I think that a lot of problems that this nation is facing are coming from a lot of contributors and not only the government of the day.
Sure a lot of problems can be traced down to incompetence when it came down to managing a market that was based on a ponzi scheme or standing up to the social partners.
Nobody did force anybody to buy an overprized house/apartment when it was clear than once more units were on the market than people needed that this would come down. But everybody did try to participate in this
get rich quick scheme and the state aided it with mortgage relief and other incentives.
And once it call came crashing down nobody in the ruling class has the wisdom to take action and made it just worse.
So the outcome is an unfair budget that penalizes people that work and try to cover themselves for rainy days by saving, having a life insurance with critical illness cover or a private pension so that they can actually have a life once they retire. Levies on Life Insurances, higher levies on savings or investments is a joke. There have been losses in pension funds and they start hiking the taxes?
People who are on social welfare are the clear winners of this budget. Yes I am saying it. They got their 3% inflation increase at the beginning of the year and now we have 4% deflation so they get a big hike while I have to save even more because I now have to pay for a clueless government. And before you shout but they took the x-mas bonus away, I’m working and I don’t get a an x-mas bonus. All my bonuses have been eliminated long ago and I have to pay more taxes now.
The looser are also people with private health insurance, not only do the prices go up because of the recent tax on health insurance, we now have to pay 4% for something we might not even use because we choose not to take the risk of dying on a trolley in Beaumont hospital. Now if the 2% addition would actually go to a modern health service (like they have in other countries) I might be convinced to pay it, but this is going to go either directly to the builders or banks or additional managers in the HSE and not equipment or frontline staff.
And in the long run there will be one clear looser: Ireland
Because today in the office I saw the first mobile “non nationals” talking to HR about transferring to another country. These are the people which should have been kept in the country because they contribute to the tax in large amounts. And I’m sure that our HR is soon going to hold a presentation about this and I’m also going to attend because once I pay over ½ of my salary to the tax man I rather move to Sweden where for the ½ of my salary in taxes I get working public transport and a health system where I don’t need private insurance to be taken care off.
And given that I lost about 12% of my salary now due to the different hikes I will make cutbacks and they won’t help stimulating the economy or create jobs. No more going out, no more food delivery and more into the pension funds for as long as that still works.