# David McWilliams RTE programme on inequality



## Brendan Burgess (20 Sep 2015)

[broken link removed]

McWilliams is doing a programme tomorrow at 21.35 pm. 

_The recession has been tough for everyone. Or was it? A small minority of people with cash, with assets, with influence have done immeasurably better out of the recession and it really bugs us. You've got the hyper-rich and the rest of us - and the gap in between is growing.

David will suggest a radical solution at addressing this that does not require new taxes but addresses the imbalance and will incentivise people and give them a greater stake in our economy._


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## Brendan Burgess (21 Sep 2015)

It's not looking good if his recent article in the Indo, is a taste of the programme.

"In Ireland, for example, the top 100 individuals in the ‘Sunday Independent’ 2014 rich list saw their wealth increase by €12bn in one year.

This was twice as much as the increase in the entire Irish GDP in the same period, implying that 100 people did considerably better than the other 4.8 million of us. We are not talking about "the 1pc"; we are talking about only 0.02pc of the population."


Séamus Coffey deals with this nonsense here: 


  Why is the €12.6 billion estimated wealth increase a useless number.  Well, 75 per cent of it is due to the top two on the list.

During 2014 the net worth of Irish-resident households rose by around €80 billion.  This is made up of:


Increase in value of financial assets: +21.9 billion
Decrease in amount of financial liabilities: –€9.8 billion
Increase in value of housing assets: +€50 billion
If any comparison is to be made with the €12 billion increase in the wealth of the “Irish” Rich List it is to the €80 billion increase in the net worth of Irish-resident households.


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## Gordon Gekko (21 Sep 2015)

Utter claptrap.

The same list that has no factual basis whatsoever, and that imports people into Ireland at will just to include them on the list.


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## Brendan Burgess (21 Sep 2015)

Gordon Gekko said:


> imports people into Ireland at will just to include them on the list.



I agree that it's meaningless, but they are Irish citizens, which is why the top 2 are on the list. 

Brendan


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## Delboy (21 Sep 2015)

Bad start to the show...'Denis O'Brien started out as a PA'


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## Brendan Burgess (21 Sep 2015)

It is outrageous that RTE allows someone to present a programme like that without any serious economist questioning it.

His complete apples and oranges comparison of GDP growth with the growth in wealth as explained by Séamus Coffey.

Tom Lyons said that many of the 300 super rich have got debt write downs to increase their wealth. I doubt if any wealthy solvent borrower got a debt write down.  Maybe an occasional person has recovered from insolvency. But that is why we have insolvency laws.

McWilliams completely ignored his own role in advising Brian Lenihan to guarantee the depositors and bondholders in Anglo and Irish Nationwide.  We did not bail out the banks. We bailed out their depositors and bondholders and McWilliams was a cheerleader for that.

"The value of shares in the top companies in Ireland grew by 500% from 2008 to 2015".  2008 was the bottom of the market. These are all publicly quoted companies. Anyone was free to buy those shares.  They are not restricted to the rich or the super-rich.

"We have tax policies which encourage the wealthy go grow more wealthy". Which policies are these?

"NAMA was a firesale of assets". Actually NAMA was the exact opposite.  If those property development loans had not gone into NAMA, the banks would have all been foreclosing on them a lot quicker.

He interviewed Kevin Nowlan of Hibernian REIT as an example of how the super-rich bought up property cheaply. Again, Hibernian REIT is a publicly quoted company, and anyone who thought property was undervalued could have bought the shares.  

The nonsense from Mark Blyth that both he and McWilliams paid more tax than Bank of America.  I don't know Bank of America's situation, but I presume it's like the Irish tax system. You pay taxes on your profits. If you make huge losses, you set those losses against your taxes.

"We tax incomes e.g. people's salaries but we don't tax capital e.g. corporation tax."  Corporation Tax is a tax on profits i.e. income, not a tax on capital i.e. wealth.

I agree that we should cooperate with all other countries internationally to properly tax multinationals.  But I fully understand that this will lead to a huge loss of jobs and tax to Ireland, as we will no longer be attractive to these companies.  McWilliams seemed to think that we could get more tax by simply raising corporation tax rates.  We would lose huge amounts of tax and income and jobs by doing so.


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## Brendan Burgess (21 Sep 2015)

From the promo for the show: 

_David will suggest a radical solution at addressing this that does not require new taxes but addresses the imbalance and will incentivise people and give them a greater stake in our economy._

I missed that bit.  He bemoaned the wealth inequality in Ireland, but he didn't come up with any solutions, other than taxing US multinationals which, other than making us all poorer, would not affect the 5% who own such a high proportion of our assets. 

We have the most progressive income tax system 
We have among the highest social welfare rates in Europe 
We have high spending on health, even though it's inefficiently spent 

We should raise the level of CAT to the same as income tax, but why did he not suggest that? 
We should raise the level of CGT to the same as income tax, but again he didn't suggest that.

He suggested no taxes at all which would hit the wealthiest 5%, except in so far that some of them have shares in the US multinationals operating here.


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## Brendan Burgess (22 Sep 2015)

I didn't notice the source of his statistics on who owns the wealth in Ireland.

Does anyone know of any research on that and how it has changed?

A lot of the super wealthy property developers and business people have gone bankrupt - would that not have reduced wealth inequality? 

The top 10% might own a bigger share of the wealth than they did 10 years ago, but I suspect that they are different people today from those of 10 years ago.   It might be worth getting out the Rich List from 2005 and seeing where they are now.

Here is some of the information which shows how meaningless a lot of it is. 

https://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Annual_rich_list_shows_Ireland_now_has_six_billionaires

*Hilary Weston and family;* €7.286bn - Retailing
*Sir Tony O'Reilly;* €1.897bn - Food, media and inheritance
*John Dorrance;* €1.857bn - Inheritance
*Dermot Desmond;* €1.239bn - Finance
*Sean Quinn;* €1.157bn - Quarries, hotels, insurance and industry
*Tony Ryan;* €1.114bn - Airline
In 2015, Hilary Weston is worth "only" €8.8 billion - not much of an increase in 10 years. Our richest man is Mr Mistry who is worth €14.5 billion. He wasn't even on the list 10 years ago.  I presume that he has become a resident in the last 10 years. 

We could improve equality by expelling anyone worth over, say, €100m? 

Brendan


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## Sophrosyne (22 Sep 2015)

The programme just reiterated the well-known maxim, “have it and you’ll get it”!

If I have sufficient resources, I can hoover up properties for recession prices and can afford to sit on them until they recover most or all of their value.

If I bought at the right time and held them for at least 7 years, I would not incur CGT on disposals.

If I enhanced the properties so that they sold for 50 times what I paid for them, I would still not incur a CGT liability.

If I don’t have resources, for instance I lose my job, my one property could be repossessed and the bank will chase me to the grave for the shortfall.

The less wealthy suffered disproportionately, as we have daily proof through posters on AAM.

There is nothing new under the sun.


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## Leper (22 Sep 2015)

We need more television programmes like this. I learn more from listening to David McWilliams than to hardened "serious (whatever that means)" economists trying to exact money from people who have nothing and withdrawing any hope they have.  Where were our "serious" economists when Ireland Ltd was going down the tubes?  The programme was populist, but true.  Well done McWilliams.


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## Setanta12 (22 Sep 2015)

Brendan Burgess said:


> We could improve equality by expelling anyone worth over, say, €100m?
> Brendan



Who is John Galt ?


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## Fella (22 Sep 2015)

Watched this last night terrible program , what's his point? Rich get rich by taking chances and risks. I mean the stockmarket is there for everyone to invest in its not only for rich people . He just picks 2008- now to show how stocks have risen , most people be very lucky to buy at the very bottom , I'm sure most rich people where invested long before 2008 and where just recovering losses. 

It's all common sense risk reward stuff , he's making out like rich people had a huge advantage and everyone got in at the bottom of the market and sold for X times they bought for , i'm sure a lot of rich people bought stocks property etc all the way down as they dropped by smaller %'s and haven't made a killing , is he interviewing them ? 

Anyone who takes a chance in stockmarket / property etc and is buying when its doom and gloom and everyone is selling deserves the reward they make in my opinion.


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## Gordon Gekko (22 Sep 2015)

Why did guys contribute to this? They just looked sinister.

As for McWilliams' nonsense re tax on multinationals...incredible.

He thinks that the 12.5% applies to revenue!


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## Brendan Burgess (22 Sep 2015)

Gordon Gekko said:


> He thinks that the 12.5% applies to revenue!



Hi Gordon

I noticed that as well.  Did he say "income" or "revenue".   By "income", he probably meant profits. 

I will watch it again.

Brendan


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## Brendan Burgess (22 Sep 2015)

Let's assume_ for the sake of argument_ that his fundamental points are correct
1)   Ireland has a very unequal distribution of wealth. 
2)  This is very unfair 

Where was his solution? 

I don't think that he even mentioned the expression "Wealth Tax". 

His solution was to tax multinationals.  Let's further assume that they simply pay up and it has no impact on their investments in Ireland. How would that affect the distribution of wealth in Ireland?  I can't see that it would at all.  

I very much doubt that much of the wealth in Ireland is in the form of shares in US multinationals. 

Brendan


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## Gerry Canning (22 Sep 2015)

I like Sophrosynes eminently obvious views.

I considered the programme to be too light on hard facts to merit serious consideration.

Surely the one thing that could (level) things a bit is a proper application of a (windfall) tax, on a lot of non -earned income?.
It seems that those lucky enough to have loose funds can hoover up (value) without adding real worth to Ireland.

Fella,
I think the stock market is for the richer in society. The bookies are for the rest !and there are no tax covers for bookie losses!
I agree those that take risks deserve some reward, but it appears they are feeding off the (little) people who bailed them and banks out ,yet it is the (little) people who subsidised the Risk who get no reward ?


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## Brendan Burgess (22 Sep 2015)

Gerry Canning said:


> I agree those that take risks deserve some reward, but it appears they are feeding off the (little) people who bailed them and banks out ,yet it is the (little) people who subsidised the Risk who get no reward ?



Yes, we bailed out the depositors in the banks. There was a guarantee of €20k in place which would have covered most people. It was a crazy transfer of wealth from borrowers and taxpayers generally to those lucky enough to have over €20k on deposit.

Brendan


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## Sophrosyne (22 Sep 2015)

Brendan Burgess said:


> Yes, we bailed out the depositors in the banks. There was a guarantee of €20k in place which would have covered most people. It was a crazy transfer of wealth from borrowers and taxpayers generally to those lucky enough to have over €20k on deposit.
> 
> Brendan



We did a great deal more than bail out depositors!


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## Conan (22 Sep 2015)

One of his big "proofs" of inequality was showing how much wealth the Top 20% and the Top 5% owned. But no source was quoted (as far as I could see). Clearly some of our former "wealthy" are now bankrupt/as good as ( Sean Quinn, Tony O'Reilly). But many of the wealthiest are actually not really resident in Ireland (e.g. the Westons, John Dorrance, Mr. Mistry , John Grayken etc). So is it correct to include them in any comparison?
I often hear some on the "looney left" quoting that Ireland has 30,000 millionaires and when pressed for a source they often quote a Bank of Ireland study from 2006. Many of those are considerably less wealthy now than in 2006 (Quinn, O'Reilly and the myriad of individuals who have sought bankruptcy in England, Wales etc).  
We again saw in the Claire Byrne show the likes of Paul Murphy drone on about how "banks were bailed out" without acknowledging that in effect it was depositors who were bailed out. It would have been interesting to see how many of those protesting about "bank bailouts" would have reacted had their Current and Deposit Accounts been shut down? 
Overall I found the program simplistic and more of a self-promotion exercise than contributing anything enlightening.  Was Williams only solution to inequality to raise Corporation Tax? Quoting the 500% growth in the share price of the major multinationals with operations in Ireland, what relevance was that???
In terms of economic analysis it would not have been out of place in the Sun or Daily Mail.


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## Sophrosyne (22 Sep 2015)

Brendan Burgess said:


> I didn't notice the source of his statistics on who owns the wealth in Ireland.
> 
> Does anyone know of any research on that and how it has changed?
> 
> ...


 
This shows the top 300.


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## Brendan Burgess (22 Sep 2015)

According to Cormac Staunton of TASC (The Taskforce for Social Change) in a report on Wealth distribution in Ireland 

"Yet we know remarkably little about how this wealth is distributed."

There is no wealth survey for Ireland - just Household Surveys by the CSO. . Apparently, McWilliam got his data from the , which estimates it.





Clearly this shows a consistent pattern of the Irish rich getting richer and the Irish poor getting poorer. 

Brendan


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## Conan (22 Sep 2015)

Surely the Credit Suisse report shows that the wealth of the top decile and percentile has actually remained flat since 2000. That's what the report states?
From a quick scan of the Top 300, it seems to me that at least 50% of the top 20 are not actually resident in Ireland. So is it correct to include the Mistry family (who live in Mumbai), the Westons, John Dorrance etc?


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## Firefly (22 Sep 2015)

Balderdash of a program. Totally devoid of proper economic analysis and almost of counter-opinion. If DMW opened his jacket, a string of knock-off watches would fall down at this stage. 

The only part I agreed with was the equality of opportunity piece, but Fintan the Tool must have had today's rant in the IT prepared for this as well (Fintan, it's not perfect, but we have free education and pretty similar standards of education across our schools. Maybe, just maybe, parental responsibility might at least be a contributing factor?).

The chap from IBEC got it 100% correct for me re: taxation on multinationals - it's not the percentage they pay, but the amount. We're taking in 4BN per year for 4 million people. The muliti-nationals pay some of the better wage rates out there too which has a knock-on for PAYE, VAT and other taxes, never mind the spin-off jobs created. The last thing we want to do here is to kill the golden goose....otherwise, would the last multi-national to leave please turn out the lights?

As for taxing the rich - impossible unless you get EVERY country signed up - which makes it unbelievably attractive for the Lichtenstein's of this world to then not comply. I prefer the English approach - get more of the international rich investing here rather than chasing our own rich out the door. 

Have to watch this again too....www.youtube.com/watch?v=661pi6K-8WQ


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## Sarenco (22 Sep 2015)

What a truly bizarre programme.  Any number of unrelated, poorly articulated "facts" shunted together to demonstrate what exactly?  It certainly didn't show a growing level of income or wealth inequality in Ireland if that was the intention.


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## cremeegg (22 Sep 2015)

Brendan Burgess said:


> Clearly this shows a consistent pattern of the Irish rich getting richer and the Irish poor getting poorer.



I'm missing something, I'm not sure weather it is the point being made or the joke.

The tables show that the top 10% owned 58% of the wealth in Ireland in 2000 and the top 10% (not necessarily the same people) also owned 58% of the wealth in 2014.

This gives the 14th most unequal wealth distribution of the 21 countries listed, in both 2000 and 2014. In other words 13 of the 21 countries listed have a greater concentration of wealth in the hands of the top 10% than Ireland.


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## Brendan Burgess (22 Sep 2015)

Brendan Burgess said:


> Clearly this shows a consistent pattern of the Irish rich getting richer and the Irish poor getting poorer.





Conan said:


> Surely the Credit Suisse report shows that the wealth of the top decile and percentile has actually remained flat since 2000. That's what the report states?





cremeegg said:


> I'm missing something, I'm not sure weather it is the point being made or the joke.



Sorry guys. I omitted the smiley. It is extraordinarily consistent.  There is no evidence at all of the rich getting richer. 

Brendan


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## galway_blow_in (22 Sep 2015)

most offensive thing i learned from the programmme was from that comer man from galway who bought a house for 900k which was originally valued at ten million and is now worth six million according to him

he claimed that his company began buying what they could as quick as they could after the bailout in late 2010 so as to head out the vulture funds which arrived the following year

this suggests the real firesale prices are made eighteen months before what is offically reported as the bottom by the likes of myhome or daft , it appears the reported lows of mid 2012 were only the lows in the market available to the rest of us , seems those big guns in the know had access to the prize assets a good while before that

its been my experience for a while in trying to buy commerical property that those who decide on the terms of a sale often have a preferred buyer , ive offered the asking price on commerical property in limerick , only for a deal to be impossible to put together , limerick is still where dublin was in around 2012


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## Leper (22 Sep 2015)

I had a conversation earlier with a teacher.  He bought his house just before the recession and just to get on the then elusive property ladder.  He still has his house out in a fairly remote village.  He cannot sell his house as it is still worth way less than what he paid.  He now cannot rent out his house because nobody wants to live in the relatively remote village where it was built.  Although he has a good job, he is trapped.  His hope has been removed and his rage is multiplying.  He must pay his taxes and his earnings are easily reckonable.  He cannot allay any tax against his huge loss while the the rich can. This is the scenario for many many people who now have no hope and can only look at the rich getting richer and of course rage sets in. David McWilliams programme just confirms that there is now less hope for many while others are swanning in easy acquired wealth. You do not have to be a trained economist to see this as all you need is some common sense.  

I wish some of our well heeled "economists" on this forum would see common sense.  The coping class has been screwed by the classes above and below them but they still continue to cope somehow.  For how long more can this happen?


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## Brendan Burgess (23 Sep 2015)

Hi Leper

None of that is really very relevant. Your friend bought a house in a remote village.  That was always going to be risky. Who is he annoyed at? Himself?   He could well be annoyed at David McWilliams for strongly advocating the bank guarantee where he and  tax payers have bailed out wealthy depositors and bondholders.  But he should be primarily annoyed at himself.



Leper said:


> can only look at the rich getting richer and of course rage sets in. David McWilliams programme just confirms that there is now less hope for many while others are swanning in easy acquired wealth.



Did you look at the figures in the above tables? There is simply no evidence that the rich are getting richer. This is a slogan which has become an urban myth.

After calling for a guarantee, McWilliams called for Ireland to default on its national debt. He called for us to leave the Euro. He predicted that the mortgage crisis and, what he called the "tracker mortgage timebomb" would lead to civil unrest and massive defaults.  While he was forecasting doom and creating a general loss off hope among the Irish , some Irish and international investors risked their money to buy assets in Ireland. Now that their judgement has been proven to be correct, he is complaining that they are getting richer.  It's not common sense - it's nonsense.

But even if the rich are getting richer and even if that is unfair, McWilliams offered no solution to it.  If you think that the people who invested during the crisis should be pulled back in now, you do that through increases in Capital Acquisition Tax and Capital Gains Tax and you introduce a Wealth Tax.  An increase in Corporation Tax on these evil multinationals would have no effect on the distribution of wealth.


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## Duke of Marmalade (23 Sep 2015)

_Boss_ agree with you entirely, the program was an outrage.  It is the sheer cynicism which gets me.  For example, Prof McWilliams knows full well that there is an entirely innocent reason why he paid more tax than BoA in a year when the latter made losses and yet he has no qualms with letting that soundbyte survive editing.
Just a couple of other comments. Asset distribution is driven by age more than anything else and this is entirely in keeping with the human condition even in a totally equal world. Thus the bottom 10% own practically zero net assets. This group of asset paupers will include a large number of young professionals who have a successful career ahead of them.
That top 300 was interesting. Only a handful were inherited wealth, the majority seemed self made.  It seems to me we all had equal opportunity to be in that top 300 unless the Prof is claiming that it is unfair that I can't sing like Bono.


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## T McGibney (23 Sep 2015)

Leper said:


> He cannot allay any tax against his huge loss while the the rich can.



I don't get this point. No matter how rich you are, you're not subject to Capital Gains Tax on any increase in the value of your home. The corollary of this is that you can't claim a Capital Gains Tax or other tax deduction on any decrease in its value either.

McWilliams et al are using half-truths to sow unwarranted public resentment and anger, for their own ends.


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## Sarenco (23 Sep 2015)

Duke of Marmalade said:


> Asset distribution is driven by age more than anything else and this is entirely in keeping with the human condition even in a totally equal world. Thus the bottom 10% own practically zero net assets. This group of asset paupers will include a large number of young professionals who have a successful career ahead of them.



That really is a key point. 

To take one example, a Garda can retire after 30 years service with pension entitlements with an actuarial value in excess of €1million.  By that stage, a Garda may well have a mortgage-free house (or at least substantial property equity) and other savings that could easily translate to a net worth in excess of €1.5million.  In contrast, a newly qualified actuary will typically have a minimal (or even negative) net worth, although you might reasonably expect an actuary to have higher career earnings than a Garda.

So the newly qualified actuary may well be in the bottom 5% of the wealth distribution range, whereas a retired Garda may well be in the top 5%.


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## galway_blow_in (23 Sep 2015)

Brendan Burgess said:


> Hi Leper
> 
> None of that is really very relevant. Your friend bought a house in a remote village.  That was always going to be risky. Who is he annoyed at? Himself?   He could well be annoyed at David McWilliams for strongly advocating the bank guarantee where he and  tax payers have bailed out wealthy depositors and bondholders.  But he should be primarily annoyed at himself.
> 
> ...




agree with most of what you say ( property in rural villages is never going to become very valuable and its foolish to think otherwise ) but i think mc williams made fair points about how NAMA sold off quality assets at much too low prices to foreign funds , that man from glenamaddy galway ( who started as a plasterer and with his brother developed a property empire in the uk and germany ) more or less confirmed that discounts way beyond 60% ( reported as the maximum dip int the market from peak to trough ) were to be had

it does appear a section  of the property market was reserved for very high NET worth individuals following the crash


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## Leo (23 Sep 2015)

From what I've seen of the Comer brothers, you really have to admire what they've built up from very humble beginnings. The stories of the sheer volume of work they got through working their way up on building sites, regularly working into the small hours of the morning just to get up and repeat day after day. 

They were shrewd, and held their ground when much of the rest of the country were leveraging themselves way beyond their capacity thinking we had the first bubble ever that wouldn't burst. Once it inevitably did burst, they had the capital available to invest in properties with potential, but particularly those like Kilternan that still required the kind of investment to finish that no bank was prepared to back. 

They don't seem like the politically connected moguls the popular media like to typically portray as the beneficiaries of NAMA deals. But then, as a nation we seem to like to think there's some big conspiracy behind success stories like this, we don't like hearing it's down to hard work and intelligence.


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## 44brendan (23 Sep 2015)

galway_blow_in said:


> how NAMA sold off quality assets at much too low prices to foreign funds , that man from glenamaddy galway ( who started as a plasterer and with his brother developed a property empire in the uk and germany ) more or less confirmed that discounts way beyond 60%


This type of allegation is without foundation and extremely annoying to those of us involved in managing an asset portfolio. In terms of the timing of asset sales the market back in 2010 - 2013 was at best volatile and at worst still in the process of bottoming out. many knowledgeable commentators were still forecasting further falls in property prices and there were very few buyers with available funds for the larger properties that needed to be sold. Yes, with the benefit of hindsight some of those properties should have been withheld from the market, but as a decision maker you are not in a position to take the risk of further drops in value on a signification portion of  of your portfolio. Fair dues to the Comer brothers and others who had the funds available to take a punt in buying properties at a time when others had neither the risk appetite nor the funds to invest.
Perception and reality are somewhat at odds here as while it would appear on the face of it that NAMA and banks sold off properties at a fraction of their value, it is unlikely that this involved "sweetheart deals" in general (not saying that there weren't any!). Most of these deals would have been available to the rest of us had we the funds to avail of them.


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## Protocol (23 Sep 2015)

Seamus Coffey has a blogpost on wealth by age:

http://economic-incentives.blogspot.ie/2015/09/age-and-distribution-of-wealth.html


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## Protocol (23 Sep 2015)

Note that the CSO has published one survey of wealth, called the HFC Household Finance and Consumption Survey.

See here:

[broken link removed]

http://www.cso.ie/en/media/csoie/releasespublications/documents/socialconditions/2013/hfcs2013.pdf


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## Brendan Burgess (23 Sep 2015)

galway_blow_in said:


> i think mc williams made fair points about how NAMA sold off quality assets at much too low prices



McWilliams said that NAMA had sold off stuff at fire sale prices.  If NAMA had not been set up, the banks would have appointed receivers and those properties would have been dumped on the market much earlier and with no co-ordination. NAMA was able to feed the property onto the market in an orderly fashion. 

It was also able to finance the completion of some of the projects, which the banks probably would not have done. 

In a massive market drop and market recovery, someone has to start selling properties at low prices to get action going in the market. 

A completely baseless and ignorant criticism from McWilliams.

Brendan


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## Brendan Burgess (23 Sep 2015)

Protocol said:


> Seamus Coffey has a blogpost on wealth by age:
> 
> http://economic-incentives.blogspot.ie/2015/09/age-and-distribution-of-wealth.html



A great piece: 



> The median wealth for the over 65 households is €202,400.  The middle household in the under 35 age bracket has 50 times less wealth than the middle household in the over 65 households.  Do we want to make this gap smaller? If we want to do that how do we achieve it? Take wealth from the nearly retired and give it to the newly qualified? Would it not be better if this gap was even greater?



To assess the level of inequality in wealth distribution, we would need to know the wealth distribution by age group. In other words, "the bottom 10% of people aged 65+ own 2% of the wealth of that age group, and the top 10% own 50% of the wealth of that age group"

McWilliams asked what did people think would be a fair distribution. If I had been asked that question, I would not have thought to factor in this age issue.


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## galway_blow_in (23 Sep 2015)

Leo said:


> From what I've seen of the Comer brothers, you really have to admire what they've built up from very humble beginnings. The stories of the sheer volume of work they got through working their way up on building sites, regularly working into the small hours of the morning just to get up and repeat day after day.
> 
> They were shrewd, and held their ground when much of the rest of the country were leveraging themselves way beyond their capacity thinking we had the first bubble ever that wouldn't burst. Once it inevitably did burst, they had the capital available to invest in properties with potential, but particularly those like Kilternan that still required the kind of investment to finish that no bank was prepared to back.
> 
> They don't seem like the politically connected moguls the popular media like to typically portray as the beneficiaries of NAMA deals. But then, as a nation we seem to like to think there's some big conspiracy behind success stories like this, we don't like hearing it's down to hard work and intelligence.




was not my intention to slight the comer brothers at all , the big pile he got for 900 k looked like it was more of a grand home than somewhere the vast majority of people would like to invest in , he did however say that they started buying around the time the IMF arrived , looking at data from myhome etc  , we are led to believe the bottom was sometime around the middle of 2012 , comer implied that the big money was in swooping on assets at least a year earlier than this , i took this to mean he was talking about stuff which was,nt on the open market


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## galway_blow_in (23 Sep 2015)

44brendan said:


> This type of allegation is without foundation and extremely annoying to those of us involved in managing an asset portfolio. In terms of the timing of asset sales the market back in 2010 - 2013 was at best volatile and at worst still in the process of bottoming out. many knowledgeable commentators were still forecasting further falls in property prices and there were very few buyers with available funds for the larger properties that needed to be sold. Yes, with the benefit of hindsight some of those properties should have been withheld from the market, but as a decision maker you are not in a position to take the risk of further drops in value on a signification portion of  of your portfolio. Fair dues to the Comer brothers and others who had the funds available to take a punt in buying properties at a time when others had neither the risk appetite nor the funds to invest.
> Perception and reality are somewhat at odds here as while it would appear on the face of it that NAMA and banks sold off properties at a fraction of their value, it is unlikely that this involved "sweetheart deals" in general (not saying that there weren't any!). Most of these deals would have been available to the rest of us had we the funds to avail of them.




so you think anyone who had the available means could have bought what they liked , i have my doubts and mr comer has increased those doubts by what he said

i believe even estate agents have preferred buyers a lot of time , never mind when assets are at rock bottom during a major economic crisis , politics is rampant in many areas of our economy and society , from AGS to NAMA


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## Leper (24 Sep 2015)

So the rich are not getting richer and aforementioned tables prove this.  The poor are not getting poorer either, well if it says it in the tables, it must be true? Ol' Lep has called it all wrong per the "financial people" here.

But, I look around me and I see people in negative equity (rural and urban), I see more people begging in the streets. St-Vincent de Paul Society informs us that they've never been busier and seldom had less funds.  People are being evicted from their homes by banks who were bailed out and helped through the taxes the same people facing homelessness. 

Many cannot obtain mortgages for homes and continue to rent paying out even more and their money continues to go "dead."  

David McWilliams takes to the television airwaves and tells the truth of the increase of the gap between rich and poor.  He supplied cogent arguments.  Did you see the look on some of the faces of some of his interviewees? They appeared not to want to admit of the millions they were making.  In what kind of tv show did they think there were appearing? I reckon most of them regretted taking part in the programme.

David McWilliams never said he had a solution to what was going on.  Merely, he pointed out in easy terms what is going on. Meanwhile, much of our population has emigrated.  Many endured cuts in wages.  Many suffered unemployment.  And you say the poor are not getting poorer and the rich are not getting richer - I reckon many of us on this forum need a Reality Check.


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## Brendan Burgess (24 Sep 2015)

Hi Leper

There are simply no data to suggest that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.  The "data" used by McWilliams do not show it. The rich may be getting richer, but there are simply no data to suggest it.

You quote some examples. But a lot of rich people lost all their wealth and have gone bankrupt.  I don't know if one balances out the other or not. 

There are virtually no evictions by the banks, contrary to the headlines in the papers. Go down to the Registrar's Court in your local area and see for yourself.

The banks were not bailed out. The depositors, most of whom were ordinary people, were bailed out.  They should not have been. It was a transfer from tax payers to people who were well enough to have deposits.

McWilliams did not supply one cogent argument. He told nonsense stories.

I agree with you about one thing. I have no idea why those guys agreed to be interviewed.  It's probably the Hello effect, where people like flaunting their money. But I thought that Comer was a private enough guy. I had not really heard much about him before. 


_David McWilliams never said he had a solution to what was going on._

Well the promo for the programme certainly did:

_David will suggest a radical solution at addressing this that does not require new taxes but addresses the imbalance and will incentivise people and give them a greater stake in our economy._

He offered no solution at all other than to increase taxes on large multinationals. This would have zero effect on the distribution of wealth in this country.  The problem is that the audience would not like the only  solutions to wealth inequality  - increases in property tax, Capital Gains Taxes and taxes on gifts and inheritances and the introduction of a wealth tax.  Of course, there are other solutions as well, such as barring wealthy people from the country and forcing pensioners to give a share of their pensions funds and savings to young families.

McWilliams always has populist simple solutions.  Guarantee the banks.  Exit the euro. Default on our national debts.  Write down mortgages. 

The problem with them is that they are neither simple nor solutions.  Each has a huge cost as you and I now know about his wonderful cost-free solution of guaranteeing the banks. 

*Lenihan's masterstroke*


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## Bronte (24 Sep 2015)

Dan O' Brien in the Indo not afraid to take issue with McWilliams assertions:

*Hard data shows 'great wealth divide' is not as big as you think*


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## Bronte (24 Sep 2015)

Leper said:


> So the rich are not getting richer and aforementioned tables prove this.  The poor are not getting poorer either, well if it says it in the tables, it must be true? Ol' Lep has called it all wrong per the "financial people" here.
> 
> But, I look around me and I see people in negative equity (rural and urban), I see more people begging in the streets. St-Vincent de Paul Society informs us that they've never been busier and seldom had less funds.  People are being evicted from their homes by banks who were bailed out and helped through the taxes the same people facing homelessness.
> 
> ...



I travel back to Ireland fairly regularly and I can only guage things on what I see.  Two of my family have secured permanent jobs this year.  No one now is unemployed which wasn't the case before, except for the one that appears to me not to want a job.   Another family member turned down permanency as they hope to move on.  The debts are starting to be repaid.  The bank will take two properties but the people involved live in a better property, yes it's rent, but it's better than what they purchased and a lot less than the mortgage.

There's an increase in traffic, a sign of people in jobs.

I dispute the Charity sector in relation to the numbers.  I'd like to see an analysis of what the reality is, or is it charities are cashing in.  I don't know.  Who exactly are getting charity and why.

Does NE matter if you're able to afford to pay back your mortgage?

What I don't see is young people bying brand new cars on credit, I don't hear stories of people buying houses and borrowing money to go on holidays four times a year, no stories of mad credit card spending, no weekend trips to NY.

You might consider me one of those 'rich' well I'm down massively from the boom, including one NE property.  No recovery in property for me, so I've no idea who is really rich.  I'm looking at auctions in Ireland and I see no recovery in property, quite the opposite - not Dublin obviously.  As a landlord for the last few years I'm mad at myself for not cashing out and wondering how on earth it's worth it.  Can't begin to imagine it must be like for those landlords who bought at the height on interest only, they are the ones who really have lost it. 

I think there has been merely a readjustment to reality from craziness.  And people who spent unwisely have had to be very careful for a few years.


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## Leo (24 Sep 2015)

galway_blow_in said:


> was not my intention to slight the comer brothers at all , the big pile he got for 900 k looked like it was more of a grand home than somewhere the vast majority of people would like to invest in , he did however say that they started buying around the time the IMF arrived , looking at data from myhome etc  , we are led to believe the bottom was sometime around the middle of 2012 , comer implied that the big money was in swooping on assets at least a year earlier than this , i took this to mean he was talking about stuff which was,nt on the open market



Their purchases have been well documented over the years, seems they'd been focusing on investing since 1992, but significantly ramped up in 2010 when they saw more value in the market. No reference anywhere to any purchases that weren't on the open market. 

I'm sure there were deals to be had that weren't publicised to a great degree, but that's the nature of an open market. People are free to sell as they see fit. The media at the time weren't reporting much on the commercial property sector either, so to an outsider, it might not look like there was much of an open market. However, if you're suggesting receivers or NAMA conducted shady deals, then that's another matter entirely. Is there anything NAMA have sold off that hasn't gone on public record?


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## Bronte (24 Sep 2015)

Leo said:


> I'm sure there were deals to be had that weren't publicised to a great degree, but that's the nature of an open market. People are free to sell as they see fit. The media at the time weren't reporting much on the commercial property sector either, so to an outsider, it might not look like there was much of an open market. However, if you're suggesting receivers or NAMA conducted shady deals, then that's another matter entirely. Is there anything NAMA have sold off that hasn't gone on public record?



Try and much as everybody seems to do, but so far I've not seen Nama do anything shady.  Sure Project Eagle is shady but not because of them. 

The Irish property market unless I'm mistaken seems pretty open and transparent, maybe it's not the case for big deals.  But anyone in the last couuple of years with any few bob could have been buying up vast amounts of property, without no CGT and no doubt in 10 years time if they recover and people make a killing we'll have everybody saying it was a shady deal.  And that the CGT exemption was to profit the FG/Lab friends.


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## Conan (24 Sep 2015)

Two of the bigger purchasers of commercial property over the past few years have been Hibernia REIT and Green REIT. Both are publically quoted companies on the Irish Stock Exchange and anybody could have both shares in either or both (not just exclusively the super wealthy as DMcW suggested).
DMcW is the typical economist looking in the rear view mirror and telling us what has already happened. People or investors with funds took investment risk post the "crash" by buying property when many economists (DMcW, Brian Lucey, Constantin Gurdgyev etc) were telling us that Ireland would need a 2nd bailout, should leave the Euro, should default of debts etc. Now that some of these investors are seen to have made a profit on their investment the likes of DMcW are suggesting that they clearly bought the properties on the cheap or that NAMA should have held on to the properties. Hindsight is wonderful. I suspect that had property prices actually fallen further he would been just as quick to criticise NAMA for not selling at the market price.
DMcW's "reputation" seems to be based on getting one prediction right (the property collapse). But just because he got the winner of one Grand National does not mean that all his future tips are sure fire winners. We don't hear much from him about his recommendation to Brian Lenehan re the Bank guarantee?
Dan O'Brien is absolutely correct in his criticism of DMcW programme. God save us from "celebrity economists".


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## 44brendan (24 Sep 2015)

The reason I have a problem with D McWilliams is nothing to do with his populist approach to Economics nor his subject matter. It gets down to his total subjectivity in terms of ignoring facts that don't suit his arguments and putting forward his opinions as facts.
The subject of his programme was good and there may well be a case to be made for inequality of wealth distribution. However he is a professional economist and not alone that but is teaching the subject to our graduate students. How can be possibly hold on to his professional credibility and pass on a professional standard to students while at the same time produce "puff economics" with no credibility for mass distribution?


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## Fella (24 Sep 2015)

I bought more shares today , maybe i'm one of these rich people he talks about that invests in shares and assets . What if my shares do really bad and I lose half my investment , there are no gaurantees , ridiculous aftertiming programmes like this appealing to the masses makes me sad , they should take his degree off him or whatever he got in college for been an idiot.


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## cremeegg (24 Sep 2015)

I have been thinking about this idea about the rich getting richer after the bust. We have seen the statistics but perhaps a personal experience of mine may shed a particular light on it.

In 2011 I tried very hard to buy an investment property, the property was well advertised in the press and online. I gathered every penny I had, I got a friend to contribute some money and I went to the bank, who agreed to loan me up to 70%, so in effect I had 2 and a third times my deposit available to bid on the property. I bid the maximum with the auctioneer but the property was sold to someone else.

Although I do not know for certain who bought the property, it is generally believed that it was the Comer brothers. 

In my opinion the property was sold for less than half what it was worth, based on rental income. Thats why I tried so hard to buy it. The reason it was sold so cheaply is because no one offered a higher price. The price paid is publicly available in the PSRA register and is about 30% more than I bid.

As rents have increased considerably in the meantime the property is now worth maybe 3 times what it was sold for.

This is a clear example of the rich getting richer. The Comer brothers made this profit not me, because they were richer than me to start with.

However I feel absolutely no sense of grievance over this, they offered the vendor more than I could so they got the property. The fact that the price is in the public record is an excellent thing.

My conclusion is that in a capitalist economy saying the rich get richer is like saying Dublin won the All-Ireland because they were better footballers. An obvious truth but not necessarily a cause for complaint.


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## Brendan Burgess (24 Sep 2015)

Hi cremeegg

That's a great story.   But it's not because the buyer was richer. It's because they bid more than you did.  Would you have bid 30% more if you had loan approval for a larger amount? 



cremeegg said:


> in a capitalist economy saying the rich get richer is like saying Dublin won the All-Ireland because they were better footballers.



That is a great one. One could write a great skit on the McWilliams programme referring to football teams.  And the solution to Dublin winning the All Ireland so often?  Tax the multinationals.  

Brendan


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## Descart (24 Sep 2015)

Is this a slag fest of a professor of economics who called it right in relation to the property bubble in this Country, when all those other economists ( being in the pocket of the banks ) talked up the market. The programme is aimed at the general audience not academics and is meant to be entertaining and somewhat enlightening as to what happened.


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## 44brendan (24 Sep 2015)

Descart said:


> The programme is aimed at the general audience not academics and is meant to be entertaining and somewhat enlightening as to what happened.


Nobody is disputing the core rationale of the program Descart, nor as far as I am aware is there any disagreement on an Economist simplifying issues to clarify them for a general audience. This is to be welcomed rather than censured. What is of great concern is that the information and findings of the programme were totally skewed and distorted to the extent that facts were presented that were both irrelevant and incorrect which should never be permitted to happen unquestioned on the public airways whether it is David McWilliams or any other presenter making the case.


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## Duke of Marmalade (24 Sep 2015)

Descart said:


> Is this a slag fest of a professor of economics who called it right in relation to the property bubble in this Country, when all those other economists ( being in the pocket of the banks ) talked up the market. The programme is aimed at the general audience not academics and is meant to be entertaining and somewhat enlightening as to what happened.


It was entertaining.  It should have stuck to stories of private jets, million euro watches, Ferraris, guys making a killing by plunging in when all around were saying we're doomed. Even replays of when He told us so and Bertie's hilarious suicide speech are always worth a watch.  

But when he juxtaposes this with austerity protests and weaves a totally spurious morality tale about a conspiracy by a tiny elite of insiders against the rest of us He actually becomes dangerous.  There is no smoking gun here - read Dan O'Brien, we are actually near the front of class in both overall prosperity terms but also in terms of distribution of income and wealth.


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## Descart (24 Sep 2015)

Yes, his presentations are like his books, quirky ! I think the documentary " inside job " sums up the moral compass of a lot of eminent economists and just who are the puppetmasters pulling their strings ?


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## Leper (24 Sep 2015)

Descart said:


> Is this a slag fest of a professor of economics who called it right in relation to the property bubble in this Country, when all those other economists ( being in the pocket of the banks ) talked up the market. The programme is aimed at the general audience not academics and is meant to be entertaining and somewhat enlightening as to what happened.



Descartes, I think you have called it right.  We have our own "economists" on this forum entertaining themselves.  They are like guitarists who meet each other for the umpteenth time before a music festival and entertain each other using obscure chords, strange sounds and their own take on music and lyrics.  That's great among the musicians but when they bring the same to the stage they are not aware that they are not entertaining the paying audience. The best example of what I can come up with here is that - wait for it - the banks are not repossessing property and there is no proof thereof as outlined a few posts back.  But, I have seen two letters from banks in the past week informing people that they will have to leave their homes before the end of November.

And . . . the classic . . . there is no proof that the rich are getting richer . . . perhaps I'm going blind?  The only people with money are the rich, they sat on their riches and when prices bottomed out, they bought (or invested).  I am not saying there is something wrong with this.  I'm just saying it is obvious that the rich are getting richer. The coping class cannot get their mitts on any money to invest.  There we go again, reduce the demand and the price reduces too.

I'm getting worried.  Some posters here who I thought to be bordering on brilliance appear to be not that brilliant. Perhaps this is why David McWilliams didn't have them on his programme?


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## Conan (24 Sep 2015)

Leper,
I always question it when someone says "it is obvious that the rich are getting richer (or the poor are getting poorer)" and offer nothing to back up the opinion. I was not looking for DMcW to entertain me on Mon. If I want entertainment (as opposed to information) I can watch Mad Men etc. But that was not what the DMcW program promised. 
Equally suggesting that the "rich" just sat on their money  and them somehow took advantage  is simplistic. Does that include Sean Quinn, Sean Dunne and the numerous builders who went bankrupt. The "rich" are not a homogeneous group. Some made sensible investment decisions and some did not. Not greatly different to many others (other than perhaps the scale).
Other than Danny McCoy (an economist) who challenged DMcW, the rest of the (edited) contributors were ones who agreed with DMcW opinions (masquerading as facts).
I maintain still that the whole program was nothing more than entertainment economics, and would not have been out of place on Comedy Central.


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## Bronte (24 Sep 2015)

Descart said:


> Is this a slag fest of a professor of economics who called it right in relation to the property bubble in this Country, when all those other economists ( being in the pocket of the banks ) talked up the market. The programme is aimed at the general audience not academics and is meant to be entertaining and somewhat enlightening as to what happened.



If it's meant to be entertaining why is it classified under Factual' by RTE rather than 'light entertainment'?

(Unfortunately it's not available on the player so I've been unable to watch it)


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## Gordon Gekko (24 Sep 2015)

Sorry, but the "data" is utter nonsense and conjecture. The Sunday Independent Rich List is the source of core data and it's more or less made up. They have no idea what anyone's wealth is. The programme was a complete joke and one has to question the wisdom of guys like Comer and Nowlan who chose to appear in that context.


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## Sarenco (24 Sep 2015)

Hi Leper

The thesis presented by David McWilliams is that wealth inequality increased in Ireland during the recent recession.  However, data published by the CSO shows that the exact opposite occurred - wealth inequality was actually lower in 2011 than it was in 2006.

To be fair, Central Bank analysis of these data does indeed indicate that wealth inequality has increased since 2011 but it remains lower than in 2006, the earliest period for which these data are available.

Ireland has the most progressive income tax regime in the EU (a point recognised by David McWilliams in the programme) and wealth inequality in Ireland for 2013, as measured by the Gini Coefficient, is lower than the eurozone average. The results also show that wealth is less concentrated at the very top of the distribution in Ireland than the eurozone average. 

I am personally of the opinion that we should actually take pride in the re-distributive impact of our tax system and the fact that core social welfare rates were preserved during the recession.


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## moneybox (24 Sep 2015)

Brendan Burgess said:


> The banks were not bailed out. The depositors, most of whom were ordinary people, were bailed out.  They should not have been. It was a transfer from tax payers to people who were well enough to have deposits.




So it was depositors, not land developers who borrowed millions from the banks with many never paying back a cent were the cause of the banks been bailed out.


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## Sarenco (25 Sep 2015)

I don't think anybody is suggesting that depositors in the covered institutions caused the financial crisis but they (along with bondholders) certainly benefited from the State intervention.

To be fair, retail deposits have benefitted from state protection in some form in most developed countries for decades but the scope of the famous State guarantee was controversially broad.


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## Brendan Burgess (25 Sep 2015)

moneybox said:


> So it was depositors, not land developers who borrowed millions from the banks with many never paying back a cent were the cause of the banks been bailed out.



Hi moneybox

It was the developers who were the main cause of the insolvency of the banks. 
The banks were not bailed out i.e. the shareholders did not benefit from it. 
The depositors and bondholders should have taken a huge hit. They took no hit. 

In summary, the taxpayers bailed out the depositors. 

Brendan


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## Fella (25 Sep 2015)

Brendan Burgess said:


> Hi moneybox
> 
> It was the developers who were the main cause of the insolvency of the banks.
> The banks were not bailed out i.e. the shareholders did not benefit from it.
> ...



How would something like that work ? For example if I had a mortgage with a bank for 200k and savings in same bank for 100k , if in theory they had of hit depositors , would they knock the 100k off the mortgage ? I wouldn't be too keen to pay them bank back 200k if they just lost my 100k deposit !! In fact I'd flat refuse too I'm sure others would too and it be chaos


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## Gerry Canning (25 Sep 2015)

Wealth inequality must have risen.
1. Those caught in negative equity.
2. Those caught with barely manageable mortgages.
3. Those caught with income reductions.
4. Those caught in higher rents.
5. All caught by flat taxes, (which % wise hit poorer harder)

Could it be that statistics cannot catch that the working squeezed are being pushed into a lower section.
The upshot  is that the cohort of the (unequal) is getting larger and now means that too many workers are effectively a new poor ,caught in a trap of surviving ?


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## Brendan Burgess (25 Sep 2015)

Here are the only hard data on the topic, from a presentation by the Central Bank. 



The higher the Gini coefficient - the higher the inequality ( If one person owned everything and no one else had anything we would have a Gini coefficient of 1; If we all had exactly the same amount of wealth, the Gini coefficient would be 0) 

And we are about mid range for other Eurozone countries.


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## Protocol (25 Sep 2015)

Sarenco said:


> Hi Leper
> I am personally of the opinion that we should actually take pride in the re-distributive impact of our tax system and the fact that core social welfare rates were preserved during the recession.



Please note that most welfare rates were cut twice.

JSA was cut from 204 to 196 to 188.

State Pensions were not cut.


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## Sarenco (25 Sep 2015)

Protocol said:


> Please note that most welfare rates were cut twice.
> 
> JSA was cut from 204 to 196 to 188.
> 
> State Pensions were not cut.



Fair enough - I should have said that welfare rates were preserved_ in real terms_ during the recession.  We obviously had material price deflation during this period so the spending power of welfare recipients was essentially maintained.

The fact that the welfare system was relatively unchanged in the face of a massive increase in the numbers depending on it was no mean feat.  I personally think that was a policy decision made by successive governments that we should applaud.


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## Protocol (25 Sep 2015)

Joan Burton often says she's proud of not cutting welfare rates.

She is correct, as the two cuts were pre-2011 election.


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## thedaddyman (25 Sep 2015)

Protocol said:


> Joan Burton often says she's proud of not cutting welfare rates.
> 
> She is correct, as the two cuts were pre-2011 election.



So the elimination of the berevemant grant, phone allowance for pensioners,  changes to maternity payment entitlement, limitations to access to full JSA to people over 24, reduction in child benefit, reduction in back to school allowances, reduction in respite care were not welfare cuts?


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## 44brendan (25 Sep 2015)

Gerry Canning said:


> Could it be that statistics cannot catch that the working squeezed are being pushed into a lower section.
> The upshot is that the cohort of the (unequal) is getting larger and now means that too many workers are effectively a new poor ,caught in a trap of surviving ?


Gerry, I don't think that there will be many arguing that during the past 7 or so years there was a significantly increased level of hardship suffered predominately by the middle to lower earners in our population. However does this in itself signify that this decline in living standards by that cohort was in any way related to a pro-rata increase in income of those currently on the "Rich List" which is the tenet of the argument made in this programme?
For example if Denis O'Brien increased his net wealth by say 500 mln in that period did he do so at the expense of the rest of us? That increase in wealth would predominately relate to his expansions abroad and potentially the added value in his companies due to increases in the share price. I just don't see any co-relation between the two changes in wealth. Because a certain cohort of people in the country are getting richer it does not follow that it is at the expense of the broader population. Wealth is not cash and there is not a limited pool of wealth where if we see the rich getting richer it must naturally follow that the poor are getting poorer. Aspirational Socialist equality is all very well if we can all aspire and have equal opportunity to climb the ladder towards our perceived goals. However I find that in practice most Socialsts aspirations are to bring the rich down to their level rather than giving us all more opportunities ourselves to achieve our own goals.
Absolutely we are not an equal society and there are many amongst us who don't have those opportunities. But in practice most people are not aspiring for opportunities to attain a good job and a good lifestyle they are more concerned with the end product rather than the means to achieve that end product. I.e. "I want your wealth" rather than "I want your opportunities".
Why begrudge the rich unless they genuinely have gained their wealth illegally or immorally? We are not the only nation of begrudgers but we are certainly up there with the best of them!!


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## Brendan Burgess (25 Sep 2015)

Here is how the Journal previewed the programme. The article reproduces the charts.


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## Protocol (25 Sep 2015)

thedaddyman said:


> So the elimination of the berevemant grant, phone allowance for pensioners,  changes to maternity payment entitlement, limitations to access to full JSA to people over 24, reduction in child benefit, reduction in back to school allowances, reduction in respite care were not welfare cuts?



I'm not defending Joan Burton.

She is careful to refer to "*basic *welfare rates".


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## Brendan Burgess (26 Sep 2015)

RTE has asked McWilliams to debate the issues with Dan O'Brien. McWilliams has refused. 

*David McWilliams turns down Celebrity Economist Debtmatch with Dan O’Brien *


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## Bronte (26 Sep 2015)

Brendan Burgess said:


> RTE has asked McWilliams to debate the issues with Dan O'Brien. McWilliams has refused.
> 
> *David McWilliams turns down Celebrity Economist Debtmatch with Dan O’Brien *



Amazing, why won't he debate.  Totally do not get the Ghandi reference.


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## Brendan Burgess (26 Sep 2015)

Bronte said:


> Totally do not get the Ghandi reference.



It was a reference to Goosey, Goosey , not Mahatma.  Does that help?


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## Bronte (26 Sep 2015)

Brendan Burgess said:


> It was a reference to Goosey, Goosey , not Mahatma.  Does that help?



No! More confused ! Gooses Goosey Gander?


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## trasneoir (28 Sep 2015)

Brendan Burgess said:


> Here is how the Journal previewed the programme. The article reproduces the charts.
> 
> View attachment 877


"The income of those who make money exclusively from shares and assets [...] has gone up 500% since 2008" Did either the Journal or the programme mention that 2008 is not the best year to take a baseline?

An hour ago, I was kicked in the proverbials. I'm 500% happier now. Woohoo.


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## Brendan Burgess (7 Oct 2015)

Rory O'Farrell makes a great point in this article: 

*An ‘ideal’ wealth distribution and the life-cycle*

*People have difficulty understanding distributions. This can be seen in the survey presented in the recent documentary by David McWilliams (which I haven’t seen yet, but am looking forward to watching). In an ‘ideal’ world survey respondents said the top 20% would get slightly more than 30% of net wealth, and the bottom 17%. But in this ‘ideal’ world the bottom 20% are actually richer than those in the middle 60%. Obviously this is impossible.*

In other words



It shows what a meaningless exercise it is asking the public what would be a fair distribution. 

Brendan


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