I've said this before but it is a truth. It is not the government's job to create jobs for its people, that is socialist/communist. It is the job of government to create the conditions for free market businesses to create jobs. Our government has so many tariffs, taxes, fees, regulations and laws on the back of business in the country that its killing it. If you want businesses to prosper, hire more people, and stay in this country, you have to create the climate for that to happen. Obama and his minions are all about placing more regulations on business and that is just sad. In truth there should be no tax on any business at all. As long as every dime that comes out of that business to an individual gets taxed then that is good enough for me.
Mind informing us of the relevance that this dogma, repeated for the umpteenth time, has for this subject specifically? I'd be fairly confident in guessing that your knowledge of our situation doesn't go beyond your "leprechauns lose their pot of gold" statement from last week.
Germany will never voluntarily give up the Euro. Germany, with Europe's largest and most robust economy, exerts tremendous power in Europe through the common currency. The Greece crisis and the Ireland crisis have shown that the Euro enables Germany (amongst others) to force budgetary restrictions on other nations. If the Euro died, so would German influence in Europe and the world. Here's what would happen: The Euro dies and the different European national currencies are reintroduced. This immediately leads to strong financial shifts in Europe. The currencies of economically weak countries are devaluated, while investors seek to buy assets in Deutsche Mark because it is backed by a stable and strong economy. This in turn leads to a revaluation of the Deutsche Mark, effectively making German products more expensive. This is a major problem for Germany's export-oriented economy, because companies will have a hard time selling their now expensive products to other countries. Exports will soon decline, while unemployment in Germany will rise to unseen heights. So it's a really, really bad idea.
There you go let the "Invisible Hand" of the Market do what it does best, fixing the Market. This entire crisis was brought about by government busy bodies trying to play "god" in the market. The solution is for them to stop meddling and let the Market fix itself.
Lets hope them Europeans bringing the Irish bailout cash come parading into town all dressed in Orange.
Rubbish. Letting the market fix itself will lead to a continent-wide bank collapse. It's not government action that's the problem, but the wrong type of government action. And in any event, that's simply one outgrowing of the crisis. The building and banking problems were initially caused by lax regulation.
And all *your* intervention has done was to delay that and add the collapse of your government to the butcher's bill. Exactly. The proper action in this was for the government to oversee the orderly bankruptcies of the failed concerns. Lax regulations?! I'll retire to Bedlam!
Exactly. People like Rick always want to try to avoid downturns in the economy but you can't. You're always going to have ups and downs. It's natural. But the constant intervention by governments to prevent downturns just in the end makes the inevitable downturn larger, more painful, and longer then need be. Exactly. The government shouldn't be bailing people out. It shouldn't' be trying to force a prevention of the collapse. It should step back and let things fail. Always amazing how Rick and others play the lax regulation card when it's actually too much regulation (and laws) being used by government that causes a lot of the problems.
^It never fails to amaze me that leftists can not grasp the very simple concept of responsible behavior. If you want businesses or individuals to behave responsibly don't subsidize, bail out, or otherwise encourage their irresponsibility. Let them fail. After much pondering on the issue I've concluded that the Left is extremely conservative and reactionary when it comes to the economy. They have a manic desire to maintain the status quo at any cost.
That implies that Government is ever wise enough to know what the "right" action is. And even if Government did know what the "right" thing to do was, more often than not they have no incentive to do the "right" thing. Government's best bet is to ensure no one gets cheated and stay out of the way.
:wehaveawinner: The Government cannot intervene for the economic benefit of one group or industry without doing so to the detriment of others. :exactly:
Rubbish again. The German and UK banks are having the loans that they made to Irish banks repaid by the bailout fund, in full. We are on the hook instead, of course. I "play that card" because it describes reality in this case. Or maybe you want to describe which regulation it was that led to the Irish banks giving out loans like sweets?
Well, sure, but Spain is soon to go bankrupt and then it's curtains. Kind of like saying to a sinking ocean liner passenger to not abandon ship, because the crew needs him to bail water.
Because you're an idiot. That's why. Ireland's biggest fault was that they didn't see the housing bubble either, leading their government and banks to run out of money rather quickly. They've resisted any help from Europe, and suggestions that they raise their basement-low corporate tax, because they're dogmatically tied to those ideas (this sounds familiar ). If Ireland goes down, it destablizes all of the Eurozone. Germany, France, and the UK will suffer, not to mention Spain and Italy will get sucked in the undertow. America will suffer also, because the EU is our largest trading partner, and any uncertainty in the Euro will cause people to flock to the Dollar and fuck up the fledgling economy we have now.
Terms of the package announced tonight. The government are trying to spin us a line about the interest rate being 5.8% - that in itself is too high, but it's a lie anyway. Seeing as we're raiding our pension reserve, the effective rate from external sources is actually over 7%, not even counting the loss of money that would have been made by investing the pension reserve fund in something else. General strike. Now. Treason charges. Now.
Pfft, at least you guys have a pension reserve. Our politicians blew it all long before I was born. Money being collected from paychecks goes straight into social security checks today. I'm firmly convinced I will never see a dime of it by the time I am of retirement age.
I wouldn't mind too much if Ireland raised its corporate tax simply because it would create another example where raising tax rates leads to exodus of capital and a drop in tax revenues taken in by -in this case- the Irish gubmint. The only reason so many companies have any kind of operations in Ireland in the first place is because Ireland's been a tax haven. If it loses that status, what reason would companies have to keep their money there? we're talking about highly mobile capital, in most cases, and not capital backed by a bunch of factories and plant and equipment. Or perhaps you think companies will still move to Ireland for its Henries?
Actually, low taxes aren't the only reason businesses set up shop in Ireland. Software companies love Ireland mainly because the Irish government doesn't waste money on the military and instead is extremely generous with education so Irish universities pump out tons and tons of software engineers who speech English. Then, of course, there is the fact that the countries infrastructure is extremely up to date and 1st world so companies burned in places like India (by constant power outages, by telephone lines not working, by internet service going out, by horrible roads so that supplies don't arrive on time, etc...) find places like Ireland a good stable place to do business. Yes, tax policy is one part of the puzzle but your obsession with it is making you miss some very important other parts of the equation.
Traitor-in-chief being interviewed on RTE (national broadcaster) today. Should be interesting - hopefully they go for the jugular. The opposition parties have all denounced the deal, but stopped short of saying that they'd renage following a general election. One is due in the new year, and we can expect the current ruling party Fianna Fail to lose more than half of their seats.
"I think we're going to have to accept [-]Federation[/-]E.U. control for the time being." Edit: oops, forgot to add the dodgy Irish accent: "Shore, 'an I'm thinkin' we'll be acceptin' E.U. control for the time bein', boy-o."
Ok, Wordforge. I tend to agree with the "less government regulation = good" side of the issue, but how do you explain this? The banks did whatever the fuck they wanted, with few regulations, and got themselves into a problem. And now we have people blaming over-regulation for it? Am I confused or something?
Actually Pikeystan's woeful infrastructure was built up thanks to lovely EU grants. Hence the Mick indignation when the money started going to Eastern Bloc countries. It has nothing to do with Ireland's proud history of cowardice and its piss-poor military.
So Ireland's answer to its economic issues is to destroy its tax base and chase away the businesses that provide the jobs? Excellent. Always nice to have a good example of hairbrained economic theories to point to.
Yes, a lot of it came from EU modernization grants just like in Spain and Portugal but that doesn't remotely change the fact that the country has great infrastructure or that infrastructure plays a keep part in attracting businesses. Also that the Irish government spends money other nations waste on the military to instead educate citizens does indeed play a key role in producing lots of highly trained skilled workers and that does indeed attract a lot of businesses. Ask anyone in engineering or technology and they'll tell you getting enough well trained workers is one of their biggest difficulties so countries which produce a lot of those well trained workers end up attracting those high value added businesses not to mention many of those workers eventually set up their own companies which further spurs economic advancement. One of America's biggest problems is our education system is very hit or miss while individual students prefer easy but economically useless degrees like Sociology rather then hard sciences or engineering. That's why we're forced to import tons of 3rd worlders who happen to have those degrees. Education, especially if you incentive's high value added skills (hard sciences and engineering) by making such degrees free if a student opts for that more difficult road really pays huge economic dividends down the line. You can't start new technology or science based businesses if you don't have those skills so the more people with those skills the more likely some of them will opt to start their own company in those fields.
Seriously, did you read this thread at all? The spending cuts and tax increases are being imposed by the lenders not by Ireland. It's pretty much standard measure for all international last resort lending so while you can blame Ireland for letting things get to this state it is hard to blame them for the proposed remedy which is being enforced upon them.
Easy. Who set interest rates so low that mortgage loans were incredibily tempting to get? The European Central Bank, established by EU government law and governed as such since 1998. Low interest rates drove demand through the roof, and thus, housing prices before it all blew up in their faces. Shit, EU interest rates are still at 1%. Who guaranteed virtually all banking liabilities through bailouts and nationalization? The Irish government. Boom, their debt is now the Irish government's debt. European government incentives, followed by Irish government socialization, has led to the EU teetering on the brink. Pretty much the same here in America with Freddie, Fannie, and Bush/Obama/Geithner, save a little "thou shalt guarantee loans to the poor" thrown in government senator by Barney Frank. If banking institutions are left to their own, throughout the entirety of their transactions, they would become much more conservative in their lending practices.
That's not to absolve these banks however of their actions. They "helped" the government make these regulations. If the government told them to fuck off then they would as Ramen said have to become much more conservative in their lending practices or else face going out of business with no one to rescue them. Don't listen to anyone who says it was a lack of regulation that led to Ireland (or anyone else) having trouble. They are lying. There's thousands of pages of regulations in all our countries. A lack of regulation would not have us seeing how the banks acted. When your survival isn't "guaranteed" by the government and when government doesn't force rules on you you are much more likely to govern your business in a way that won't lead to bankruptcy.
