Article from 1998 looking at where the Celtic Tiger came from. This bit is obviously relevent today "Lower taxes would be great if they were funded by higher taxes on the rich but in the last budget the rich gained the most from tax cuts. This means that in a future slump money will not be available to maintain or improve social welfare, or public health/education without again raising PAYE taxes".
Topic: Economy
The real cause of the housing crisis is neither the tens of thousands of returning Irish born migrants nor the 15,000 or so asylum seekers. The reason housing is in short supply and expensive is because of the hoarding of land and super profits of a handful of speculators.
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The housing crisis in Dublin
After six years of massive house price increases it is now (2000) almost impossible for the average worker to buy a house in Ireland. Average house prices in Ireland rose from 11.3 times the average income in 1989 to 18.2 times income in 1999. The increases in rent and house prices have, for many workers, completely wiped out any gain made from tax cuts in our take home pay. And for the poorest and most vulnerable sections of the working class the housing crisis is becoming a disaster as the rapidly growing number of young people sleeping on the streets demonstrates
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50 per cent is no solution
When Labour announced a 50% tax rate on those earning more than £150,000 there was a whole spate of gnashing of teeth from the right-wing media.
Let us put this in context: less that 2% of the British population earn more than £100,000, a mere 10% over £40,000. Britain is an extremely unequal society, with a few owning the bulk of income and wealth.
This is the second of three talks I delivered at the Prague S26 counter summit.
When I left school in Ireland the first job I applied for was in McDonalds. They didn’t advertise jobs, there was no need but instead whenever they needed people they mailed out to a list of those who had called into the joint in the last couple of weeks. They interviewed about 60 people for four or five jobs. I didn’t get one! On Friday as I got the bus to the airport in Dublin I noticed a bus shelter where McDonalds were advertising for workers and boasting they were paying over the minimum wage. Like all low paid service sector employments they now have massive problems finding enough people to work for them.
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The Nice Treaty and globalisation
This article was written at the time of the second Nice referendum in Ireland as part of ‘Libertarians Against Nice’, a WSM initiated campaign that distributed 15,000 leaflets as well as carrying our other activity. Because of right nationalist opposition to the treaty we were keen to publish material that put forward a distinct perspective, one that argues against the treaty from a class rather than nationalist perspective.
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Space Aliens horrified by Earth
An alien spacecraft surveying the earth would surely be astounded by the ‘civilisation’ that inhabits it. On the one hand it has sent men to the moon and sequenced the human genome. On the other tens of millions die every year because they lack access to basic medicine and clean water. 2.6 billion people have no access to sanitation, 2 billion have no electricity and 100 million are homeless. How can this be?
Restructuring and Resistance is an inspired book that succeeds in explaining why many people in western Europe are opposing capitalist globalisation. It does this by doing what the mainstream media will not, giving them a voice.
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The Euro: the root of all evil?
The arrival of the Euro in its ‘real’ form of notes and coins is a key step along the path towards European unification. In Ireland, at least, it was virtually unopposed save for a few nostalgic articles about missing the artistry of the old notes and coins.
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What is the World Economic Forum?
The WEF is not democratic in any sense, being composed of representatives from selected corporations who pay 30,000 plus a year for the privilege. Yet it is one of the key bodies which decide how life will be for the 6 billion of us who inhabit the globe.