Irish Times

[anton pulisov]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

We also kind of embraced certain elements of the EU freedom of movement and movement of capital. People left in bad times, people came when times were good. This has helped keep our social welfare bill down in the really terrible times, but also we imported large numbers of young people when times were good.

Jettisoning unemployed people is no way to run a country, but I've been down this road with you before.

[Borracho]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

Ireland's Wage Slip, by Michael Taft:

http://www.broadsheet.ie/2016/05/31/irelands-wage-slip/

You're not going to believe this, but it seems the already well-off are getting wealthier while the rest of us can go and shite. Imagine!

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

antoine polus wrote:

We also kind of embraced certain elements of the EU freedom of movement and movement of capital. People left in bad times, people came when times were good. This has helped keep our social welfare bill down in the really terrible times, but also we imported large numbers of young people when times were good.

Jettisoning unemployed people is no way to run a country, but I've been down this road with you before.

Very few people leave because they are unemployed. Most Irish people who leave are either employed, or students pursuing further education. The impact on the unemployment figures comes from people taking their places. And there is literally nothing that Ireland can do about emigration other than try and provide more jobs and better conditions.

Irish people speak english and are able to move to Major english speaking economies with great ease. when times are bad here they go to find better opportunities elsewhere, and when things improve here, people don't leave, and people come back.

People move around in pursuit of better economic opportunities. This isn't a policy failing. This is the point of free movement of labour within the european union. It's just the way that the world is now. We have a very relaxed attitude to people moving here in large numbers even when times are bad.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

Borracho wrote: Ireland's Wage Slip, by Michael Taft:

http://www.broadsheet.ie/2016/05/31/irelands-wage-slip/

You're not going to believe this, but it seems the already well-off are getting wealthier while the rest of us can go and shite. Imagine!

Hmm. that also tells another story. the Irish economy is split into two sectors. There is the internationally traded sector, and there is the domestic sector. The first sector barely flinched during the recession in terms of jobs, or wages, or output. That sector is now growing at completely insane levels because of a huge expansion in investment. From the point of view of the measurement he is using, their wages hardly fell, so all of the increase over five years shows up.

Most people either work in the public sector where wages have been frozen, and the domestic private sector. This sector was hit very hard by the recession, and the reason that wages in these sectors is down over the last five years is that they kept falling in the middle, so any increase is only recouping some of the past losses.

You're looking at a relatively small, highly productive exporting sector of the economy, which helps provide the wages and tax income to support a much larger, less lucrative, but more job intensive domestic production and services economy.

Past experience would tell us that it takes time for sustained growth in the export sector to start the domestic sector growing, and when that happens, that's when wages start to rise across the board, and you get the largest increases in employment.

However because of changes in the taxation system, disposable income rose sharply across the economy.

[anton pulisov]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

Very few people leave because they are unemployed. Most Irish people who leave are either employed

These stats are misleading. If somebody has a degree in Biology and is working serving coffee before they emigrate, then they don't count as an unemployed emigrant. That they have a job doesn't matter. The state has failed to provide them with a future in a way that other small states in the EU are well able to do.

Ireland has by far the greatest level of emigration of all OECD countries. Nobody else comes close. You can look at that as fully embracing the free movement of labour, or you can look at that as abusing the free movement of labour as a safety valve.

There are few things that annoy me more than people in living in Ireland going on about how great we are at emigrating, so I'll just leave it at that for now.

[Diable Rouge]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

We're going through the looking-glass, people! Labour introduce a Dáil bill on "workers' rights" - pray tell, what prevented them introducing such in the last five years?

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

What do you think?

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

These stats are misleading. If somebody has a degree in Biology and is working serving coffee before they emigrate, then they don't count as an unemployed emigrant. That they have a job doesn't matter. The state has failed to provide them with a future in a way that other small states in the EU are well able to do.

Compared to who? youth unemployment went from 25% in 1992, to below 10% in 1998 and stayed there until 2008. It went below the EU Average in 1996 and stayed there until 2008 Youth unemployment hit a peak of 30% in 2012, but is now at 15% and falling sharply.

youth unemployment has been generally higher in sweden for most of the last 25 years. Ireland's youth unemployment rate was below holland, between 1993 and 2008, and they're back in line again. And before you say it's all down to emigration, it is worth pointing out that number of people employed in ireland increased by 50% in that time frame.

Youth unemployment has been much less of a problem in Ireland than virtually everywhere else in europe for most of the last 20 years.

And I don't think that Irish people are great at emigrating. They are however used to it, and large numbers of people move to and from this country in good times and bad. Given that for the last century we have had a free movement pact with the UK, share a common language and for most of that time effectively a common currency, it would be more accurate to view Ireland and the UK as having a common labour market, much like the north of england has with the south.

When one region does well compared to the other there is a flow of people. It happened in the sixties to a degree, and also in the seventies, and it happened again between 1995 and 2008. But even when times are amazing, a substantial number of people leave anyway. 75,000 Irish people emigrated during the last three years of the boom. I did. it had nothing to do with a lack of opportunity here. Most of the people I know who went to england were gone long before the bust, and they were all from dublin, and they all lived at home through college.

The thing is that the only thing that a government can really do about that is to encourage economic growth that leads to the creation of jobs. And the last government did that, so emigration is dropping fairly sharply, while immigration in the form of new arrival, and returning emigrants is increasing.

It's not clear what the last government could have done about this, other than try and restore the economy and jobs market as quickly as possible. i.e. adding 150,000 jobs over the last three years.

[anton pulisov]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

Youth unemployment has been much less of a problem in Ireland than virtually everywhere else in europe for most of the last 20 years.

Being unemployed in Ireland is a bigger problem than being unemployed in other countries.

In Sweden you don't have to emigrate. The benefits are good enough and access to education generous enough that you can improve your CV and eventually get a decent job when the economy picks up. You can emigrate if you want, but you don't have to. In Ireland there is not much of a choice.

But we've had this discussion before.

[Diable Rouge]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

The Awesome Berbaslug!!! wrote: What do you think?

Precisely nothing - they had Ministers in key portfolios, and the numerical weight in TDs. Varadkar says FG may facilitate Michael D if he runs in 2018, and all parties are trying to circumvent the latest EU ruling on water charges.

[Diable Rouge]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

Interestingly, Independents4Change now have seven TDs after Maureen O'Sullivan joined today, making the party as big as Labour.

[Lang Spoon]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

That could be the most effective of the left splinters in the Dail. Whatever you think about Wallace, he has been surprisingly good in the chamber (prob helps if Daly is writing his Cliff notes), all except Collins really seem to have a grasp on their brief.

No ff lite capitalist posing as leftist like Stephen Donnnelly to fuck things up either. His ego and secret wingnuttery (well, maybe not much further right than Berbaslug) will destroy the soc Dems.

[Diable Rouge]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

Government defeated on an amendment to the Labour motion, after FF joined with the Opposition to support the original wording.

[Lang Spoon]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

Hoors be hooring.

Do we give Enda till the Dail recess?

[Diable Rouge]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

FF will have to give Enda one budget, to put some gloss of responsibility on the subsequent rug-pulling.

[Lang Spoon]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

That's prob about right that the peace in our time agreement will last a budget. I'd see the immediate danger to the gombeen's Gombeen being blueshirt discontent. A change of leader would give FF just media cause to renege whenever suits them post putsch, but common sense is in short supply within the deefers and big farmers tent (especially the shrines to Maggie creeps).

Beware young Pathcal Enda! Brutus in the 'boro, the son he never had (well, adopted dub son)

[Diable Rouge]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

All four candidates for Leas Ceann Comhairle (SF, FF, Ind and FG) have been defeated.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

Being unemployed in Ireland is a bigger problem than being unemployed in other countries.

This may or not be true. However one thing that was true is that you were notably less likely to be unemployed in ireland than in most other countries for most of the last two and a half decades, and more likely to be able to find a job.

In Sweden you don't have to emigrate. The benefits are good enough and access to education generous enough that you can improve your CV and eventually get a decent job when the economy picks up. You can emigrate if you want, but you don't have to. In Ireland there is not much of a choice.

But for most of the last three decades you didn't have to emigrate either. The only reason that people had to emigrate in the last eight years is that our bubble burst, leaving us in a horrific budgetary, unemployment, and banking crisis.

youth unemployment went from 6.2% in 2008 to 31% in 2012, to 15% in 2015. In sweden it went from 20% in 2008 to 25%, and has dropped to 20% again. This is just a reflection of how much worse the economic crisis hit ireland, but also a reflection of how quickly things recovered.

But one of the major factors in our ability to keep the numbers down to 31% is the large proportion of people in the relevant demographic who were in college. there was a lot of people going for further education during the last couple of years.

But one of the barriers to the creation of the sort of welfare system that would enable young people to stay at home on the dole for the duration of the economic crisis, was that we didn't have enough money to pay for the people already in the welfare system, never mind the large number of young people finishing education

I essentially don't understand what you want the government to do. People moving country isn't remotely the same thing as it was 15 years ago, let alone when my relations were emigrating. and you can't hammer a govt that creates a bunch of jobs, reduces youth unemployment, and ends net migration.

I mean not everything can be terrible all the time.

[Geoffrey de Ste. Croix]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

The Awesome Berbaslug!!! wrote: Geoffrey did the Greek economy contract by a third because of the policies of their debtors, or because of the end of the Greek tiger bubble economy, which needed a massive amount of government borrowing to create and sustain it?

Greece was somewhat unusual among European countries in how little it exported beyond tourism, or how little it manufactured full stop.

Ireland's gdp didn't take anything like the hammering that greece's did because we were exporting huge amounts of stuff throughout the recession to people who weren't broke. Huge amounts of Greek economic activity was in the domestic services sector and that was torn to shreds by the end of easy govt borrowing.

Also when greece's creditors want Greece to reform pensions they don't necessarily want Greece to reduce fact spending, or take demand out of the economy. They just want the Greek govt to spend a lower proportion on pensions, and spend that money in other ways.

Greece spends 18% of their gdp on pensions. The European average is 10%. That's completely unsustainable. It simply has to change.

It’s well known how Greece got into this mess and I have no wish to further discuss what has been discussed ad infinitum. Where we differ is our approach. You have written in considerable detail how Greece should get out of its chronic financial distress through the existing Euro rules including stripping more domestic demand by reducing pensions. I on the other hand cannot see how in any way at all that staying within the current paradigm is going to end the Greek crisis.

Greece is now 8 years into this, 21 year old Greeks were 13 years old when this started so regardless of where the moral blame lies for the mess, the country has a generation through no fault of its own is growing up in hopelessness and being driven out of their own country and all the while the banks are getting almost their 100 cents on the Euro and multinationals are hovering up public utilities at fire sale prices.

The Troika’s callous and inhumane response to Greece and the Greek people is appalling and no amount of adherence to Euro rules is going to get the country out of this mess. It will be perpetual crisis until a debt jubilee or leaving the Eurozone through default.

[Diable Rouge]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

So, after months of unrest, Luas drivers eventually accept what they originally rejected.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

You have written in considerable detail how Greece should get out of its chronic financial distress through the existing Euro rules including stripping more domestic demand by reducing pensions

I don't think that anyone is arguing that the Greek Govt should spend less money, just that they should spend a lower proportion of it on pensions, and more on other things, like welfare payments to people of working age, direct support for children, investment in education, that sort of thing.

A big part of the reason that so many greek families are reliant on pensions, is that other welfare payments have been hammered to maintain pensions. In 2012 Ireland was paying 40% of its govt budget in social welfare to half the population, Greece was paying that to just their pensioners alone.

If you're spending heading for half your govt income on pensions or you have such a low retirement age for so many people, or you're so resistant to reform that this is still an issue nearly a decade after the start of the crisis, you're not doing it out of respect to your elders.

It's because of clientelism. It's because they represent such a huge voting bloc, and one that seems to act to elect parties that promise to protect their interests. If a government accepts EU demands for reform, they get annihilated at the next election. They voted in huge numbers for Syriza, who campaigned on the grounds of not changing pensions at all. it represents a huge distortion of government spending on generational grounds.

The hardship argument is perhaps the strongest under those circumstances. However even that has to take into account that things are terrible in greece, and you are just aiming to reapportion the misery on generational grounds, in that the changes in the pension system are supposed to be spent elsewhere in the economy. The extra money that would be freed up by the EU taking over the rest of Greece's debt would represent a substantial improvement in Greece's finances, allowing the government to inject that money into the economy.

all of this talk of punishing greece is optics. It's a struggle to force greece to structurally reform their economy, before giving them the debt relief that they want/need.

The Troika’s callous and inhumane response to Greece and the Greek people is appalling and no amount of adherence to Euro rules is going to get the country out of this mess. It will be perpetual crisis until a debt jubilee or leaving the Eurozone through default.

they're not trying to get greece out of this economic crisis just through adherence to rules. That would be weird. and the idea of a balanced budget isn't something that greece should aim for because of European rules, but because borrowing for current expenditure is how they got in this mess in the first place. It's a really terrible idea, unless done as part of a counter cyclical approach that you stick with even in good times.

They're trying to get greece to structurally reform its economy so that they can eventually recover, and Debt relief is the second part of that.

if the Greeks promise to make the reforms that the EU wants, and then start to implement then, then the EU will gradually take on the remaining third of the Greek debt, at 1% interest, effectively giving them an 80% write off, for a very long time, and reducing their debt repayments to very low levels. The other EU states will pick up the difference between the interest they are charged, and the interest they are charging greece.

The way that the troika worked in Ireland is that they wanted us to hit various financial targets, and make particular reforms to our taxation base that would help ensure that we didn't wind up with another bubble. Their list of demands seemed very reasonable, and it's actually a shame that they left before we finished reform of our insurance and legal sectors. Even their approach to our water system wasn't to tell us to privatize it, but to come up with a meaningful means of overhauling it before it falls apart.

Because we signed up to their primary aims so relatively enthusiastically, they allowed us a great degree of choice in what we sold, or what we chose to do, occasionally warning us that a certain level of cuts to particular parts of the economy could cause undue damage to the underlying economy.

Greece wouldn't be under half as much pressure to sell things if they had made more progress towards the primary structural aims of the troika. These privatizations seem to be the easy thing to throw to the EU, while not getting very far on other, more politically painful moves.

and yes I thank Christ I'm not a greek person coming out of college, into a wasteland of total economic devastation, but their problems don't extend just to the EU, it's also that their govt is choosing to give so much of the available money to the retired, instead of to the rest of the economy. These groups are actually in direct opposition to each other

The EU isn't punishing greece because they have a debt problem, the EU is withholding debt relief because Greece is refusing to address one of the economic imbalances that got them into this mess in the first place, and if they don't the situation in the paragraph above will persist. If they give them debt relief before these reforms are made, then all impetus to address this situation will be lost.

There are four steps to them getting out of this mess. The first is to recognise that no-one is very interested in lending Greece Money for current spending, so they have to spend only what they take in in taxes. They've already regained control of their spending at enormous human cost. They have to assign more of their govt spending to "productive" expenditure, like education, or the working age population.

Then get their large effective debt write off, then try and use their crushed wage levels to attract export based industry, to generate economic growth and jobs (they are starting from an absurdly low base) and then try and resolve their population pyramid nightmare by taking in a couple of million refugees, in return for large amounts of targeted EU cash and investment. (there is no way out of this that doesn't include greece substantially increasing its working age population as the ratio between people who are in work, and everyone else is absolutely frightening.

Even if this goes really well, and they eventually start to recover, It's going to take a long time. there is going to be an awful lot of misery in greece, so the measure is not really that there is misery now, but whether or not you are creating the condition for the minimum amount of misery in the future, within the constraints that no-one is going to lend to greece for current spending.

If The EU were to completely take over Greece's debt tomorrow, how much progress do you think that Greece would make on pension reform, and how do you think that the next couple of years would pan out, given that Greece will no longer be able to borrow for current spending?

it's not a question of Morals. If greece wants europe's help, it has to play ball. Europe isn't just going to give it money because they fucked up. They have to reform, even if only for their own sake.

[anton pulisov]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

TAB, Ireland has the highest number of emigrants, by far, of all countries in the the OECD. No other OECD country even comes close. So when you say "for most of the past three decades" people didn't have to emigrate from Ireland, it is very difficult to take you seriously. That's like saying that there were no famines in Ireland for "most of the 19th century".

you can't hammer a govt that creates a bunch of jobs, reduces youth unemployment, and ends net migration.

Well, one of the easiest ways to reduce youth unemployment is to get them to fuck off, because net migration during the course of the FG/Lab government was -128,000 according to the CSO. The figure for the first half of 2015 is -11,600. The CSO has no newer figures. So I don't know in what fantasy land FG/Lab put an end to emigration. I guess it will eventually end when there's no more young unemployed people left to emigrate, and then the unemployment problem will be solved.

[Borracho]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

all of this talk of punishing greece is optics.

Optics?! It's already happened, and is continuing to happen on an ongoing basis!

[Tubby Isaacs]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

antoine polus wrote: TAB, Ireland has the highest number of emigrants, by far, of all countries in the the OECD. No other OECD country even comes close. So when you say "for most of the past three decades" people didn't have to emigrate from Ireland, it is very difficult to take you seriously. That's like saying that there were no famines in Ireland for "most of the 19th century".

you can't hammer a govt that creates a bunch of jobs, reduces youth unemployment, and ends net migration.

Well, one of the easiest ways to reduce youth unemployment is to get them to fuck off, because net migration during the course of the FG/Lab government was -128,000 according to the CSO. The figure for the first half of 2015 is -11,600. The CSO has no newer figures.

That's not right.

11,600 is in the year to April 2015. Not the first 6 month of 2015.

It's surely close to zero now.

[anton pulisov]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

Yes, -11,500 in only the first four months of 2015, which is even worse per month than -11500 in half a year. I don't see what point you are trying to make besides being semantic.

The figures only go to April 2015. Net emigration might indeed be around zero now, bit we don't know because the figures aren't available. But people seem to nonetheless have opinions on what the figures might be.

But claiming FG/Lab helped end net emigration is like a vampire helping stitch up a neck wound and taking credit for stemming the bleeding.

Irish governments intentionally use emigratio as an economic recovery tool. And when the emigration finally ends, the government that employed emigration as an economic recovery tool claims they ended emigration. It would be funny if it wasn't so vomit inducing.