Dublin Opinion

I was waiting for my no.40 bus on Parnell Street when I popped into the shop to pick up the Irish Times for the Friday jobs section. Waste of time, I know, but you have to keep the eye out. Anyways, while I was there I saw that the Evening Herald had an article in it by George Lee himself, where he outlines his ten-point plan to save the Irish economy.

Basically, George wants to sell off Bord Gais and the parts of ESB “that the State no longer needs to own” - i.e. the profitable parts. Also, he wants to get rid of the “massive public sector quangos like the HSE, CIE and FAS and expose them to more competition in order to deliver vital health, transport and training services more effectively and at less cost to the taxpayer.”

Is he really talking about the private sector as “efficient”? Oh dear. And does George really believe that the social relations in an operating theatre are the same as those in a Las Vegas Casino?

Either way, in a time of falling wages and fewer jobs, George Lee wants to raise the cost-of-living by completely privatizing access to our health service, as well as government training for the unemployed, and dispense with public transport which will see service-based routes cut or canceled altogether. He also wants to cut back VAT to pre-recession times so we can, somehow, consume our way out of this little mess without increasing wages or benefits - in fact, state benefits are to be cut and state profits privatized. I suppose we’ll consume our way out of the recession by buying goods and services out of our decreased wages - after we’ve somehow absorbed the rise in prices for health and transport which privatization always brings - or by borrowing money from non-borrowing banks, or by using our maxed-out credit cards. Maybe George, who earns five times the average industrial wage, thinks consumption isn’t a problem for us normal folk, that all we’re doing is holding back from spending out of nervousness. That must be the word at the dinner party table these days.

My favourite, though, is this one:

I would cut the reduced 13.5pc rate of VAT to just 10pc between now and the end of 2010. This would stimulate labour-intensive services like construction, help the tourism industry through the downturn, and give a huge incentive for first time buyers to bring forward purchases of new houses, helping to resolve crises in banking and the public finances.”

Apparently, housing construction is being held back by big government and its VAT rates, and not by the fundamental crisis in the Irish and international banking systems. not only that, more housing is what we need to get us back on the straight and narrow. And mortgages. fucking lots of them. Happy days again.

(source: Central Bank of Ireland, level of outstanding residential mortgages, file here.)

Mortgages and houses and a personal consumption spree, with a reliance on tourism thrown in for the craic. All to be financed by individual personal income. During a recession. The largest recession in eighty years. That’s George Lee’s economic plan for Ireland. National growth through individual consumption of privately-built housing.

Absolutely no idea as to how to get capital flowing in the economy again. All he can offer are cuts in social services, the once-off transfer of valuable public assets to private capital for private gain, and a belief that rates of personal consumption will rise, phoenix-like, on the back of a private housing construction boom that will be funded through tax breaks - something like this, maybe? Which in turn leads to something like this, maybe?

If you want some true common sense proposals on how Ireland can get through this recession (we can’t get out of it on our own, but we can certainly get through it in something approaching one piece, and in a sufficiently strong position to take advantage of the upturn if/when it comes), I suggest you have a read of this by Michael Taft.

In the meantime, to celebrate George Lee’s rebirth as a naked right-wing economist, standing as a TD for a right-wing party in one of the strongest conservative middle class constituencies in the country, we dedicate the following song.

Enjoy.