One can only chuckle. Last year the pronouncements of rating agencies were treated as though they were written on Mount Sinai. Downgrades, or the threat of such, were interpreted by our high priests of deflation as demands to cut public spending. That’s what we did - big time; slashing public spending by nearly €9 billion [...]

There have been some outrageous and hilarious things said in this economic debate. I don’t know how economic historians will come to rank them. But surely at the top must be the claim that the rich have paid a ‘far higher price’ than other groups in society as a result of the economic downturn. You [...]

What would you say if a Government Minister, discussing Budget 2011, came on to a current affairs programme and said the following:
‘To increase economic growth, we intend to cut growth. To promote employment, we’re going to cut employment. And as for emigration - we don’t care if it increases. Indeed, the Government sees some upside.’ [...]

Yesterday afternoon TASC presented ‘The Minimum Wage‘ to the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Enterprise, Trade and Employment. During the presentation TASC Director Paula Clancy argued that any moves to reduce the minimum wage or JLC rates would represent what she termed a “double strike against economic recovery”.
This presentation follows on from TASCs ‘Square Deal? The [...]

I have to admire those who claim we must bring the low-paid into the tax net. I admire their chutzpah, their audacious willingness to flaunt in public their remarkable ignorance of the tax system. For the low-paid are already in the tax net - big time. Let’s go through the arguments and see if those [...]

Over on Progressive Economy Michael Taft says that progressives need to unite around a common analysis and respond to what appears to be the aspirational nature of many of our demands. Or as he put’s it:
“…to call for all manner of good things without specifying where we are going to source the money: why should [...]

Dan O’Brien from the Economist Intelligence Unit has been appointed economics editor of the Irish Times. He is someone whose opinion should be taken seriously, even if one doesn’t agree with everything he says. On last Sunday’s The Dunphy Show, Sarah Burke, one of our leading analysts on the health sector, argued for a stimulus [...]

The economist Michael Burke has an article in Tribune Magazine which makes the point, for a UK audience being sold the Conservative Party line, that austerity measures are economically counter-productive, and that during a period which has seen such a significant decline in private investment and consumer spending the last thing a government should do [...]

The IMF has suggested that the Irish Government’s growth projections are too optimistic and should be scaled back. So has the EU Commission. This has grave implications for the Government’s current strategy; if growth doesn’t come right, fiscal targets will be missed, debt will pile up, unemployment will remain high and living standards low. The [...]

Michael Burke and Michael Taft have a post on Progressive Economy which estimates the deflationary impact of cuts in government spending up to 2014 and examines how much the cuts will actually reduce our borrowing requirement and ultimately our deficit, which after all is what they are being put in place to achieve.
Using the ERSI’s [...]