Suggestions towards a Program for National Recovery

The news that the Dáil is considering introducing a dress code is scarcely heartening. The conformity and parochialism at the heart of successive Irish governments hardly needs sartorial encouragement, and the imposition of a dress code will only give the establishment one more tool to bludgeon the more outspoken and non-conformist of our public representatives into line.

Those of us who don't have the luxury of buying a new suit every time it rains might prefer a little more focus on serving the public good from our elected leadership. I make myself so bold as to put forward some suggestions which they could more usefully spend their time in contemplating.

Of course, I don't expect anyone shall trouble themselves to listen to me, but why should I let that stop me?


National Recovery: Some Sweeping Suggestions

1. Implement a high marginal tax band of 95% on income over 100,000 euro per annum, and 99% on income over 150,000 euro.

2. Implement a graduated tax payable yearly on private assets such as property, vehicles, and stock to begin at a value of 500,000 euro: 0.1% on assets valued over 500K, 0.25% on assets valued over 750K, 0.5% on assets valued over 1 million, 1% on assets valued over 2 million.

2a. Farmland, land under forestry, and assets used for the generation of green energy should be exempt from this asset tax.

2b. Corporate assets should be taxed on the same scale, with tax exemptions for a)small businesses, b)equipment which is necessary for the running of the business, c)property at which more than 20 persons are employed during the course of an average day.

3. DIRT and CGT taxes should be increased by 5%.

4. Extra tax incentives to be offered to organic farmers.

5. Incentives to be offered for companies incorporated as co-operatives.

6. Incentives for use of green technologies.

7. Support for regular programs of cultural events in small towns; expansion of the writers/artists in schools/prisons programs; creation of a series of "Science in the Library," "Philosophy in the Library," "History in the Library," programs in which scientists, philosophers, and historians are invited (and paid) to tour local and national libraries to discuss their areas of expertise in front of a general audience.

(You could fund this last on a small scale from a single politician's yearly salary. Eighty grand goes a long way. Assuming you pay each speaker 200 quid per appearance, you could fund four hundred appearances. If you got cheaper speakers and paid them only 100 quid per, that's eight hundred appearances.)

8. Creation of the salaried post of Volunteer Co-ordinator for each town of more than 10,000 inhabitants, with responsibility for a) recruiting and co-ordinating volunteers for local civic initiatives such as litter removal from beaches and civic/community spaces, replanting of green margins and verges with fruit-producing native trees or plants, tending and harvesting said fruit-producing trees or plants, local community celebrations; and b) promoting and providing support for individual volunteer initiatives, such as local drama societies, local historical or cultural societies, local amateur sports clubs, etc.

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When that's done, I'd like a pony, too.

I have these utopian dreams, you see. Dignity and grace and possibilities.

And if we could write a high marginal inflation-adjusted tax rate into the constitution, I'd do it in a heartbeat. But then, I'm a socialist.

Xάρις: in support of the idea of grace

In the course of my required reading last week, I ended up between the covers of a volume called Reciprocity in Ancient Greece. In a lengthy discussion about reciprocity between gods and humans, and between citizens and the citizen body, the word χάρις kept reoccuring.

The process of linguistic evolution has brought our English charity from the lineage of Greek χάρις. It's certainly a related concept: χάρις carries the connotation of delight, pleasure, a favour done; something done in the spirit of graciousness and not, necessarily, from obligation; something done in the spirit of relationship, not necessarily from the motive of reciprocal gain.

In translation, χάρις is often rendered as grace.

And that got me thinking. Grace is a term with a long history of use in Christian theology from Augustine on, generally to describe the mechanism by which an omnipotent deity extends salvation to a sinful humanity. But how often, outside of narrow theological contexts, does anyone consider the value of graciousness*?

Grace is the gift that demands no return. It may hope for one: it may even expect one, at some indefinite future point, but it does not require one. Grace is the welcome unlooked-for, the gift that need not be requited; the delightful favour, the pleasing moment between friends or strangers.

I'm an atheist, so the idea of the grace of God is no more than an interesting thought experiment to me. But the idea of grace between people?

Maybe acts of grace are things to strive for. Maybe the possibilties of a life lived in grace, like those of a live lived in mindfulness, are worth bearing in mind.

And I like the possibilities of the word grace. Of χάρις.

One of the other translations of χάρις, after all, is kindness. I don't think the world is ever lessened by striving for more of that.


*My Oxford Concise defines gracious as: 1. kind, indulgent and beneficent; 2. dispensing grace, merciful, benignant (arch.) agreeable, pleasing; (poet.) kindly, courteous.