Remember a few months ago, when ICTU proposed postponing the target year for Maastricht compliance to 2017? There was a widespread rending of garments and universal condemnation of this most irresponsible and reckless proposition. I recall an interview with our erstwhile Minister O’Dea who went apoplectic at the idea predicting economic Armageddon and the wrath [...]

Yesterday I spoke to Dr. Nat O’Connor, Policy Analyst with TASC and a regular contributor to Progressive Economy on the phone about the TASC autumn conference in DCU this Saturday. Nat explains how the perspective of TASC and those of the speakers differs from the more mainstream economists and commentators whose solutions on how to [...]

Ronan Lyon has written an instructive post on the ‘Thorny Issue of Teachers’ Pay’. So useful, in fact, that it was highlighted on Irish.economy.ie and in the Sunday Business Post. And boy has it stirred comments on both websites. Cutting to the quick, Ronan concludes that Irish primary school teachers are paid too much - [...]

One in four people you pass by on the street today have stated they would vote for Labour if an election were held today (well, not exactly - 17 percent opted for Labour, the 24 percent is a calculation based on excluding the undecided; and it was last Monday and Tuesday when the poll was [...]

The late, great monetary economist Hyman Minsky (1986:110), quoting Nobellist James Tobin, once wrote of economics theory that:
“the terms in which a problem is stated and in which the relevant information is organised can have a great influence on the solution”.
Minsky goes on to write:
“But the way the problem is stated and the identification of [...]