Westminster government’s ‘special financial operation’, ostensibly to create economic growth, lacks credibility without a demonstrable plan of how that might be achieved.
Dividends have averaged 3.5 per cent of stock prices for the past few years. Massive bids to buy shares would inflate share prices, and dividends would reduce in percentage terms. Bank rates, artificially depressed for the past few decades, are forecast to rise to 6 per cent or 7 per cent by next summer. Only if new industries are created with the available wealth could there be any economic growth. What new industries, if any, is HMG about to sponsor? If these are to be ‘green’ industries their effect on the economy will be offset by the demise of ‘grey’ and ‘black’ industries.
If economic growth entails further consumption of the planet’s finite resources and contribution to global warming, even in the exercise of ‘green’ industry, is growth a worthwhile objective?
Surely we should be aiming for a stable economy, or a regressive one if we aim to reverse global warming and planetary degradation in general.
How socially stable can any fiscal state be if the wealth of the economy, whether growing, stable or regressing, is not shared equitably among the population whose combined effort creates the wealth?
Everyone’s wages or income or accumulated wealth comes from someone else’s wages whether directly by providing a product or service, or by being employed by a private or public organisation, or by trading on the stock market.
One person’s gain is another person’s cost.
Wages, income and wealth are measured in terms of credit units (CUs) such as pounds, euros or dollars earned ultimately at the basic level by human effort. Raw materials, products, land and built property have no intrinsic value other than the value of the human effort expended in sourcing and working them.
In any fiscal state there are a finite number of CUs in circulation reflecting the human effort expended in the state (ignoring for the moment the effort expended by (often exploited) peoples beyond the immediate fiscal state). This is referred to as the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the total credit value of goods and services bought and sold in CU terms within the fiscal state.
Some people’s income is less than adequate for their needs. Others have more than they need. Whose effort is worth less or worth more than someone else’s effort?
To alleviate the poverty of people on lower incomes, people with relatively higher incomes are taxed to subsidise, by state benefits, those with lower incomes. This is less than ideal.
People with middle level incomes are relatively impoverished unless the tax threshold is raised to at least the average income level. Higher level subsidisers can be resentful, the subsidised are deprived of the dignity of being able to support themselves and their dependants, and the present income-class system is perpetuated.
What other alternative might there be to universally exploitative global capitalism? The present economic crisis may have been engineered or, like global warming, has run out of control.
DENNIS GOLDEN
Strabane, Co Tyrone
Clergy totally unaware of root causes of poverty in Ireland
It was no surprise that the recent attempt by Christian Churches in Ireland to block the border poll debate was led by Catholic clergy.
Since the British built Maynooth college in 1795 the Church has berated and condemned every attempt to end the occupation and usurpation of Ireland by the most ruthless and despotic empire that the world has ever seen. And from their pulpits they consistently condemned and demonised the brave patriots who led the fight against this tyranny.
The United Irishmen, Fenians, the Land League and the 20th century revolutionaries all endured the wrath of this Church.
In 1879, in Belcarra in Co Mayo, a prominent Fenian, Henry Curry, was refused the last rites of the Church on his death bed because he refused to renounce the Fenian boycott campaign against the tyrant renting landlords.
Are we to seriously believe that senior clergy are totally unaware of the root causes of poverty in Ireland, which is the British capitalist system?
While this system of inequality and exploitation is delivered and directed by English Tories whom we don’t elect, its most ugly manifestation is a multi-tier hereditary system of those who become immensely rich on wealth that was created by the sweat, toil and genius of working people. At its head is an elite dynasty which is headed by a multi-millionaire monarch. This entire clique resides in grand mansions, many of whichare in sight of homeless people sleeping in the streets. Their official residence here in Ireland is Hillsborough Castle which was confiscated from its rightful owners, the Magennis family of Co Down by English land thief Moyles Hill, after the defeat of the Gaelic clans in the early 17th century.
JACK DUFFIN
Belfast BT11
Disaster waiting to happen
T
ime and time again, when I am out on the roads in Omagh, I see dog walkers alongside their dogs in the outer suburbs with no lead on the poor dog. With speeding cars whizzing past it is a disaster waiting to happen.
If I tried to advise them, I know I’d be the worst in the world. At the end of the day, it is still an animal. Any kind of distraction at all, another dog, a cat, so many other things could attract the dog into the road.
It is maddening to watch. I wish there was some kind of law that would ensure protection and safety for the dog.
PATRICK STEWART
Omagh, Co Tyrone
Garbage glory
LAST Thursday I drank some superb Northern Ireland craft beers, backed a few nearly horses and met a friend who I hadn’t seen in a long time but the highlight of my day was having my recycling bin picked up after 10 weeks.
ENDA CULLEN
Armagh
