Who speaks for the taxpayer?

Brendan Burgess said:
Or, as with the teachers, the existing staff are on salaries which are way above the market level and the €35k guy should be reduced to €30k.

Brendan
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That is an option for sure.
But who is arguing for that? The teachers are well within their rights to make their case for more (or equal pay in this case). Their employer is entitled to argue for pay cuts - I havent heard it yet.
It should be minded that pay increases are not always a bad thing, in fact more often that not they are a good thing.
 
TheBigShort said:
Their employer is entitled to argue for pay cuts - I havent heard it yet.
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Which is the point of the thread.

Why is there nobody campaigning on behalf of their employers for a bit of common sense here? Reduce the teachers' pay to what the market values them at.

Brendan
 
Sometimes I wonder whether you’re just taking the proverbial, Big Short.

The salary offered to an employee of a company or country when its profits/fiscal budget are healthy isn’t the same as the salary offered to an employee of a loss-making company or a country that’s in hock.
 
Yes they and I completely agree.

When the teacher unions talk about equal pay for equal work they don’t mean anything if the sort.

They mean the same long service distorted pay scale for all teachers.
 

The very notion that you could ever compare the profit and loss account of a company with that of a sovereign nation is farcical. This topic was raised in the "Economic Issues" not the "Accounting Issues" section.
 
So why should any one paid tax???

I agree with some of the points raised, but that is the tax system, there is plenty of more ways taxes are spent that we don’t agree with, but that is the system.

Yes the farmer should be more prepared for bad weather, it use to be the that a farmer would set aside 20% feed more that he needed

As for the teachers which my wife is one, I can only say that she works longer hours that I do and her whole Easter was taken up preparing work and visiting to school nearly every day, meeting tradesmen and getting work done around the school, so they earn every penny.

Brendan, why should my taxes pay for your water & waste water system, when I have to paid for mine, I recently had to replace my pump & filter costing €2500 the tax payer didn’t pay for my water !!!

Why should my taxes pay for free child care & free per school, when my children where younger I pay for this myself.

The list goes on & on
 

Agree fully. Everyone should pay for their own water.

I don't have children but I am happy enough to contribute taxes to raising the nation's children. But I don't know where that should stop.

Brendan
 

As a farmer, I couldnt agree more. Curiously, the farmers in Leitrim, which is probably one of the hardest hit counties for shortages of fodder, is the one county where they are out protesting about forestry taking up the land in competition with livestock farming. This is the same land that is marginal for conventional agriculture but the best for growing trees in Europe. Trees love rain and dont need to be foddered, ever. And forestry pays considerably more than mainstream farming and allows the farmer the freedom to get an off farm job if he wishes. Returning to shortages of fodder, I always remember my father insisting we had two years supply of hay in store in case of a late spring. Something I queried at the time but later realised the wisdom of it.

Woodsman
 
Hi Woodsman,

Forgive my ignorance, does hay perish or can it be kept for years?

Many thanks.

Gordon
 
TheBigShort said:
The very notion that you could ever compare the profit and loss account of a company with that of a sovereign nation is farcical. This topic was raised in the "Economic Issues" not the "Accounting Issues" section.
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Agreed.

I guess it depends on what value society places on goods and services. To me, the food and educational sectors should be valued highly and conversely, there are other sectors / occupations that society rewards highly which have very dubious societal merits.

For example, moving from the general to the personal, for a period, I was involved in academia - very rewarding, worthwhile and not great pay. Now I do a job with very marginal societal benefit - if any - that's highly rewarded.
 
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So if a country is in hock and bankrupt, with the grippers coming up the garden path, the pay and conditions of new entrants to the public service shouldn’t be affected?
 
Hay can be kept for three years provided it is properly protected from the weather. In my fathers time it was made in to cocks in the field and then built in to large ricks which were weatherproof and often covered with canvas. In the present time hay is generally made in to bales and stored in barns where it will keep perfectly for at least three years provided of course it was properly dry when being stacked.

Silage, which nowadays is the more popular option, will also keep for at least two years once it is kept airtight in those round black bales you see all over the country or in large concrete pits where it is covered with plastic. A further option is haylage which is, as the name suggests, a semi dry cross between hay and silage. It is very palatable and stores well, again when it is kept in airtight bales and is often fed to horses as well as cattle and sheep. Straw is also a good substitute for hay or silage if fed with some additional meal and again keeps for years.

And a final word of wisdom from my father who always said "May can be a very hungry month"
Why have all these old practices been abandoned? Surely a prudent livestock farmer would see it as an essential part of his business to ensure he NEVER ran out of fodder. If he complains that his land was too wet to make either hay or silage during a wet summer then perhaps he should be using at least some of it for another purpose such as forestry.
 

There are many other issues related to the forestry controversy, but regarding this thread title specifically, are the "farmers" involved not fairly high dependent on the taxpayer - both in terms of grants and, also, tax reliefs and exemptions?
 
Gordon Gekko said:
So if a country is in hock and bankrupt....
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"So" seems to imply here "it follows" - when what you wrote doesn't follow at all - or at all at all. I would suggest a complete non sequitur, if you will.

My point was simple and clear. I was simply stating what I believe to be true that there can be a misalignment between the value to society of certain goods and services and the monetary rewards given by that self-same society. Do you agree with this?
 
Early Riser said:
There are many other issues related to the forestry controversy, but regarding this thread title specifically, are the "farmers" involved not fairly high dependent on the taxpayer - both in terms of grants and, also, tax reliefs and exemptions?
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You are correct and this goes out over the heads of some posters you look at there postings they think the know a lot when in fact they know very little on the subject they are posting about ,They are useless when it comes to speaking for the taxpayer,Most are overpaid when it comes to giving back to there own Country,
 
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Brendan Burgess said:
I don't have children but I am happy enough to contribute taxes to raising the nation's children. But I don't know where that should stop.
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That's very noble of you Brendan to want to contribute to the welfare of the next generation. Of course, the mere existance of the next generation assists in making sure that your mortgage repayments, pension contributions, stock market investments are, hopefully not in vain. Without the next generation on toe to replace us, all those assets would quickly turn to zero.
I would say that contribution counts for quite a lot. The phrase "we owe it all to the next generation" springs to mind.
 
Woodsman said:
Surely a prudent livestock farmer would see it as an essential part of his business to ensure he NEVER ran out of fodder.
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How can this be achieved? I'm sure you are aware that a farmer has limited capacity to store fodder? Never ending supplies would be wonderful for all our demands, but reality has a way of popping those willy wonka gobstopper bubbles!
 
A farmer doesnt need large expensive sheds to store plastic wrapped round silage bales. You can see stacks of them all around rural Ireland. It isnt that difficult to plan ahead and use the surplus from the previous year before you start on the more recent fodder crop. Farmers did this with hay in the past but perhaps they are gambling nowadays on getting by and if the worst happens, the tax payer will pay for imported fodder for them. Which takes us back to Brendans original post.
 
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