Discussion

1. Comment by: malachy steenson

   Dec 6th 2011 at 15:12

   See ACRA magazine here

   http://cedarlounge.wordpress.com/2011/12/06/household-charge/#comments

2. Comment by: BRIAN CARROLL

   Dec 13th 2011 at 14:12

   Article I wrote from today’s Daily Mail, for Jpeg see my Facebook above

   I’m giving my household charge to Achill-henge… so send in the bailiffs if you must, Enda
   By: Brian Carroll

   I’VE decided that I will not be paying the €100 household charge introduced in the Budget and I hope thousands of you will follow suit.

   Enda Kenny patronisingly informed us all last week that the economic mess was not our fault. He told us sacrifices had to be made because we are spending €16billion a year more than the State is taking in. I agree with him that sacrifices have to be made but I disagree that none of us is to blame.

   Our entire economy was predicated on a property bubble. This bubble was encouraged and perpetuated by a system of tax reliefs for property developers, which created 19,000 Irish millionaires by 2008. It also created so much employment that one in five people in this country ended up in jobs directly or indirectly sustained by the construction industry.

   Meanwhile ordinary taxpayers attempting to buy houses had to drown themselves in 35 years of debt to match the fever pitch of the market place. The banks queued up with 100 per cent mortgages, allowing their senior executives to become millionaires and property developers themselves.

   At the same time, the Revenue took in billions in stamp duty - €4billion in 2006 alone. This stamp duty, paid by the ordinary taxpayer, was used between 2000 and 2008 to create 55,400 public sector jobs. In other words, instead of improving our hospitals, or our schools, Bertie Ahern tripled the public sector pay bill, all the while engaging in the farce of social partnership and benchmarking to buy votes and re-election.

   Farce The only way that these public sector jobs could be sustained was if property prices didn’t crash, ever - something which would be a global first.

   But Bertie Ahern told cynics to commit suicide. Charlie Mc-Creevy told us to drink champagne.

   Brian Cowen publicly drank it, by the neck.

   Enda Kenny is wrong - there are lots of people to blame for the mess we are in, but the ones paying the most to shave the annual €16billion deficit are the mugs who paid the stamp duty, and took out 35-year, 100 per cent mortgages to put a roof over our children’s heads.

   I paid more than €600,000 for my four-bedroom house in 2006. I’m lucky - it’s only dropped in value by around €200,000. I don’t mind repaying the mortgage. It’s money I borrowed, so I have to pay it back.

   But my wife and I also paid €100,000 in stamp duty to the Government. Nobody likes to pay €100,000 in tax, but it would more palatable if the money was used to improve public services instead of funding benchmarking for public servants, increasing pensions and pay for politicians, and increasing social welfare payments to the highest rates in Europe.

   Instead of tackling waste in the public sector, or widespread social welfare fraud (5 per cent of people claimed not to be able to get work in the Celtic Tiger era), the Government has yet again avoided these sacred cows and instead hit ordinary working families with indirect taxes. The property tax is made all the more egregious by the symbolism of the victims of a property crash paying for the sins of those who caused it. As if funding the bank bail-outs wasn’t enough salt in our wounds. My wife now commutes 140 miles a day to work. Without her, we couldn’t pay the mortgage, as my income is down at least 50 per cent since 2008.

   I will be 68 by the time my mortgage is finally paid off, and I will have no pension. After already paying €100,000 in stamp duty for a house that’s dropped in value by twice that amount, I’m now expected to pay a yearly tax to live in it! Well, you can send the bailiffs, Enda, because I’m not paying it.

   The Government claims this charge is ‘interim’ and will be replaced by a property tax in 2014 based on the value of the house. Any fool will tell you that this measure will be as ‘interim’ as the tax levy introduced to pay for the AIB/ICI banking crisis in 1985.

   And from 2014, this new household charge will rise every year until it meets €1,600 a year per household - the amount the ESRI, the Government-sponsored economic think-tank, believes is fair. Last week, Environment Minister Phil Hogan said it was a fair tax as it only came to €2 a week. Once the ESRI gets its way, it will be €30. Every week, for the rest of your life.

   At least in the UK, the property tax covers refuse charges. Here we pay them separately to private contractors. And from 2014, we’ll be paying water charges as well. Phil Hogan says that the household charge will raise €160million a year to ‘improve local government services’.

   Here’s another way to get the money Phil - implement the recommendations of the Local Government Efficiency Review which said that €500million could be saved annually by simple reforms which wouldn’t even involve pay cuts. Of course, that would involve tackling the unions and, as Pat Rabbitte discovered - when he was slapped down by his party leader for suggesting the Croke Park deal might have to be revisited next year - that’s a no-no.

   Disobedience The first bill for the household charge will be due from January 1, 2012. If householders haven’t voluntarily paid it by March, they will get a penalty notice, adding 10 per cent to the bill. My advice is to take that penalty notice and forward it to Achill-henge, Achill, Co. Mayo.

   This is where Joe McNamara, the so-called Anglo Avenger who drove a cherry picker up to the gates of Leinster House, has built a symbolic structure to mark how property has brought us all to our knees. I suggest that we all send our household charge penalty notices to that address and on St Patrick’s Day, hold a bonfire as a symbol of our civil disobedience.

   There are only 1.1million PAYE workers in this country. Those 1.1million workers pay for the 440,000 on the dole, and contribute to the wages of the 302,000 public sector employees. Our numbers are dwindling as every day more people join the dole queues.

   Retail sales have fallen every week now for 45 consecutive weeks - if that doesn’t tell Enda that people are suffering and struggling to make ends meet, what will? Yet he’s added 2 per cent to VAT, increased motor taxes, fuel charges and carbon taxes. These are all taxes on families, yet Leo Varadkar has the audacity to claim that not one family will be worse off in their pay packet come January 1 because (nod and a wink) the Government hasn’t increased income tax.

   The minister also told us recently, with his tourism hat on, that we should all take a holiday at home. Well then, what we need to do now is take that €100 property tax and use it instead to have a day-break to Achill where we can personally burn our penalty notices.

   I’d suggest that St Patrick’s Day is as good a day as any.

3. Comment by: CMK

   Dec 14th 2011 at 00:12

   Brian, I think you might have been better to stick to the Mail and not bother posting that piece of crap here. You do know, I presume, that you’ve posted this to the Irish LEFT Review? Do you know the difference, politically, between the Left and the Right? You’re probably one of those legion of right wing Irish journalists who don’t believe ideology matters when every word they write or utter has ideological roots as clear as day to many on the Left.

   You do understand the kinds of articles that are posted here on a daily basis? You do understand the types of critique discussed here? Like, I know where the Daily Mail is coming from, and that’s why I avoid it like the plague. The tenor of the rubbish you’ve posted here suggests you’re not a regular reader. What are you: a freelancer delighted to get a couple of hundred words in the Mail and wanting to share your good ‘fortune’ with the world?

   Your noxious crap is a classic in the divide and rule genre. A campaign to beat the Household Tax can only successful if there is respect and solidarity. You clearly lack basic respect for workers in the public sector (who’ll likely provide the backbone, in all senses of the word) for the campaign; you also clearly lack basic respect for those on social welfare. You probably believe they ‘choose’ of their ‘free will’ to get on the dole and ignore the hundreds of thousands of jobs out there just waiting to be filled.

   I know the Mail probably wouldn’t give you your cheque unless you packed in the requisite number of right wing fallacies, but I’d suggest you spend a day or two reading Michael Taft’s ‘Notes on the Front’ blog as a useful corrective. But, really, as not getting paid to post on ILR you could at least have excised those fallacies and lies before posting here. You’d have guaranteed yourself a more respectful response. But as it is, it’s both barrels time.

   I’m sorry you’re in very rough financial circumstances, but you’ll have to join the queue with the rest of us.

   There are two genuinely, touchingly, stupid sentences in your piece:

   ‘This stamp duty, paid by the ordinary taxpayer, was used between 2000 and 2008 to create 55,400 public sector jobs. In other words, instead of improving our hospitals, or our schools, Bertie Ahern tripled the public sector pay bill, all the while engaging in the farce of social partnership and benchmarking to buy votes and re-election.’

   Now, you’d probably win a philosophical prize for packing so many non-sequiters into such a small space. But do you seriously think that schools and hospitals can be improved and outcomes for service users improved by not employing extra teachers, nurses, medics, support staff? Like who the f**k does the work in these settings? Robots? That’s where, ya know, increase in pay went: extra staffing and resources. And of course you’ve probably forgotten the year on year 5% inflation for much of the bubble period? No? Doesn’t ring any bells? No matter.

   Do you seriously think that no public sector workers paid stamp duty on an overpriced house during the bubble? Don’t tell me that you seriously believe public sector workers were exempt from stamp duty? Actually, do tell me, I need a laugh. And of course, you managed to stuff in the classic of the dopey, unreflective right-winger genre: that public sector workers aren’t tax payers.

   You then better yourself by rolling out the other classic right wing trope: ‘widespread social welfare fraud’. As I said go to Notes on the Front for another view on that all:
   http://notesonthefront.typepad.com/politicaleconomy/2011/11/this-claim-is-getting-tiresome-minister-of-state-fergus-odowd-has-said-that-the-government-believes-it-can-save-600m.html

   All in all, I have to say, I’m glad the state stung you for 100 grand in stamp duty, any fair minded person would surely think that cash was put to better us paying a special needs assistant’s salary (or three) than enriching another, by the evidence of this article, oafish right-winger. As if we don’t have enough of those. And they haven’t created and then exacerbated this crisis.

4. Comment by: BRIAN CARROLL

   Dec 14th 2011 at 09:12

   CMK
   I thought it would be interesting to get your side’s views - in the same way as Joe Higgins writes a column for the Daily Mail, not something anyone would call a natural fit. Unlike you, I do read people I disagree with to test my own beliefs and occasionally learn a thing or two. Instead of jumping in with two feet maybe you should be prepared to open your mind to failings on your own side of the argument. People on the left who are against the household tax have their own reasons I’m sure - mine, as set out in the article are simple: I paid for my house, and I paid stamp duty, so I’m not prepared to pay rent to the State for the rest of my life. This is probably an argument that a lot of people on your side of the house might agree with.
   Here’s what they might disagree with, but it’s my opinion: The Household Charge is another easy example of Michael Noonan’s low-hanging fruit - hit tax-paying families again to cut down the €16bn deficit instead of tackling waste in the system. Are you seriously suggesting there is no waste in the public sector? Are you suggesting that the 9,000 public sector employees who earn over 100k a year, and will retire on 50,000 a year, deserve to do so while the rest of us get screwed.
   The 55,000 public sector jobs created by Bertie Ahern between 2000 and 2008 were not all frontline staff as you suggest and if your argument is that they improved either the hospital service or the quality of schools I’d suggest you haven’t been in either for a long time. In fact he created a raft of middle management positions - hence we’re still waiting for 8,000 highly-paid middle managers in the HSE alone to receive proposals on a voluntary redundancy program me.
   Re-read the article and tell me where I once suggested public sector workers don’t pay tax. The difference is simple: public sector works pay tax on salaries that come out of state coffers. Private sectors workers pay tax on salaries not paid by the state. So one tax is reductive and the other adds new wealth to the state.
   Lastly, I could have posted under a fake name, or hidden behind some initials, and just posted the article in with some phony headline about this ‘noxious crap in the hatemail’, but I’m not afraid to have an opinion or to have it challenged. I agree with a lot of the proposals on your side - I would agree with an extra wealth tax on those earning over 100,000 for example, but just like there are frontline workers on 28k a year who can’t afford another cut, there are thousands on our side earning that and less who can’t afford more taxes either - especially on houses we already paid for.
   P.S. I can assure you I got over the first flush of pride at being published 17 years ago, but I realize in some quarters in this country its a crime to have a career.

5. Comment by: CMK

   Dec 14th 2011 at 13:12

   First up, Brian, you’re a professional journalist so I’d expect you to publish under your own name. There are a wide variety of perfectly valid reasons why people post anonymously on websites - I’m sure you can come up with a few yourself if you thought about it.

   I don’t know where you get the idea that I don’t listen to opposing views. Quite bizarre to infer that I don’t. Anyone of even vaguely Left wing views in this state is exposed, 24/7, to views that they disagree with. Every newspaper has an editorial stance that is right-wing; every radio panel discussion will be dominated by right-wing viewpoints; ditto for every TV discussion programme. I buy the Sunday Business Post, the Irish Times, the Sunday Independent (not the Mail, admittedly) I listen to Newstalk, I’ve read Hayek and Friedman. But you seem to be under the illusion that there actually exists a culture of debate in this society where argument will change minds and views can be shifted, and where all viewpoints will be given sufficient space and time to articulate their perspectives.

   That may exist at the individual level and in small group contexts, but at a political, cultural and media level there is no debate. Rather there is a facsimile of debate to hide the imposition of, and rigorous policing of, an orthodoxy that will not allow itself to be challenged in any substantive manner. That orthodoxy includes inter alia the following views: we must pay our bank debts in full regardless of the social costs which are far less important than our creditworthiness as a state; austerity ‘works’; we must cut wages to regain ‘competitiveness’; we must cut the public sector; we must not tax wealth or business; exploitation of our natural resources under state ownership is futile and foolish. Open any newspaper, or listen to any discussion on TV and radio about the current crisis and nearly every view expressed will be reducible to those handful of propositions. This orthodoxy has wrought crisis on this society and it looks increasingly likely that it will bring disaster. No matter how much evidence is accumulated to confront the orthodoxy - increasing unemployment, increasing emigration, public services at breaking point, economic growth stalling, debt levels rising, mortgage arrears mounting, rising suicide levels - the orthodoxy will continue to pound away at its core principles and ignore the human costs of those principles.

   And one of the key tools for supporting and enabling that orthodoxy is the one you deployed in your piece: pitting public sector workers versus private sector workers. Divide et impera. By the way, you explicitly argued, and you repeated that point in your response, that 1.1 million PAYE workers contribute to the wages of the public sector; public sector workers ARE PAYE workers. So, that’s a non-sequiter in your argument. Tell me, what would the costs be where every public service was privatised and supplied at full economic cost by a profit seeking private company? They’re starting to find that out in the UK: and it’s enormous. The UK state is contracted, over the next decade, to hand hundreds of billions over the odds to the private sector for the privilege of providing essential services to citizens that the state itself once provided. No right winger in this state ever seems to have thought through the consequences of his/her utopia of the abolition or severe downsizing of public provision and the public service and it’s replacement by private providers. It is guaranteed to be a costly disaster in both economic and human terms.

   There’s waste in every complex organisation – I’m sure you could find waste in the Daily Mail. Of course, if you believe that the provision of decent public services that must be provided in complex and continually changing settings, is by its very nature a waste, then that’s a philosophical viewpoint that it’s pointless arguing about here. Sure, let’s cap outrageous salaries in the public sector and equally outrageous pension arrangements. Let’s cap equally outrageous salaries in the private sector with a top rate of tax of 80-90%. Let’s institute a universal defined benefit pension system for all workers in this state, public and private.

   While we’re on the Mail newspaper group, perhaps you could let us know when the 5 page expose of Lord Rothermere’s taxation and domicile arrangements will be published. Now, THAT’S a waste, allowing the mega-rich live tax free by permitting the complex taxation arrangements that such these parasitic lifestyles depend on to continue. Strangely, I doubt if we’ll ever see that explored by the Mail, or any other newspaper for that matter. But that’s surely something worth investing your journalistic skills in exposing. Instead of another go at the public sector and social welfare?

   Finally, regarding front-line services and increases in staff numbers. Many of the back-office jobs created in the public service were to free up time for front line staff to dedicate their time exclusively to their area of competence, not to form filling and administration. Medical secretaries are the classic example, where medical consultants would not be able to function without adequate secretarial backup. But that backup is regarded as unnecessary bureacracy and so ripe for cutting. The result? That frontline consultants are spending hours trying to keep track of medical records and away from clinical duties.

   I’m glad you oppose the household charge and not going to pay. Fair play. But you’re not going to get far trying to stir up resentment against the public sector and those on social welfare.