The Blame Game

The nights are drawing in, they darken and lengthen. We peoples of the northern worlds like to gather round the fire and scare the arse off each other with tales of ghosts and demons and things that go bump in the night. All we need is a good storyteller… and we’ve got plenty! Wahahahahahaha…haaaaah!

But hold! Who are the ghosts and ghoulies stirring their hellish broths and prowling the streets, teeth rotten, breath worse, looking for innocents upon whom to raven and gorge, looking for dacent hardworking taxpayers to fleece and dupe?
Why, it’s public servants!! Booooooooohhhh!! Axe murderers, blood-eyed demons, zombies and witches are old hat. For Halloween 2009 children will dress up not as zombies but as the scariest monsters of all, nurses, firefighters, soldiers and teachers…
Woooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhh!!!!
These, apparently, are the evil djinns who have brought the public finances the state they are now in, ‘the filthy parasites who teach our children, nurse the sick and try to protect us from crime’, as the Irish Times’ Fintan O’Toole described them, irony dripping.
Or so we are led to believe by the (generally very well paid) commentariat, who have made them the scapegoats for the situation we now find ourselves in. And you thought it was greedy bankers and developers and poor politico-economic management!! How stupid of you!!
But this is where we are, and it seems to many that the Government has made its decision, to bail out the bankers and builders and screw the public service workers.
And some people love it. When Brian Ború warned everyone at the Dublin Chamber of Commerce dinner that a chainsaw massacre was on the way on December 9, the audience lapped it up and, as is the way with slasher movies around Halloween, the more gore the better.
Of course, he’s right about the need to cut the public debt, but whether doing it requires a bloodbath is another matter. And while the converted could scarce forebear to cheer, more economists seem to oppose his plan for NAMA than support it and that’s got to be a worry.
(Indeed, some, like Morgan Kelly, Professor of Economics in NUI Galway, are downright scathing…)
Whatever about NAMA, the contrast between Ború’s apparent hard line on public service pay and the soggy way the Government abandoned tax reform, despite having broadcast that the report of the Commission on Taxation would provide the blueprint for stable Government finances, is both fascinating and deeply depressing.
As it happens, the Commission’s report contained a number of proposals for taxes that were ridiculously complex and messy to administer. Quite why we always seem to go for the tortuous option rather than the simple one eludes me every time. But the essence of the report was very sound and should have been adopted.
And they were right about the need to tax property. But they were wrong in suggesting a value-based model. After all, something is only of value if someone wants to pay you for it and right now not a lot of people are buying.
A simple tax based on the area of a building, with a floor area equivalent to a modest family home being tax free and larger areas being taxed at rates consistent with existing tax bands would be clearly fair, socially equitable and easily administered. And it would give an absolutely stable tax yield year on year…
So why not do it? Why rule out tax increases in areas like this? After all, what is stamp duty but a property tax? And haven’t people been paying it? The problem now is not that they won’t pay the tax. It’s that they’re not buying the houses!
But no, not to happen… apparently, the same gorehounds who cheer the chainsaw as it lops the public service run and hide at the prospect of a property tax. This year, Leatherface* is seen by many as the good guy!
Oh, one despairs of it all sometimes!
Truly, even optimists are depressed. This isn’t just tales of creepy crawlies and wicked witches any more. No, we’re in a deep dark hole now and we need to stop digging down and start digging out.
We still control our own destiny. We can, as it were, keep whistling past the graveyard or we can confront the darkness.
The thing about the chainsaw is that it doesn’t discriminate between what should be there and what shouldn’t, what’s of value and what’s worthless. The next few years will be characterised by grief and social strife or by consensus. We do still have a choice. Consensus is harder than confrontation and takes longer, but is much more likely to sustain us on an upward path in the long run.
Taking that path will require leadership, not boss-ness. As I keep saying folks, they ain’t the same thing.
Give the pot another stir there… hubble bubble…
*Texas Chainsaw Massacre