The domestic economy is headed into a double-dip recession according to the ESRI.  And that’s just the beginning of the bad news.  Government ministers and certain commentators will put it down to the Eurozone crisis (‘we’re doing a good job, hitting our targets, it’s those darned Greeks, and Italians and Germans‘) but the fact is we [...]

The Minister for Finance has said there was a need to have ‘an informed debate’ on the issue of the proposed VAT rises, and ‘not simply resort to rhetoric’.  No one would disagree except that only a day later the Minister admitted, in response to a query by Fianna Fail’s Michael McGrath that the Government did not [...]

This is an article by Patrick Nulty, the recently elected Labour TD which was published yesterday in the Mail on Sunday.
Even though we are stuck with the EU-IMF bail-out, the Minister for Finance has made it clear that the Government is free to choose between different tax, spending and investment policies. We may have [...]

The Dublin Council of Trades Unions’ March Against Austerity tomorrow (12 Noon from the Garden of Remembrance) is taking place against a rising European and global awareness of the power of the top 1 percent.  So what about our own home-grown 1 percent?  How much wealth do they own - wealth that translates into economic and [...]

This article was written by John Ross in 1996 at a time when political debates in Britain, stimulated by the beginning of the process to create the single currency after the Maastrict Treaty, were focused on whether or not the UK should join the new single currency. The article concludes that not only is it [...]

Government Ministers are floating all sorts of horror options (medical card fees, closing hospital  beds, cutting education grants and Child Benefit, etc. etc.) while at the same time insisting this is the only alternative to income tax increases. I’m not so sure.  So I thought it might be helpful to gather [...]

DCTU
March Against Austerity
Saturday November 26th @12pm
Meeting at the
Garden of Remembrance

We’re into the great expectations-management game again.  It happens once a year, just prior to the budget.  ‘Proposals’ are leaked or rumoured.  The media - colluding in this annual exercise - chase around for stories.  TDs, commentators, and people potentially affected are lined up for comment.  No one is any wiser but it fills column [...]

This was originally written for Progressive-Economy
The Minister for Finance’s comments justifying VAT increases is deeply worrying for it evinces either considerable unfamiliarity with basic economic facts; or considerable indifference to such facts in pursuit of a particular agenda.  Here’s what he had to say on RTE (22 minutes in):
‘It (the VAT increase) will apply to everybody [...]

Introduction: a pattern of dependency
The collapse of the Irish economy has come as a particular shock to many people, at home and abroad, because of its seemingly remarkable success in the preceding years, the period of very rapid economic growth that saw the country, from the early 1990s onwards, described as the ‘Celtic Tiger’.  However, [...]