HomeLifeLET THEM EAT CAKE

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LET THEM EAT CAKE — 2 Comments

  1. Good points, but it’s not really austerity. The same governments are also continually coming out with brand new regulations which bind businesses and cause an increase in overheads. I once wrote that the regs my business suffers mean I can employ about 20 staff less than I’d like or have to withhold pay rises etc. I said that about 3 years ago and it has got even worse since. If they take their boot off of people’s throats long enough maybe things might change, most notably if they liberalised the housing market by taking down regulations which stop builders building, but also just back off, sack some pointless bureaucrats and halt this direct transfer of wealth from the people and private businesses to the public sector.

    • Dick,
      The austerity I am referring to here in Ireland was the twice a year Budget penalty that was imposed on us by the Government, (at the urging of the ECB/IMF/EU). We had €3bn in cuts in both annual budgets, (so -€6bn a year), for several years and social services such as health and education were wafer thin on the ground. Salaries were cut across the board even as prices went up and yet we were told that we were in negative inflation. The €6bn was used instead to pay the interest on the loans that were taken out to pay off the bank debts and unsecured bond holders. But a fool could have predicted that cuts in a financial crisis shrink the economy, which they duly did, shifted wealth from the poor to the wealthy, which also happened, and miraculously now we are being told that the country’s economy is flying again. As regards regulations and red tape for business, our economy is pretty good comparatively speaking and if you are a large foreign-owned multi-national, it’s fucking brilliant!!!

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