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EDDIE HOLT

We are NOT all in this together

By
Eddie Holt

Published Saturday, March 14, 2009, 4:10 PM
Updated Wednesday, July 29, 2009, 1:15 PM


Public sector workers protests over collapse of Irish economy
Public sector workers protests over collapse of Irish economy
Photo by Niall Carson/PA

There are ways to fix this recession. However, sooner than say “we are all in this together”, the rich must pay their share. That’s the answer, I’m afraid. Some people benefited hugely and lost greatly from a capitalism that went out of control via deregulation. Others gained and lost to some extent; yet others didn’t benefit at all or imperceptibly. We are clearly not “all in this together”.

 It’s insidious but it’s the mantra of power. However, it is a lie. The market was divisive, exalting competition and atomising people. That’s the way it was. It’s bizarre when people say – almost always the well-heeled – “we’re all in this together”. No, we’re not, actually. There is certainly a societal response to the recession but ever since Margaret Thatcher’s “there is no such thing as society”, it’s been difficult to find. Her economic policies – the politics of the New Right – prevailed until very recently.

 The notion of geometric or percentage cuts in pay is absurd. So, some person making a million euros or dollars takes, say, a 10 per cent pay cut. They make only €900,000. My heart bleeds for them. The poor, little, sweet things: they have only €900,000 for the year ahead. How will they manage to survive? Even if such people took 95 percent pay cuts, they’d still be ahead of the average wage in Ireland or the US.

 Only a cap on salaries will do. In the Sunday Independent last week, Gene Kerrigan suggested €100,000 ($128,000) as a maximum. I don’t know if €100,000 is the figure. My own feeling is that something closer to €50,000 ($64,000) should be the maximum payable to any person for three years. That would leave me, for instance, some tens of thousands of euro behind what I currently make. That’s the deal, however. If people have huge mortgages, freeze them and begin to pay in a maximum of three years.

 The point is to cap salaries. Still, it should only be for three years. If, after then, people wish to return to greater differentials – though hopefully not as absurd as prevailed in banking (and is still prevailing) up to this recession – that’s fair enough. But the propaganda in Ireland during the current recession has been abysmal. Maybe with President Obama, there’s been hope but that’s not been the Irish experience to date.

 What values will emerge from the current recession? Already, we’ve seen distrust of the market with the mostly ruling Fianna Fail party (FF makes up about 90 per cent of the coalition government) at its lowest ever ranking in the polls. Normally, Fianna Fail can command about 42 percent of the total vote. One Millward Brown poll in the Irish Independent showed the party to have lost 17 percent of its support. It was down at 25 percent. In Ireland, that’s unprecedented.

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We are NOT all in this together | IrishCentral


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