It is quite difficult to comprehend the credibility granted to the economic establishment in terms of defining the options that we can adopt to address our economic problems. This is all the more extraordinary when considered against what can only be described as the worst reputational performance by any set of associated professions in history. [...]

Kevin Doogan in his excellent book, New Capitalism? correctly points out that employment is the achilles heel of right-wing economic analysis.
You can’t model jobs - either they are there or they are not.
If you follow work, and keep focused on the jobs, then more realistic appraisals of the actual dynamics of the economy start to [...]

It’s strange how certain things stick in your mind. I remember very well reading the newspapers while on a weekend away in early October last year. It was during that bizarre time in the lead-up to the IMF/EU/ECB fiscal kidnapping and just after Olli Rehn had announced that Ireland was a low tax economy, and [...]

TASC did something quite unusual, even revolutionary: they looked up the facts. With all the unsubstantiated claims about labour costs, ‘Myths of the Irish Crisis: Wages and Competitiveness‘ is truly fresh air in a stale debate.  Here I reproduce the data from Eurostat which TASC uses to show that Irish labour costs in low-paid sectors [...]

A basic income is an income universally and unconditionally granted by the state to all on an individual basis, without means test or work requirement. It is a form of minimum income guarantee, also known as a citizens’ income or social dividend. It differs from state payments that now exist in various European countries in [...]

The April edition of the Socialist Voice is out. You can view it in PDF here, or read it on the Website here.
The articles this month are:
* Stress tests needed for working people! [NL]
* Anglo-Irish Bank records historic losses [NL]
* A tale of two Europes [NC]
* Workers in struggle
* Workers’ rights under sustained attack [EMC]
* [...]

I’m usually not partial to terms like ‘class war’ but readers might be able to provide an alternative description to what is happening.
First, we find that AIB employees were informed over the airwaves that there would be 2,000 redundancies plus with no guarantee that it will all be voluntary. A spokesperson from SIPTU - which [...]

Michael Burke has a post on Progressive Economy which shows how much we are really going to have to pay for these bank recapitalisations that never seem to be enough. It’s essential reading for anyone interested in whether or not Ireland’s debt level is sustainable, never mind just, given the ongoing hollowing out of the [...]

Also, a separate website, organised by Repudiate the Debt: nodebt.ie
You can also join them on facebook: www.facebook.com/people/Repudiate-TheDebt.

Let’s play a game. Let’s auction off a Euro coin. These are the rules. The Euro goes to the highest bidder. The losing bidder, on top of losing out, has to pay the highest amount they bid. So, the first bid is for 1 cent, hoping to make a 99 cent profit. The next [...]