Michael Burke’s common on Michael Taft’s post on progressive-economy@tasc re Service exports
In the late boom year of 2005 the Gross Value Added (GVA) of the building and construction sector was €12.9bn and industry ex bulding was €33.6bn (2009 National incomes and Accounts, Table 4). By contrast the GVA of 'Other services', which includes financial services was €67.6bn.
If we turn to the separate Input-Output tables, the 3 categories of financial services (finance, insurance and related) comprised €32bn.
These are very large numbers and they are based on a fiction.
The CSO link provided by Michael Taft shows Ireland has a trade deficit in services with the US of some €17.4bn, whereas services trade with the Europe and the rest of the world is in surplus.
Donagh is the editor of Irish Left Review.
Contact Donagh through email: dublinopinionAtgmail.com
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August 22, 2010 9:59 am
In general the radical left are just bourgeois activists in disguise. They are there to help capitalism maintain itself. They fail to understand the elements of communist thought. They consider themselves left or radical left. Yet they continue to suggest to the Government and the working class how they have a better recipe as to how the Irish capitalist economy can be restored to a healthy state. But this is not the job of revolutionaries. It is not the job of revolutionaries to suggest how to improve or manage capitalism. People like Joe Higgins, Kieran Allen, Michael Taft et al constantly criticise the incompetent Irish government concerning the progress of the Irish economy. They suggest that it is this incompetence that has led to the fall in Irish economic growth. They fail to make clear that the capitalist economy is inherently contradictory and limited. It is this internal character of capitalism that has led to the global financial crisis –not greedy or morally depraved capitalists or even befuddled governments.
The SWM calls itself a marxist party yet it calls for increased state spending by the capitalist state as the way out of the crisis. For the SWM it is not social revolution that is the solution but increased spending.
Paddy Hackett