economics

Future Ireland / Healthcare in ‘A New Ireland’

| Readers 4139

In producing the report – now a book – ‘A New Ireland’ this year, I conducted lots of interviews asking people about the prospect of Irish reunification.  The issue of healthcare in a united Ireland was consistently cited as a major concern. Northern perceptions of the southern system are very negative.  Views within the Republic are not that positive either, for sound reasons.  But it is only fair to point out that the NHS in Northern Ireland is in crisis.  …

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Future Ireland / Nation-States Are Yesterday’s Politics – Let’s Review Our Terms and Conditions 

| Readers 2044

Global trends indicate that we are graduating from ideological party politics to voting based on personal priorities such as financial security. Trump’s America is the prime example. But, like their hurricanes, everything from the US eventually crosses the water and laps our shores. Unstoppable cultural homogeneity adds to this. With lightning speed our young people adopt the same fashion, music and patois globally. The extent to which this is manipulated by media giants, arms of government and lizard overlords is …

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Half of NI firms postponed or cancelled investment plans due to Brexit…

| Readers 3001

A survey by AIB bank shows that half of NI firms postponed or cancelled investment plans due to Brexit. As a business person myself I know in uncertain times you keep your money in your pocket to see how the future will pan out. You put off taking on new staff, you hold off on opening new premises, you don’t buy new equipment etc. But really caution does not just apply to business people but to any sensible consumer which is why we …

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Are we seeing the end of the DUP/Sinn Fein approach to the economy?

| Readers 6485

The Economy spokesperson for Sinn Fein, Conor Murphy had a platform piece in the Belfast Telegraph this morning about the under performance of the Northern Ireland economy over the past decade of devolution which has some interesting content in it. He argues; A proper Industrial Strategy requires rigor and an attention to detail. These are not qualities typically associated with the DUP’s decade in control of the main economic Department. DUP ministers comfortably talked the language of the business community …

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Is Northern Ireland dramatically poorer than the Republic?

| Readers 48784

Before Ireland was partitioned in 1921, the six counties that were to become Northern Ireland were the powerhouse of the Irish economy. Two thirds of Ireland’s manufacturing capacity was in the six counties, Belfast was Ireland’s largest city, and the economy was focused on high value manufacturing, unlike the largely agricultural economy in the rest of the island. Today, the economic situation in the two jurisdictions has flipped. The Republic of Ireland is now one of the world’s richest countries …

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Economics as Storytelling – will Northern Ireland live happily ever after?

| Readers 1022

Economics is seen as one of those complex subjects, up there with nuclear physics, as simply too difficult to understand and something only economic experts can comment on. However, this is not always the case. While presented and viewed by most as objective, scientific and complex, economics can actually be viewed as a form of storytelling. What we need to do is translate the language into one that is easier to understand and the best way of doing this is …

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What’s that got to do with the price of fish? The growing gap between inflation and the perception of inflation

| Readers 623

Last week’s news that the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) rate of UK inflation has dipped below zero for the first time since official records began in 1996, and for the first time since 1960 based on equivalent historical estimates, caused a range of reactions amongst commentators and politicians. The Chancellor, George Osborne, was keen to emphasise that this should be termed “negative inflation”, a brief spell of decreasing prices, rather than the more damaging “deflation”, implying a longer term period …

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“When it comes to fiscal responsibility, it’s your real future liability and assets that matter…”

| Readers 326

So yesterday it was Labour making promises they don’t know they can keep, and today it is the Conservatives taking stale old policies from the 1980s out of the oven and serving them as fresh, leaving the country with a poor politics of small differences. So, on old narratives recycled as new, here’s Outside Left on the illusory comfort of austerity politics: When it comes to fiscal responsibility your paper balance sheet doesn’t really matter, it’s your real future liability and …

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Confronting the challenge of poverty and inequality…

| Readers 815

We often think that poverty is inevitable, and many people (think that they) know by itself that poverty is a cause of illness and social problems. The poor are always with us, they say, rather misreading Deuteronomy and St Matthew. Attitudes today are rather different from Victorian times, when the poor were seen as either ‘deserving’ or ‘non deserving’, groupings which were subjective and moralising. If you were ‘deserving’, you got into the workhouse; too bad if you were deemed …

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Italy’s Five Star Movement – is this what The End of History looks like?

| Readers 76

In 1992, Francis Fukayama predicted in The End of History that the end of the Cold War would impend not only an era of triumphant liberal-democratic capitalism, but one where political evolution had reached its final form. Western democracy, he argued, was the best form of state organisation practically achievable by humans. The folly of such naïve Western triumphalism, already being challenged by China’s authoritarian wave of economic growth when Fukayama wrote his book, was laid bare by Mohamed Atta …

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The Failings of Global Aid- is it Time to Make Charity History?

| Readers 30

Walking by a lake you see a child drowning. There is no one else around- what should you do? The clear moral answer is to jump in and pull the child out without sparing a thought for potential inconvenience. It has long been argued that the same moral reasoning applies to world poverty- we must intervene to help the world’s poorest. The widely held view is that this help should be aid.  But does sending aid make the difference it …

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Time to end the war in Afghanistan?

| Readers 6

Yesterday was the deadliest day so far for the United States of its 10-year war in Afghanistan, as thirty members of the American special forces were killed when the Taliban shot down a Chinook helicopter. That brings the US death toll since the start of the conflict to over 1,000. The UK has lost over 300. Afghanistan: countless thousands (ISAF / NATO hasn’t cared to count too closely). This year, the projected total cost to the US relating to Afghanistan is …

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Exposing economic literacy as orthodoxy

| Readers 5

I suspect that the tenor of the debate around the economy is going to take an ugly turn with the entry of various independents into the electoral race over the next week or two. Prior to the dissolution of the Dáil, there was the grotesque spectacle of Fine Gael and Labour facilitating the passage of a Finance Bill that they publicly stated they would vote against, but, by their actions clearly condoned. Collectively, their positions on the economy, or specifically, …

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Growth or deficit: “Economics is the method. The object is to change the soul”

| Readers 19

There’s a good piece in The Guardian from Julian Glover who says, yes, the Coalition does want cuts for ideological reasons, but then what of it? Yet ministers, by and large, hesitate before admitting this. Liberal Democrats worry about scaring their voters. Conservatives aren’t sure the country will understand their big idea. It’s easier to take refuge in the alternative truth that cuts are happening because they are needed. Even Ed Miliband issued a press release last week agreeing. From …

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What Ireland did right (and what it needs to do)…

| Readers 15

It is difficult to believe now that one country recently sent 19 delegations to Ireland to study how well our economy was managed. The revelation that our model of economic management featured positively in political and economic discussion in countries including Estonia, Greece and Scotland may also come as a surprise. As we survey the ruinous aftermath of the collapse of a property and banking bubble, it is salutary to read that ‘Ireland turned out to be the first country …

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Euro crisis: The Hollow Euro

| Readers 2

Twice in the past century Germans have learnt, the hard way, the value of sound money. Between 1921 and 1923 the Weimar Republic, under the strain of massive WW1 reparations, fell into a hyper-inflationary death spiral. The Mark plunged in value, measured against Gold Standard Marks it fell from a ratio of 1:1 to 1:1 trillion in 2 years. After the German defeat in WW2, their economy was in tatters and the Reichsmark once again worthless. In 1948 Ludwig Erhard, …

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