Wednesday, Feb 8th 2012
Even before EU Finance ministers were due to meet today to discuss whether Greece needs to do more to reduce its deficit this year from 12.7 to 8.7 percent GDP, Jean-Claude Trichet was on TV demanding that Greece needs to take “extra measures” to ensure the credibility of their “turnaround plan”. These extra measures, a [...]
In this time when businesses are failing and people are losing their jobs and in some cases their homes, it may seem crazy to criticise economic growth. But sufficiency, sustainability and security are key needs of people and living systems all over the world, as we move into the rest of this century. We also [...]
Michael Burke | Who Benefits from Current Government Policy
According to Sean Quinn of the Quinn Group and Jim O’Hara of Intel, the most significant employers in the country, nothing is being done to prevent prolonged unemployment and mass emigration – clearly a situation that they consider needs to be avoided. So who is current government [...]
The Government has a plan. And, yes, you should be worried. The Government’s approach to fiscal stabilisation - namely, a deflationary approach - is often portrayed as ‘the only option’. Of course, it isn’t. There are other approaches, in particular those based on boosting investment and output in order to grow employment and, so, the [...]
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 the midst of one of history’s most severe crises of capitalism, there is no more apt time than the present to briefly survey the basics of Marxist economics. It would be beyond the scope of this short article to trace the development of the theory from the works of Marx up until the present [...]
The latest CSO Earnings and Labour Costs Survey
The CSO Earnings and Labour Costs Survey shows that average weekly earnings fell overall by 1.1% from €706.03 in Q2 2008 to €698.43 in Q2 2009. However, while there was a fall in the average unit cost of labour in the private sector, connected principally to the [...]
Below are recordings of some of the comments and questions that came from the audience at Thursday’s meeting on the budget (see below or here). Those making comments include Paul Dillon (Labour Party), Tom Redmond (CPI), Scott Millar (journalist and historian), Mick O’Reilly (ATGWU retired) and one man whose name I did not catch.
Below are recordings of the principal speakers at the CPI meeting on the Budget, which took place in the Merrigan Hall, Abbey Street, on Thursday. The speakers were Michael Taft, Cian O’Callaghan, Cathleen O´Neill, Eoin O’Broin, and Eugene McCartan.
They won. We lost. Get over it. Now let’s change it.
There are any number of outrages in the 2010 budget - large ones and a plethora of small ones that will only become evident when the details see the light. These will be dressed up in all sorts of fashionable clothes. My favourite is ‘this [...]
