# Socialist Thatcherism



## Purple (13 Aug 2019)

Jason O'Mahony wrote an interesting piece in the Indo about the contradiction of those who want the State to provide services for them without actually paying for it. 
I think this mindset is more damaging than he outlines in his article and is the reason we have such a narrow tax base, high debt levels and unsustainable levels of State pension and welfare provision.


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## odyssey06 (13 Aug 2019)

Plus the expectation that the lion's share of any extra funding for services would be gobbled up in pay claims and feather-bedding and not go to actual improved services or employing more frontline staff.


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## Purple (13 Aug 2019)

We've loads of general threads about the provision of services by the State. Can we keep this to whether posters think the State can provide those services better (quality and value for money) than the private sector. 
My view is that I would love it if they could but I don't believe that they can deliver either better quality or value than the private sector.
I think that the State should regulate, not run, when it comes to most services and that transparent taxation such as a TV licence (Public Service Broadcasting Tax), water charges etc are a great idea and that everyone who consumes a service should pay for it.


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## jpd (13 Aug 2019)

Agree but unfortunately, no one proposing this would have a chance of getting elected, never mind putting it into action :-(


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## odyssey06 (13 Aug 2019)

Purple said:


> We've loads of general threads about the provision of services by the State. Can we keep this to whether posters think the State can provide those services better (quality and value for money) than the private sector.
> My view is that I would love it if they could but I don't believe that they can deliver either better quality or value than the private sector.
> I think that the State should regulate, not run, when it comes to most services and that transparent taxation such as a TV licence (Public Service Broadcasting Tax), water charges etc are a great idea and that everyone who consumes a service should pay for it.



+1 re: I don't believe they can deliver either better quality or value. But then our regulators are a joke too e.g. COMREG.

But people who don't watch RTE or use RTE.ie or RTE player would be charged for the new broadcasting tax regardless of whether they consume the service or not? Plus I'm not sure what % of the country are exempt from having one, but it's so many that basically the burden falls on the same people who pay for all the other taxes and services.

Also, on the water charges, the whole IW debacle stank of corruption and semi-state feather bedding and and I think it's clear after 3 previous abolitions of water charges in this country that they ain't going to stick so let's focus on the best way to fund it that doesn't involve that.


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## Purple (13 Aug 2019)

odyssey06 said:


> the whole IW debacle stank of corruption and semi-state feather bedding


So just like every other State or Semi-State body. The difference with Irish Water was we saw behind the curtain.
That's leads into the larger question of why anyone would want the State to deliver any service.


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## michaelm (13 Aug 2019)

Purple said:


> I think that the State should regulate, not run, when it comes to most services . .


Agreed.  Although I think the state should own, if not directly run, key infrastructure.


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## rboyddd (13 Aug 2019)

Electronic voting machines
€1.3bn overspend on 2018 Health budget
€1bn write off on PPARs
Motorway Programme Cost €16bn against a budgeted €6bn
National Stadium plan abandoned with a €200m cost to the taxpayer
National Children's Hospital....

The above headline items would indicate that the state has poor project spend controls / skills.
As the state does not yet run a budgetary surplus there are additional borrowing costs associated with the above amounts.


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## michaelm (13 Aug 2019)

. . . we paid a king's ransom for the M50 toll bridge.


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## Purple (13 Aug 2019)

rboyddd said:


> Electronic voting machines
> €1.3bn overspend on 2018 Health budget
> €1bn write off on PPARs
> Motorway Programme Cost €16bn against a budgeted €6bn
> ...


€20 billion a year in Healthcare Spending, amongst the highest per capita spend in the world, especially if we adjust for our very young population and yet we have dreadful levels of services (but of course nobody who actually works in the healthcare sector is actually at fault; it's all the fault of the particular minister of the day).

We need more direct taxes, ring-fenced against specific spends, not less. The RTE type tax is the way to go; we know exactly what it costs each household and we know exactly what we get for it.
"General Taxation" is a warren of byzantine black holes into which nobody knows how much of their money perishes. 
Wouldn't it be great if each tax payer got a statement of account each year from the government outlining exactly where all their taxes went. It would be useful if that statement also outlined how much the state spent on them too.


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## rboyddd (13 Aug 2019)

Didn't Renua espouse this type of transparency as part of their manifesto coupled with a radical deconstruction of the existing "progressive" PAYE/PRSI/USC tax system.  The left leaning media certainly contributed to thwarting that initiative.


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## PMU (13 Aug 2019)

Purple said:


> Wouldn't it be great if each tax payer got a statement of account each year from the government outlining exactly where all their taxes went. It would be useful if that statement also outlined how much the state spent on them too.


It's here already https://whereyourmoneygoes.gov.ie/en/


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## Purple (14 Aug 2019)

PMU said:


> It's here already https://whereyourmoneygoes.gov.ie/en/


I was looking at that yesterday. It tells us where all our money goes. I would like a breakdown of where my money goes.
I know that 10.5% of my taxes go to paying State Pensions but that doesn't include the pensions of retired State employees.
I know that 27% of my taxes to to welfare and I know that 22.4% of my taxes go to Healthcare but I want to know what it costs me every time a new super drug costing tens of thousand a week is approved by the HSE.

It would be nice if the people who pay for nothing also saw how much of other people's money was being spent on them in both direct and indirect benefits.
The reality is that on average only the top 30% of income tax payers are net contributors. I'm in that bracket but with 4 kids I'm not sure if I actually pay in more that I get out.


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## Gorteen (6 Sep 2019)

As a public servant, I am confident that public services are incompetent in terms of management, financial planning, budgetary integrity. Partly personal incompetence, partly self-imposed restrictive practices and the ever-present greed of staff representative groups where anything "new" is a rationale for additional money, staff, etc.


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## NoRegretsCoyote (6 Sep 2019)

@Purple 

This "Do I put in more than I get out?" question is almost impossible to answer.

You pay income taxes obviously but lots of indirect taxes like excise and VAT. What about the business rates paid by businesses you purchase prodcuts from? How should that revenue be allocated?

Working how much benefits you receive is easy, but the majority of expenditure is collective in nature.It's impossible to answer how much benefit you (individually) gain from having a defence force for example.

Finally there's the dynamic element. Lots of people will take more than they pay in when they are unemployed. But over a lifetime it may be the opposite.


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## Purple (9 Sep 2019)

NoRegretsCoyote said:


> @Purple
> 
> This "Do I put in more than I get out?" question is almost impossible to answer.
> 
> ...


The vast majority of us are net recipients, even if we work and pay taxes all our lives.


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## NoRegretsCoyote (9 Sep 2019)

Purple said:


> The vast majority of us are *net recipients,* even if we work and pay taxes all our lives.



Maybe so.

High earners pay a very big share of income tax.

PRSI and USC obviously much more equally spread.


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## Purple (9 Sep 2019)

NoRegretsCoyote said:


> Maybe so.
> 
> High earners pay a very big share of income tax.
> 
> PRSI and USC obviously much more equally spread.


While people don't pay any tax on their first €17k it is hard to see how PRSI and USC are anywhere near equally spread. 
The reality is that low and middle earners are very under taxed, in both direct and indirect taxes. We have a very narrow tax base which relies on Multinationals and screwing high earners. Those high earners are also the people who consume the least amount of Public Services as they are likely to have Health Insurance and not receive welfare.


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## cremeegg (9 Sep 2019)

Purple said:


> whether posters think the State can provide those services better (quality and value for money) than the private sector.



No the state cannot provide these services better than the private sector, for some very simple reasons.

The employees of the state who provide public services are also voters (and well organised voters) this means that the state in its role of provider of public services can never focus exclusively on providing those services. It must always worry about the interests of the voter employees. Of course private sector organisation must also look after their employees, but they do not elect the CEO.

The benefits of competition do not apply to most public services. If a private sector company does a bad job it goes out of business and another one comes along, if that does a better job it carries on. State provided public service agencies, may try to improve but they are never just closed down to give someone else a chance.

The lesser issues that the state agencies seem to suffer from, poor management, inflexible unions, excessive public demands, could possibly be reformed, but the issue of the voter/employees and the lack of competition cannot be resolves in a state provision environment.

There are some excellent public sector organisations, Revenue and the CAO, and there some disasters, The HSE and most local authorities.


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## NoRegretsCoyote (9 Sep 2019)

cremeegg said:


> The benefits of competition do not apply to most public services. I*f a private sector company does a bad job it goes out of business and another one comes along, if that does a better job it carries on.*......



How long would it take for the following private organisations to do a bad job before they went out of business:

AIB
Dunnes Stores
CRH
Greyhound Waste

The answer is "a very, very long time". There are (presumably) lots of other badly-run private companies with a niche in other sectors of the economy. Competition is not a panacea!



cremeegg said:


> There are some excellent public sector organisations, Revenue and the CAO, and there some disasters, The HSE and most local authorities.



Completely agree. Bad public sector organisations should be forced to learn from good ones, although this is hard to achieve.


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## cremeegg (9 Sep 2019)

NoRegretsCoyote said:


> How long would it take for the following private organisations to do a bad job before they went out of business:
> 
> AIB
> Dunnes Stores
> ...




Dunnes, I don't know months rather than years I'd guess. Lipton, Five Star, Tesco Mk1, Quinnsworth, Superquinn all disappeared .

CRH.  An Irish started, owned and run aggregates company that its the biggest supplier in the US South West, they must be doing something right. But if they weren't they too would be out of business.

AIB. The state bailed AIB management and probably would do so again, an absolute failure to enforce competition. Which is not to say that the state had a better option at the time. It is seldom recognised that *AIB shareholders were wiped out*. Perhaps they will enforce better oversight on management next time.

Geryhound waste. Haven't they been given a monopoly by the local authority because the LA wasn't able to collect the bins. I must admit I know little about them.



NoRegretsCoyote said:


> Competition is not a panacea!


I disagree. Under certain circumstances it is difficult to enforce competition or its consequences, but where it exists it is effective.


NoRegretsCoyote said:


> Bad public sector organisations should be forced to learn from good ones, although this is hard to achieve.



Certainly, but where competition is the rule with some exceptions in the private sector, public sector organisations spreading best practice is rare.

Revenue's introduction of ROS was a huge success, but the HSE can't or won't introduce electronic health records, and there is no mechanism to compel them or replace them with an organisation that can or would.


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## Sophrosyne (9 Sep 2019)

In fairness, I think Revenue is and always was technologically way ahead of the posse. A retired Revenue Assistant Secretary told me once that Revenue introduced a pilot for computerized records in the 1960s and rolled it out in the early 1970s!

I note that some hospital consultants in the HSE now maintain electronic records. It's a start I suppose.

It suggests huge cultural differences between the Revenue service and the current/former Health services.


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## PMU (10 Sep 2019)

cremeegg said:


> Revenue's introduction of ROS was a huge success,


  Three cheers for Accenture that did all the work.


cremeegg said:


> but the HSE can't or won't introduce electronic health records, and there is no mechanism to compel them or replace them with an organisation that can or would.


No one will do this.  If you think PPARS and the NCH were disasters, in 2002 the UK attempted to introduce a state of the art health record system. https://www.centreforpublicimpact.org/case-study/electronic-health-records-system-uk/.  Technically this was a brilliant system.  It was also a very expensive flop. So when you mention 'health records', no one will touch it.   It is too risky for your career.


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## NoRegretsCoyote (10 Sep 2019)

PMU said:


> , in 2002 the UK attempted to introduce a state of the art health record system. https://www.centreforpublicimpact.org/case-study/electronic-health-records-system-uk/.  Technically this was a brilliant system.  It was also a very expensive flop. So when you mention 'health records', no one will touch it.   It is too risky for your career.



Of course the world doesn't exist beyond the UK..........


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## Firefly (10 Sep 2019)

Sophrosyne said:


> In fairness, I think Revenue is and always was technologically way ahead of the posse. A retired Revenue Assistant Secretary told me once that Revenue introduced a pilot for computerized records in the 1960s and rolled it out in the early 1970s!



It's amazing how efficient the government can be when it comes to collecting money...


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## Sophrosyne (10 Sep 2019)

Firefly said:


> It's amazing how efficient the government can be when it comes to collecting money...



And the HSE could be just as technologically efficient.

If Revenue could do it in the 1960s, surely this could be done 50 years later in the Health service.


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## cremeegg (10 Sep 2019)

PPARS was done by trying to design a system that met every user requirement, some of which requirements were only identified long after the development had begun. (Just like the NCH Really)

With ROS, Revenue developed a robust system that addressed many but not all user requirements. Then users were persuaded and ultimately forced to adopt ROS, if there were issues they had to be sorted by the user conforming to ROS.

If the HSE try to build an all singing all dancing medical records system, they will fail. If they build a simple robust system, and get users, GPS, Consultants, hospitals, moving on to it in their own time that will work. Expanding outwards from a stable core. Patients will not be long demanding that their records are there.


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