Economics of the Budget do not make sense
BUDGET 2016 appears to be a celebration of ‘recovery’. If only! Anyone who thinks this is recovery they are unaware of what is happening to economics in the 21st Century. ‘All changed; changed utterly; a terrible “economic” beauty is born’ and this Budget knows nothing about her.
Despite the second coming of ‘the fastest-growing economy in Europe’, growth – the frantic driving force of economics for more than 200 years – is over. It has been replaced by sufficiency, ability to produce all goods and services in great abundance.
Indeed we are suffering from gross over-sufficiency as we fail to restrain our extraordinary 21st Century ability to produce everything to excess. As for jobs, we must find ways of sharing out that work which is still reliant on human effort if we are not to be over-run by mass unemployment.
The Budget does nothing to deal with our new economic situation; it doesn’t even acknowledge that change has taken place and just stokes up ‘recovery’ which is just a rerun of the ‘boom’ in desperate attempt to return to the old ways of growth and work.
It is interesting to note the ministers’ euphoria about Ireland’s growth at the same time the IMF worries about world economic slippage back into stagnation; Chinese imports are reported to have dropped by 20 per cent and oil price is less than half of what it was just over a year ago.
These are new and wonderful times with great abundance of everything and little need of growth and work but if we don’t want to destroy them and in turn have them destroy us, we must adapt with new thinking and new ideology. I fear we find neither from this Budget.
PADRAIC NEARY, Tubbercurry, Co. Sligo.