# When did we have a stable economy



## 345Jabber (29 Mar 2009)

Since the downturn arrived on our doorstep all government officials and some opposition party members repeatedly mention getting us back on track and returning us to a more stable economy but I've thought more and more about this and wonder when did we have a stable economy.

70's mass emigration low employment
80's mass emigration low employment
early 90's mass emigration low employment
late 90's employment low wages
early 00's false high employment due to construction
07-present return to mass unemployment

Can someone put me straight on where the government are returning us to we were. My recollection always were a net emigrating country with high unemployment and low wages where is Cowen's and Lenihan's utopian state?

Why aren't the media asking this same question?

Another point what the hell is the knowledge economy?

If they mean getting jobs for highly educated people (Masters, PHD's) surely they don't expect to substitute all those construction and retail jobs for high paid graduate jobs. Currently @400,000 people on the dole, how many do they honestly expect to be employed in this knowledge economy or more to the point how many do they think we will believe?


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## Purple (29 Mar 2009)

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			When did we have a stable economy?
		
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*
Between 1992 and 1997 (approx). After that the main growth drivers in the economy switched from productive to speculative.

The real answer, since the above is a blip, is never; we have had massive swings from high to low and back again for the last 300 years.


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## 345Jabber (29 Mar 2009)

Never.
Goes along with my general thinking, question arises why is our national media  persisting in letting the government talk cobblers about returning the nation to a stable economy when we never actually had one in the first place.

So the question I'd ask is do we have a working media......

Why aren't they asking pertinent questions instead of repeating and repeating the same points e.g. we all know TD's and bankers are over-paid does repeating the statement make it more so.
Some questions I would like them to start asking:

1. Where are the senior level civil servants who effectively managed the country over the last 15 years, why haven't they been asked to resign?
2. What do the government regard as a stable economy?
3. Do the TD's themselves whose desire it is to make us more competitive regard themselves as been paid competitively?
4. How many people can or will actually be employed in the knowledge economy?
5. How will taxing those left in employment more, stabilise the economy and get us all spending more money?


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## Mommah (29 Mar 2009)

345Jabber said:


> So the question I'd ask is do we have a working media......



We have the media we deserve. If we were interested in reading the intellectual nitty gritty on economic recovery....they would provide it. We’re not, so they don’t.



345Jabber said:


> 1.     Where are the senior level civil servants who effectively managed the country over the last 15 years, why haven't they been asked to resign?




For the same reason I haven’t been sent off on a prison ship to Tasmania for buying a second property.  We are jointly and severally responsible.

The only people who can claim to not be responsible are those who never did nuffin and will likely continue to do nuffin.

 Reading a few international websites or purchasing a few international newspapers will reveal that practically the entire globe is affected in the same way. Is this the fault of irish politicians and bankers and developers?



345Jabber said:


> 2. What do the government regard as a stable economy?




I’m not an economist. But I guess that point were we are near full employment...probably around 5%?



345Jabber said:


> 4. How many people can or will actually be employed in the knowledge economy?



I guess that depends how entrepreneurial we are in this area.
If it’s worthwhile for anyone to take a risk in developing knowledge businesses.
If we can manage to export our knowledge.



345Jabber said:


> 5. How will taxing those left in employment more, stablize the economy and get us all spending more money?



 Well fact is we have to pay for our services healthcare/education etc.
For the last 10years the greedy developers, bankers, property tycoons have been footing a huge percentage of this cost. A majority now have no income and cannot contribute.
So its up to Joe Soap to carry the can or cut the costs until the greedy get back on their feet.


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## meatmonger (29 Mar 2009)

agree, stable 1993-1997.

then we had benchmarkeing, then we went from 4th most competitive country to 80th or something.  these are all decisions made by our government, unions and private sector representatives.  

these are not international factors.  these were decisions made in ireland.
the same people still make these decisions, so i hope we go bust, because until then, there is no hope. the sooner the better.


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## Mommah (29 Mar 2009)

meatmonger said:


> agree, stable 1993-1997.
> 
> then we had benchmarkeing, then we went from 4th most competitive country to 80th or something.


 
I can't see at the time how bench-marking (which I benefited from ) affected our competitiveness so drastically. 
At the time...it didn't require an increase in taxation to fund it.
So our decline in competitiveness is due to the OVERALL increase in wages, particularly in the productive industries.

NOW bench-marking is costing us, because the decline in the private sector means there are fewer people to fund a somewhat bloated public service.


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## 345Jabber (29 Mar 2009)

> If we were interested in reading the intellectual nitty gritty on economic recovery....they would provide it. We’re not, so they don’t.


 
How is asking pertinent questions pertaining to the way our government purposes to recover our economy nitty gritty. I haven't read or heard any comment on why or how our higher level civil servants failed to perform over the last 15 years, as it is them and not the puppet politicians who effectively run the country. The so called plan forward is simply tax those left in work more to pay for those now unemployed, hardly an intellectual strategy and if this is all they can come up with then why pay senior civil servants €200k+ for something a man on the street can do for a lot less. I for one am interested in hearing this as I paid tax in the 80's and its bloody painful handing over more to the government then you get yourself. 



> For the same reason I haven’t been sent off on a prison ship to Tasmania for buying a second property. We are jointly and severally responsible


.

If someone in the private fails to perform they're assigned job role in every industry (banking the exception) they will be asked to resign or step-aside. No one is saying we're not responsible but management manage and we haven't been managed, the FAI fire managers who have performed better than our lot They should go, higher taxes will be the results of our folly what's theirs. 
The entire globe didn't have a property and construction bubble like ours, again people are paid to manage this, they didn't. 



> I’m not an economist. But I guess that point were we are near full employment...probably around 5%?


 
What I'm trying to say is that full employment is a political nirvana being churned out by the same people who churned out the construction industry as sustainable, why aren't we challengling them on this, when apart from during the boom have we been anyway near 5%, why are the media letting them get away with more cobblers. At best we will return to something like the early 90's which is not far from where we are now, this is the reality believing it will get so much better is just another folly on our part.  


> So its up to Joe Soap to carry the can or cut the costs until the greedy get back on their feet.


 
It's good to laugh, but the greedy never got off their feet they've just scuffled them to the side a bit, us Joe Soap will end up back with near 60% tax all in and still be none the wiser as to how it happened.


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## meatmonger (29 Mar 2009)

Mommah said:


> I can't see at the time how bench-marking (which I benefited from ) affected our competitiveness so drastically.
> At the time...it didn't require an increase in taxation to fund it.


 
At the time a property bubble provided a massive revenue stream that was not to last.  now the stream is dry, and our uncompetitiveness has become apparent.

its not good enough to blame just international factors like the politicans do.


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## UptheDeise (29 Mar 2009)

meatmonger said:


> At the time a property bubble provided a massive revenue stream that was not to last. now the stream is dry, and our uncompetitiveness has become apparent.
> 
> its not good enough to blame just international factors like the politicans do.


 
The fact of the matter is that we are bust. The government borrows €60 million a DAY. We have a revenue stream of €34 billion for this year but the cost to keep the country up and running is €51 billion.

OP, as to what defines a stable economy, to me it is when our our economy swings both ways but the swings are not to severe.


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## Mommah (29 Mar 2009)

345Jabber said:


> How is asking pertinent questions pertaining to the way our government purposes to recover our economy nitty gritty.


 
I'm not saying your question is inappropriate, just that the consumers of the media in Ireland are not interested in much more than glib soundbites.
Thats what they watch, that's what they buy.

I personally am very interested in the international situation and Irelands place in it. I read alot about it. But I am nothing more than an interested lay person, not an expert. But one thing over the years that I have learned is that you can usually rely on the experts when you really need to make a bags of things.


345Jabber said:


> What I'm trying to say is that full employment is a political nirvana being churned out by the same people who churned out the construction industry as sustainable, why aren't we challengling them on this, when apart from during the boom have we been anyway near 5%, why are the media letting them get away with more cobblers.


 
I would have thought we had full employment in the boom. (circa 6%)
Full employment is toxic as it pushes up wages and makes one less competitive. So something less than full employment or full employment aided by quality immigration. But immigration was one of the factors that fueled the unstainable housing demand.



345Jabber said:


> At best we will return to something like the early 90's which is not far from where we are now, this is the reality believing it will get so much better is just another folly on our part. .


 

I like this quote from Ben Graham circa 1934
"The market is a pendulum that forever swings between unsustainable optimism and unjustified pessimism."
I think the pendulum is still swinging and we are heading into unjustified pessimism territory.



345Jabber said:


> It's good to laugh, but the greedy never got off their feet.


I often wonder who these greedy people are?
Public service drones like me who aspire not to have to live from paycheque to pay-cheque and try to save and invest our earnings wisely most of the time.

People like my OH's former boss who last year employed 200 people and now is down to 13 and stressed out of his mind. He paid €100 000s in taxes last year and I expect will pay diddly this year.

People like Sean Quinn who employ 1000s of people and got seriously burned investing his profits.

Its all very trite writing these people off as greedy.



			
				meatmonger said:
			
		

> its not good enough to blame just international factors like the politicans do. .


But it is naive to dismiss these international factors, which are a HUGE part of what's happening. I live in France, I worked in the USA and still keep in touch with many natives and they are all wailing the same dirge.

We have local factors, one of which is that we are falling from a higher place economically. One of which was the property bubble. But there were plenty of property bubbles in the US too, more localised than ours but affecting just as many people.


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## Purple (1 Apr 2009)

Excellent post Mommah.


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## room305 (5 Apr 2009)

I'm not sure what exactly is meant by "stable" but there are two periods when Ireland experienced growth, as measured by an increase in worker productivity, a consequent increase in real wages, high employment and positive GDP.

From the late 1850s through the early 1900s when we punched hugely above our weight in economic terms during one of the first major eras of globalisation.

And as Purple has said, from the early to mid nineties through to just before the turn of the century.

But these were aberrations and our natural state seems to be mainly one of fecklessness and poverty.


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## Mommah (5 Apr 2009)

room305 said:


> But these were aberrations and our natural state seems to be mainly one of fecklessness and poverty.


 
I'm sorry but these sort of statements of self-loathing really annoy me.

What is feckless?...according to wikipedia http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/feckless

Lacking purpose
Without skill
Ineffective, incompetent
Lacking the courage to act in a meaningful way
Lacking vitality.
There is no way having lived in 4 different countries that any of these apply to the stereotypical irish person or Ireland Inc.

As for vitality Ireland, its vitality is one of the things I miss most about Ireland when I'm abroad. The vitality in Ireland is palpable. My most recent visit at the end of March, I was blown away by the buzz in the coffee shops the restaurants, the pubs. Amazing.

As for poverty....WTF???

Ireland is listed as either 4th, 5th or 6th richest countries out of over 200 listed by GDP here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_capita

The is no way in h ell that there is any real poverty in Ireland.
I used to work in disadvantaged areas visiting people at home and saw poverty related to addiction and mental illness. But aside from that...none.
If you want to see real poverty in the first world might I suggest inner city places in the US.

The economy is nose diving. We need to quit whining and behaving like a teenager dumped by their first boyfriend. We need to deal with it and move forward. That requires understanding our strengths...which are many.


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