There are a few subjects that are guaranteed to start rows. Public sector pay is always a dead cert. Stimulus is another one. And, of course, relative poverty; as in ‘Ireland suffers from a high level of relative poverty’. There are any number of views on this matter, usually quite heated. The ESRI report, ‘Poverty [...]

In a couple of excellent recent posts on Progressive Economy Michael Burke and Michael Taft look separately at two pieces of analysis of the current economic situation for Ireland by the European Commission and find that all is not as we are often led to believe.
How Unique is Ireland’s Economic Crisis?
In Michael Burke’s post he suggests that [...]

Some arguments I just don’t get. For instance, if I were an owner or manager of an enterprise that sold goods and services into the domestic economy (that’s most enterprises) I would be concerned at falling consumption. After all, if people cut their spending, my sales fall. If people are worried about holding on to [...]

David Begg’s suggestion that the target date for returning the Irish budget to Maastricht compliance (that is, bring the annual deficit to below -3% of GDP) be postponed for four or five years certainly did get a response. Even Chairman Colm McCarthy felt moved to pen his thoughts on the suggestion (he wasn’t terribly enthused). [...]

John McHale of NUI Galway has produced an outline for a fiscal plan. It is well worth reading. It’s a serious treatment. It’s also an unnerving treatment. For it has the capacity to wreck the Exchequer’s finances with little ‘stimulating’ effect on the economy.
On the way to presenting his fiscal plan John makes some highly [...]

However, given the enormous scale of the problem, it would be fanciful to suppose that it can be solved without at least some reductions in public spending, and anyone who doubts this cannot really be regarded as a serious participant in the public discourse on the matter.’
Well, that put us in our place. Not only [...]

Here is my challenge to the real devaluationists. Will any of them take it up? Real devaluationists claim that, since we can’t devalue our currency, we must devalue other inputs into the economy. Wages feature prominently as in cutting wages will increase our competitiveness. Many of these ‘real devaluationists’ are grouped around Irisheconomy.ie (Alan Ahearne [...]