RTE frontline show: Teachers good ,bad ,indifferent?

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You could say the same about all employees of private sector companies who rely on state contracts/funding so its an irrelevent argument.

It is not an irrelevant argument. There are very few private companies that solely exist because of government contracts. The vast majority of the private sector is made up of companies that are dependent on private customers.

But in reality, Yes, we pay taxes.
You return some money to the tax pool where it came from, but you do not increase the tax pool and therefore do not contribute to the cost of running government.

What I was talking about here was situations where unions (for teachers or others) come in and protect a worker who is quite clearly not fit for the job and is as much a source of annoyance to their colleagues as to management. It undermines everyone and the whole concept of unions.
I fully agree, it is a disgrace that any organised body would stand over and defend the failure of some of its members.
 
Originally Posted by Chris http://www.askaboutmoney.com/showthread.php?p=1160884#post1160884

You return some money to the tax pool where it came from, but you do not increase the tax pool and therefore do not contribute to the cost of running government.
This is nonsense.

If all the public services were put out to tender to private companies, and all the current public servants worked for these private companies, where do you think the government would get the money to pay for the services?
 
But we do contribute to the economy.
You contribute time to the publicly provided services which are not part of the productive part of the economy. Thus you contribute to the non-producing part of the economy.

This is nonsense.

If all the public services were put out to tender to private companies, and all the current public servants worked for these private companies, where do you think the government would get the money to pay for the services?

No it is not nonsense. No matter how fancy accounting techniques get, you cannot claim that by giving someone a cheque for x amount and then getting back a cheque for x - y amount this increases your account balance beyond what it originally was.
This scenario has already been mentioned by csirl. But you highlight exactly the problem, income tax from people employed in services paid for through taxation do not add to the tax pool. It's not a chicken and egg scenario, you can only raise revenue by taxing production. Imagine a small island economy where people want to set up a government with certain services. They can only do so after taking money out of the productive economy.
 
We pay tax , it comes out of our pay cheques every fortnight, and we keep private business going by using and paying for their services. To use your logic any money we spend on private services should be deducted from the amount of tax paid by private sector workers and not reckonable.
 
TBH, I really don't understand why the Public Sector workers are given a salary 'Gross' of Tax.
The pay should be given Net, ie, your pay is 24k per annum, you get 2k per month.
Otherwise it is an exercise in futility. The govt pays you 30k and you pay them back 6k in tax, but the hassle and expense of collecting that 6k in tax is pointless imo.
 
TBH, I really don't understand why the Public Sector workers are given a salary 'Gross' of Tax.
The pay should be given Net, ie, your pay is 24k per annum, you get 2k per month.
Otherwise it is an exercise in futility. The govt pays you 30k and you pay them back 6k in tax, but the hassle and expense of collecting that 6k in tax is pointless imo.

Don't know if you're joking or not but people can have other sources of income, not to mention spouses who can also have other sources of income.

Also how would you claim back tax paid on medical expenses, bin charges etc etc.
 
TBH, I really don't understand why the Public Sector workers are given a salary 'Gross' of Tax.
The pay should be given Net, ie, your pay is 24k per annum, you get 2k per month.
Otherwise it is an exercise in futility. The govt pays you 30k and you pay them back 6k in tax, but the hassle and expense of collecting that 6k in tax is pointless imo.

And then have everyone going around saying civil servants don't pay any tax.
 
and therefore do not contribute to the cost of running government.

This is the part I say is nonsense.

They contribute by paying part of their salary in tax. Where the government get the money to pay their salary is irrelevant.
 
Yes, teachers spend their salaries and pay taxes - but it all comes from the pot produced by the productive economy.

If you had an economy with no education/teachers and the citizens decided to start providing education and employed one teacher paid a salary of 50 gross and 25 net - the salary comes from the citizens paying an extra 25 in tax (reducing their spending power by 25 net) and gets paid to the teacher (providing a spending power to the teacher of 25). The economy loses 25 of spending from the citizens but gains 25 of spending from the teacher - but no net gain. The government extracts 25 from the citizens to pay 50 gross, 25 net to the teacher - so the government neither gains nor loses. The economy has no new money, it has just been redistributed.
 
The economy has no new money, but has gained a teacher. I think everyone is overlooking the actual work provided by the public service, and it's value.
 
I don't think anyone is saying there is no value provided by education - but that's moving on to a different argument. Chris is correct in saying that there is no contribution to the costs of running the government.
 
I don't think anyone is saying there is no value provided by education - but that's moving on to a different argument. Chris is correct in saying that there is no contribution to the costs of running the government.

But there is a huge contribution to the economy and to the private sector.
 
I don't think anyone is saying there is no value provided by education - but that's moving on to a different argument. Chris is correct in saying that there is no contribution to the costs of running the government.

Of course they contribute to the cost.

If teachers were paid gross without any tax being deducted, there would be less money to pay the gardai, fire fighters etc.

How is this not contributing?
 
Of course they contribute to the cost.

If teachers were paid gross without any tax being deducted, there would be less money to pay the gardai, fire fighters etc.

How is this not contributing?
Wow - do you really intend this as a serious argument? Sure, I'll play along... If teachers were paid their salaries gross: (a) their gross would be whatever they currently get net...; failing that - (b) no-one would want to become a fireman, garda, everyone would want to be a mega-paid teacher, (c) current teachers wouldn't be able to get into teaching because there would be so much competition to be a mega-paid teacher that entry requirements would rocket, and (d) the Germans would really laugh their heads off at us trying to ease our bailout terms..


Did you read my post above? Where is the 'contribution' coming from?
If you had an economy with no education/teachers and the citizens decided to start providing education and employed one teacher paid a salary of 50 gross and 25 net - the salary comes from the citizens paying an extra 25 in tax (reducing their spending power by 25 net) and gets paid to the teacher (providing a spending power to the teacher of 25). The economy loses 25 of spending from the citizens but gains 25 of spending from the teacher - but no net gain. The government extracts 25 from the citizens to pay 50 gross, 25 net to the teacher - so the government neither gains nor loses. The economy has no new money, it has just been redistributed.
 
TBH, I really don't understand why the Public Sector workers are given a salary 'Gross' of Tax.
The pay should be given Net, ie, your pay is 24k per annum, you get 2k per month.
Otherwise it is an exercise in futility. The govt pays you 30k and you pay them back 6k in tax, but the hassle and expense of collecting that 6k in tax is pointless imo.

Ahh, but you're forgetting about the defined benefit pensions....they are based on final/average salaries...if salaries were reduced to the net of tax amount then the pensions would be lower too ;)
 
Ahh, but you're forgetting about the defined benefit pensions....they are based on final/average salaries...if salaries were reduced to the net of tax amount then the pensions would be lower too ;)

Its an interesting point though.
If the government could adjust the pension entitlements to reflect the new 'tax free' wage, maybe public sector workers could be just paid a nett amount without reductions.
For example, instead of the 1.5 times gross for the lump sum it could be 2 times net (This is just example).

I think 15-20% of employees are based in public sector so it would cut down on the admin required for prisi, income levy, pension deductions etc,
 
We pay tax , it comes out of our pay cheques every fortnight, and we keep private business going by using and paying for their services. To use your logic any money we spend on private services should be deducted from the amount of tax paid by private sector workers and not reckonable.
The tax you hand over to revenue comes out of the revenue coffers in the first place, this does not add to the tax pool.


This is the part I say is nonsense.

They contribute by paying part of their salary in tax. Where the government get the money to pay their salary is irrelevant.
No, where government gets the money from is the most important thing. If I give my daughter pocket money out of my account and then ask her to contribute to household costs out of that pocket money, then I cannot claim that household revenue has been increased and she has contributed to the running costs of the household.

The economy has no new money, but has gained a teacher. I think everyone is overlooking the actual work provided by the public service, and it's value.
It has gained a teacher and lost a job in the private sector. I am not saying that this is a good or a bad thing, but adding the teacher comes at a cost.

But there is a huge contribution to the economy and to the private sector.
No, government cannot contribute to the private economy. Ever penny government spends, be it on direct employees or on services by private companies, has to be taking out of the economy. At the very best there is zero net gain to the economy.

Of course they contribute to the cost.

If teachers were paid gross without any tax being deducted, there would be less money to pay the gardai, fire fighters etc.

How is this not contributing?
I think what orka was saying is that if the current salary of a government employee is €24k and they have €2k deducted in taxes, then their salary should simply be €22k, while at the same time cutting out the cost of tax accounting on pay day. This would not mean that there is less money to pay for other services, as less wages would have been paid out in the first place.


Here is most simple way to demonstrate the scenario:
Imagine an island economy which is worth €1000 per anum. The residents decide it is time to set up a government and provide a certain amount of services. To do this they tax the economy at 10% resulting in revenue of €100 to the new government. The government then proceeds to employ some people and wages paid to all government employees is €50 per anum. These employees are then taxed at 10%, meaning they hand back €5 to the government. The government's revenue is now not up to €105 in total for the year, revenue is still €100. Only the productive economy can be a source of government revenue.
 
Where do the islanders get the poeple to do the new government's work?

If they are existing islanders then the private companies will need to cadge some immigrants from the next island over the way to do the work of the guys that left.
These will pay €5 in taxes, bringing the governments take up to €105.

The extra €5 comes from where??? The new public servants.
 
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