a luxury we can't afford or as an obligation to meet our commitments to solidarity and justice. Ireland (and Canada I suppose) have stood as nations committed to peace keeping, leading the fight against global poverty, standing apart from those whose foreign policy consists of bombing the world into the shape they choose.

If you stick a flag on your backpack and walk across the world, whose flag is inevitably chosen?

fianna saor wrote: »

well to borrow your phrase i definitely view it as a luxury we cant afford. if you were in debt would you borrow money only to give a percentage you could do with, away. if people want to give money to assist in foreign aid by all means let them do it with their own money.

For all the whining here now (and god there is a lot of whining) we are still in the top few percent of all the people on this earth. Once you travel to countries where people are truly suffering it's very difficult to want to cut this aid funding. Perhaps it's a a bit of a burden for us but our burden is not even in the same league as the people who receive it.