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Facts and figures
Oct. 19th, 2011 11:12 pmO honourable friends, I bring you some facts and some figures.
As of September, the percentage of persons signing on to the Live Register stands at 14.3%, down 0.1% from August. Let's round up and call it 15% of adult persons, or approximately 440,000 people from a nation of just over 4.5 million. (Statistics from the Central Statistics Office.)
That means 15% of people are unemployment or underemployed. Just under 42% of these people - that is, approximately 6% of all adult persons - are long-term claimants on the Live Register. That is, they have been signing on for over a year. This percentage has risen - from approximately 34% to approximate 42% of claimants, or from approximately 5% to approximately 6% of all adult persons - within the space of a year.
The Consumer Price Index records average inflation of 2.6% to date this year. As of July 2011, almost 9% of households with mortgages are ninety days in arrears. According to figures from the Central Bank of Ireland, approximately 30.6% (or c. 145,400 out of 475,000) of mortgaged properties were in negative equity as of 2010, a figure representing 47% of outstanding mortgage balances. I have no data for 2011, but I suspect this figure has, if anything, dis-improved.
The minimum wage has been cut from E8.40 to E7.20. Social security has been cut. All earned income over approximately E. 3,000 per annum is subject to the Income Levy. Tax brackets have not been adjusted for inflation. The government is introducing a property tax for all households from January, and unmetered water charges are also in the works.
Meanwhile, GDP has risen 1.6% and GNP 1.1% in the second quarter of 2011. Companies such an C&C show pre-tax profits of over 64 million euro, up from 58 million last year. No one has been prosecuted for the financial shenanagins that led to the 2008 crash. Bankers, politicians, and senior television analysts still form a cosy circle-jerk. The National Asset Management Agency has turned into yet another government quango, whereby we reward the incompentents who fucked us over in the first place and provide jobs for their friends and relatives.
Government policy is set by elected hacks and sell-outs (yes, Labour, I'm talking to you: no, I will never vote Labour again) - at least, when it's not being set by unelected Financial Policy Wonks from the IMF and the ECB, who are far more concerned with protecting bondholders and the French and German banks who exposed themselves by lending to banks whose balance sheets are now composed mainly of toxic assets and government bailout funds than with protecting the most vulnerable citizens of our society.
Let us pretend, O honourable friends, that our European Financial Policy Wonks have heard of John Maynard Keynes. Let us pretend, O friends and fellow citizens, that they possess at least a modicum of logic; let us grant them adequate reading comprehension, and the ability to follow historical evidence. Have they not read The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money? Have they failed to grasp its essential points?
Let the record show that classical economics, balance-sheet economics, supply-side economics - all this, when faced with a market recession, significantly fails. It fails to improve matters for any but the richest of the rich, and it actively makes things worse for anyone in the middle class on down. (And let us not be sidetracked into defining that amorphous beast, the "middle class".)
Why, then, are we faced with failed policies, toxic policies, when Keynesian economics demonstrably works? Why is the cry of "Balance the Budget!" raised when the chattering classes - yes, even they, even the Policy Wonks and the Political Hacks, for they stand or fall as we do - should be clamouring "Provide Employment!" "Build Infrastructure!" "Invest!"?
We cannot have democracy without hope. We cannot have hope without economic improvement - for who can hope for the future when the vast majority of us are entirely focused on surviving the now? And we cannot have economic improvement without government action, without government investment.
Now is the winter of our discontent, and I see no summer sun ahead of us.
I've never desired wealth for wealth's sake: the sum total of my life's financial ambitions has always been a tolerable, secure position with a pension. A position wherein one could afford a house, a dog, a foreign holiday once every couple of years; a position where one could hope to be treated as a being worthy of dignity.
(It's odd to admit to always having wanted to work in the civil service. But there you go. Civil service functionaries perform useful and necessary functions to the running of the country, and at least in the civil service, one is not solely serving the aggrandisement of private profit.)
But it seems as though our country is to be reduced down to the bare apparatus necessary to qualify as a functioning nation. I don't have hope anymore. Hope, like anger, is a distraction. If I focus on just the things in front of me - on just trying to spend less every week on food, on not fucking up and needing an extra tenner at an inconvenient time, on not thinking more than a month or two in advance - maybe I can avoid dwelling on the fact that my country views me as just one more fungible resource - and one surplus to requirements, at that.
As of September, the percentage of persons signing on to the Live Register stands at 14.3%, down 0.1% from August. Let's round up and call it 15% of adult persons, or approximately 440,000 people from a nation of just over 4.5 million. (Statistics from the Central Statistics Office.)
That means 15% of people are unemployment or underemployed. Just under 42% of these people - that is, approximately 6% of all adult persons - are long-term claimants on the Live Register. That is, they have been signing on for over a year. This percentage has risen - from approximately 34% to approximate 42% of claimants, or from approximately 5% to approximately 6% of all adult persons - within the space of a year.
The Consumer Price Index records average inflation of 2.6% to date this year. As of July 2011, almost 9% of households with mortgages are ninety days in arrears. According to figures from the Central Bank of Ireland, approximately 30.6% (or c. 145,400 out of 475,000) of mortgaged properties were in negative equity as of 2010, a figure representing 47% of outstanding mortgage balances. I have no data for 2011, but I suspect this figure has, if anything, dis-improved.
The minimum wage has been cut from E8.40 to E7.20. Social security has been cut. All earned income over approximately E. 3,000 per annum is subject to the Income Levy. Tax brackets have not been adjusted for inflation. The government is introducing a property tax for all households from January, and unmetered water charges are also in the works.
Meanwhile, GDP has risen 1.6% and GNP 1.1% in the second quarter of 2011. Companies such an C&C show pre-tax profits of over 64 million euro, up from 58 million last year. No one has been prosecuted for the financial shenanagins that led to the 2008 crash. Bankers, politicians, and senior television analysts still form a cosy circle-jerk. The National Asset Management Agency has turned into yet another government quango, whereby we reward the incompentents who fucked us over in the first place and provide jobs for their friends and relatives.
Government policy is set by elected hacks and sell-outs (yes, Labour, I'm talking to you: no, I will never vote Labour again) - at least, when it's not being set by unelected Financial Policy Wonks from the IMF and the ECB, who are far more concerned with protecting bondholders and the French and German banks who exposed themselves by lending to banks whose balance sheets are now composed mainly of toxic assets and government bailout funds than with protecting the most vulnerable citizens of our society.
Let us pretend, O honourable friends, that our European Financial Policy Wonks have heard of John Maynard Keynes. Let us pretend, O friends and fellow citizens, that they possess at least a modicum of logic; let us grant them adequate reading comprehension, and the ability to follow historical evidence. Have they not read The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money? Have they failed to grasp its essential points?
Let the record show that classical economics, balance-sheet economics, supply-side economics - all this, when faced with a market recession, significantly fails. It fails to improve matters for any but the richest of the rich, and it actively makes things worse for anyone in the middle class on down. (And let us not be sidetracked into defining that amorphous beast, the "middle class".)
Why, then, are we faced with failed policies, toxic policies, when Keynesian economics demonstrably works? Why is the cry of "Balance the Budget!" raised when the chattering classes - yes, even they, even the Policy Wonks and the Political Hacks, for they stand or fall as we do - should be clamouring "Provide Employment!" "Build Infrastructure!" "Invest!"?
We cannot have democracy without hope. We cannot have hope without economic improvement - for who can hope for the future when the vast majority of us are entirely focused on surviving the now? And we cannot have economic improvement without government action, without government investment.
Now is the winter of our discontent, and I see no summer sun ahead of us.
I've never desired wealth for wealth's sake: the sum total of my life's financial ambitions has always been a tolerable, secure position with a pension. A position wherein one could afford a house, a dog, a foreign holiday once every couple of years; a position where one could hope to be treated as a being worthy of dignity.
(It's odd to admit to always having wanted to work in the civil service. But there you go. Civil service functionaries perform useful and necessary functions to the running of the country, and at least in the civil service, one is not solely serving the aggrandisement of private profit.)
But it seems as though our country is to be reduced down to the bare apparatus necessary to qualify as a functioning nation. I don't have hope anymore. Hope, like anger, is a distraction. If I focus on just the things in front of me - on just trying to spend less every week on food, on not fucking up and needing an extra tenner at an inconvenient time, on not thinking more than a month or two in advance - maybe I can avoid dwelling on the fact that my country views me as just one more fungible resource - and one surplus to requirements, at that.
