In our trickle-up economy, the distance between the earnings, life choices, and
access to basic human rights (housing, medicine, and education) of the higher- and
lower-earners is growing. Research and international experience have repeatedly
shown that countries with the biggest gap between the rich and the poor also have
the greatest social unrest. The water-charge protests and Trades Union delivery of a
cold winter of discontent are only a taste of what could be to come if we don't
reverse current policies of wealth distribution upwards. There’s a lot of simmering
anger out there.
Endgame
For Fine Gael, the recession appeared to be something of a godsend. It broke
the Fianna Fail grip on the electorate and enabled them to use austerity politics to
achieve Fine Gael's favourite wet dream—savage cuts in spending that they believed
would become the new normal.
Their claim, on this basis, of a successful recovery effectively cost them the last
election. While they trumpeted their successful management of a 'recovery', they
failed to allow for a demand from those who had paid the price of that 'recovery' for
a refund now that the good times were rolling. People who had watched services
dwindle, trolley counts grow, and homelessness soar, are now demanding improved
services and won't accept that we can't afford those improvements while tax
reductions are the order of the day.
Public-service unions that had seen their members' pay slashed and conditions
worsened, naturally enough, demanded pay restoration and the end to a two-tier
system that discriminated against new recruits. In what must have seemed like an
added bonus by Fine Gael, this two-tier system had appeared to set the stage for further
reductions over time as burn-out and natural attrition reduced the numbers of those on
the old pay scales. They might perhaps have thought that dividing was the short cut to
conquering. Wrong again. Those on the old pay scales stood by their colleagues and
showed a willingness to take action if those colleagues' pay wasn't brought up to the
top-tier level. An increasingly fraught and fractured Government capitulated, and then
capitulated again, and again. And they may be willing to let Bus Eireann collapse to
avoid another capitulation. But they’re still going to cut taxes.
Fine Gael retain power by grace and favour of a mixed bunch of increasingly
disappointed and disappointing independents. And by the ‘goodwill’ of a drastically
reduced but politically astute Fianna Fail cohort of TDs who refuse to grasp the poisoned
chalice of government while retaining the ability to collapse the current government
pretty much at their will. The tail is consequently gleefully wagging the dog. And the dog
doesn’t like it.
And they’re still going to cut taxes.
A few years ago, protesters in Greece carried placards declaring 'We're not the
Irish'. Well, neither are we anymore; which is to say, we aren't the quiescent, put-upon,
long- suffering sheeples who put on the green jersey and endured in silence. We’re as
mad as hell and we ain’t gonna take it anymore.