In recent days, the judiciary have been the latest section of that upper stratum of Irish society called upon to take a pay cut 'in the national interest'. It would seem that they have responded with the same lack of enthusiasm as others occupying a similar rank and station.
- Why do we pay exceptional salaries for the job of putting people behind bars when the underlying causes of crime are well known and, in some cases at least, could be largely remedied with properly targeted social programmes?
- Whose ideas was it that people in certain professions ought to paid to live like royalty, while at the same time, it is expected that we should be able to run our healthcare and educational services on a shoestring? Are we really so blind that we cannot see the link between an unhealthy, uneducated population and an unhealthy, uneducated society?
- If public office is really such a onerous occupation, demanding that elected officials be reimbursed with exceptional levels of both pay and expenses, (a lot of jobs require that you make do with just one or the other) should we not, as a society, demand value for money? Why not make public office a formal qualification. Our universities, colleges and educational establishments are filled with bright minds, who could easily devise a curriculum to educate our modern day Machiavellian princes and princesses, in matters relating to governance and affairs of state.
I speak of Irish society incidentally, because it's the only one that I have significant, first-hand knowledge of. But I do not doubt for one moment that 'we are not alone out there'. Across the water, in Britain a huge public row has broken out about politicians expenses. The recent elections to the EU parliament again raised the question of MEPs expenses and, according to some commentators there is a major scandal there, just waiting to spill over into the public domain.
But the problem with all of this is that, if we're going to play the blame game, we have to start with ourselves. We kind of knew all of this was going on and if we didn't, we should have made it our business to be informed.
So what does all this have to do with the wage structure in our society. Well, everything really! These questions are sometimes posed as moral and ethical dilemmas, part of some kind of equality agenda and to a certain extent they are part of this. But from a wider perspective it really boils down to the fundamental question of whether we have an economy, in the true sense of the word, or just networks of private hoarders.
You could read point six of the JSU's Draft Action Plan and react with a sense of dismay. We fought long and hard to achieve the introduction of a national minimum wage; surely it is the lower paid who need most protection in the current economic climate! But then you have to reflect. You see, in economic terms, wages are relative to buying power. Relativity is the operative word here.
There are actually parts of the world where you could live relatively well on €7 per hour. These are also parts of the world that tend to get much better weather than we do! In fact, if we sat down and analysed it we'd probably wonder why the hell we're still hanging around, why don't we all just blow this joint and move to a more southerly latitude?
Imagine if our jobs (for those of us who still have them) could be re-organised so that we could all work remotely. We could find ourselves sipping margaritas on a beach somewhere, logging on to our laptops a few times a day, or checking text messages, for any pressing issues while debating whether or not to catch the surf before the sun goes down. Would it sicken you further if I said that some people already have that lifestyle? The future is here, it just hasn't been evenly distributed yet!
When we speak of wages, we have to consider the matter not just in overall volume terms, but also from the point of view of what is taken out in the form of taxes, mortgages, rents etc. If you depress the real value of wages, whether by depressing wages themselves or by raising prices, you actually depress the all-round economy. This in turn prolongs a recession, makes it harder to come out of it. Think of it this way. It's not just the working man or woman who is relying on his or her wages to live. The people who supply the wage earner with all the necesssities and creature comforts to live (the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker) are also depending on those same earnings.
This is one of the reasons why the current government got things so badly wrong in recent budgets but you have to ask the question, did the opposition do any better? The economist, David McWilliams, has suggested that the government was really in a position which in chess is referred to as "Zugzwang ... where the victim is left in a position where he has to move, but any move he makes renders him worse off. He has nowhere to hide."
It was a noted Fianna Fáil politician of a previous era, the late Brian Lenihan, father of the current Finance Minister, who famously said, back in the previous recessionary days of the 1980's, that Ireland couldn't sustain it's existing population and that some of us would have to emigrate. But lest anyone think that I'm engaging in one-sided political bashing, it should be said that Brian Lenihan Snr's popularity didn't suffer as a result of making that statement. He actually out-polled Mary Robinson in terms of first preference votes, in the 1990 presidential election that sent her to Áras an Úachtarain, marking a historic milestone as the first female president.
The reality is that, if anything, Ireland is under-populated. On the eve of the Great Famine of 1845-1848, the population of Ireland stood at 8 million. Today, over 160 years later it still has not recovered to anywhere near those levels. Is there anyone out there who would dare take a bet that it still will not have recovered 160 years into the future? That is in the year 2169 or thereabouts?
To be honest, I'm not going to get bogged down in specifics as I don't expect to be alive by then and I further suspect, that everyone alive today will also be dead by then, so it's a safe bet. I'm not going to win anything but I'm not going to lose either. But in a way this sort of illustrates the kind of Keynesian logic that all western governments have been following, more or less, since the end of the Second World War - in the long run everyone is dead! Just hope it doesn't happen sooner rather than later. A lot of people around the globe today are probably asking themselves if that day hasn't come!
The famine of 1845-48 was not the consequence of over-population, except in the sense that the type of economy that was carried on at the time couldn't sustain the numbers. Today it's the same but with a slightly different twist - the size of the population doesn't sustain the type of economy we should be trying to emulate, therefore we have to look abroad, to the export market. The problem for the Irish entrepreneur is that, in most cases, the domestic market is too small. The Irish economy is heavily dependent on foreign markets and foreign direct investment.
But even in the 1840's, the solution had already presented itself - it was called the industrial revolution, an event actually initiated on that other island just across the water and one which, ironically, expatriate Irish labour played a significant role in. Friedrich Engels encountered many of them and recorded their experiences in his work The Condition of the Working Class in England published in Germany in 1845. The working class that he was writing about contained significant numbers of Irish hence, perhaps, the title. Otherwise he might have just called it 'the condition of the English working class.'
It's no use wishing that history turned out differently. Indeed the situation may not all be one of doom and gloom either. In recent years due to an influx of labour, Irish society has had the opportunity to forge new relations with many different parts of the world - Africa, Eastern Europe, the Far East. Surely this must offer prospects for an economic revival?
I've raised a number of questions here and to be honest, at the end of the day, I'm no better informed than the next guy. I suggest however that point six of the Draft Action Plan could be re-formulated. It should read something along the lines of:
You could read point six of the JSU's Draft Action Plan and react with a sense of dismay. We fought long and hard to achieve the introduction of a national minimum wage; surely it is the lower paid who need most protection in the current economic climate! But then you have to reflect. You see, in economic terms, wages are relative to buying power. Relativity is the operative word here.
There are actually parts of the world where you could live relatively well on €7 per hour. These are also parts of the world that tend to get much better weather than we do! In fact, if we sat down and analysed it we'd probably wonder why the hell we're still hanging around, why don't we all just blow this joint and move to a more southerly latitude?
Imagine if our jobs (for those of us who still have them) could be re-organised so that we could all work remotely. We could find ourselves sipping margaritas on a beach somewhere, logging on to our laptops a few times a day, or checking text messages, for any pressing issues while debating whether or not to catch the surf before the sun goes down. Would it sicken you further if I said that some people already have that lifestyle? The future is here, it just hasn't been evenly distributed yet!
When we speak of wages, we have to consider the matter not just in overall volume terms, but also from the point of view of what is taken out in the form of taxes, mortgages, rents etc. If you depress the real value of wages, whether by depressing wages themselves or by raising prices, you actually depress the all-round economy. This in turn prolongs a recession, makes it harder to come out of it. Think of it this way. It's not just the working man or woman who is relying on his or her wages to live. The people who supply the wage earner with all the necesssities and creature comforts to live (the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker) are also depending on those same earnings.
This is one of the reasons why the current government got things so badly wrong in recent budgets but you have to ask the question, did the opposition do any better? The economist, David McWilliams, has suggested that the government was really in a position which in chess is referred to as "Zugzwang ... where the victim is left in a position where he has to move, but any move he makes renders him worse off. He has nowhere to hide."
It was a noted Fianna Fáil politician of a previous era, the late Brian Lenihan, father of the current Finance Minister, who famously said, back in the previous recessionary days of the 1980's, that Ireland couldn't sustain it's existing population and that some of us would have to emigrate. But lest anyone think that I'm engaging in one-sided political bashing, it should be said that Brian Lenihan Snr's popularity didn't suffer as a result of making that statement. He actually out-polled Mary Robinson in terms of first preference votes, in the 1990 presidential election that sent her to Áras an Úachtarain, marking a historic milestone as the first female president.
The reality is that, if anything, Ireland is under-populated. On the eve of the Great Famine of 1845-1848, the population of Ireland stood at 8 million. Today, over 160 years later it still has not recovered to anywhere near those levels. Is there anyone out there who would dare take a bet that it still will not have recovered 160 years into the future? That is in the year 2169 or thereabouts?
To be honest, I'm not going to get bogged down in specifics as I don't expect to be alive by then and I further suspect, that everyone alive today will also be dead by then, so it's a safe bet. I'm not going to win anything but I'm not going to lose either. But in a way this sort of illustrates the kind of Keynesian logic that all western governments have been following, more or less, since the end of the Second World War - in the long run everyone is dead! Just hope it doesn't happen sooner rather than later. A lot of people around the globe today are probably asking themselves if that day hasn't come!
The famine of 1845-48 was not the consequence of over-population, except in the sense that the type of economy that was carried on at the time couldn't sustain the numbers. Today it's the same but with a slightly different twist - the size of the population doesn't sustain the type of economy we should be trying to emulate, therefore we have to look abroad, to the export market. The problem for the Irish entrepreneur is that, in most cases, the domestic market is too small. The Irish economy is heavily dependent on foreign markets and foreign direct investment.
But even in the 1840's, the solution had already presented itself - it was called the industrial revolution, an event actually initiated on that other island just across the water and one which, ironically, expatriate Irish labour played a significant role in. Friedrich Engels encountered many of them and recorded their experiences in his work The Condition of the Working Class in England published in Germany in 1845. The working class that he was writing about contained significant numbers of Irish hence, perhaps, the title. Otherwise he might have just called it 'the condition of the English working class.'
It's no use wishing that history turned out differently. Indeed the situation may not all be one of doom and gloom either. In recent years due to an influx of labour, Irish society has had the opportunity to forge new relations with many different parts of the world - Africa, Eastern Europe, the Far East. Surely this must offer prospects for an economic revival?
I've raised a number of questions here and to be honest, at the end of the day, I'm no better informed than the next guy. I suggest however that point six of the Draft Action Plan could be re-formulated. It should read something along the lines of:
A review of the national wage structure to take account of new realities, for the purpose of making the Irish economy more competitive internationally and stimulating local demand. For an economy that serves the needs of the people with social protection as it's primary concern. For a national minimum wage that reflects these aims accompanied by the introduction of a national maximum wage.To paraphrase Swift you might call this 'a modest proposal'.
Copyright © Oscar Duggan 2009
No comments:
Post a Comment