Finger-pointing won’t resolve borrowing crisis

Hardly a week goes by without a minister or backbencher reminding us, usually in stern tones, that “we are borrowing €1bn a month to pay for (insert public sector worker group eg nurses’) salaries”.

So we borrow for nurses salaries, for public sector pay, for all sorts. Sometimes this is couched in terms of borrowing for social welfare, but usually it is attached to public sector pay.

Regardless of where it is attached it is a useful encapsulation of bias and special interest pleading from those doing so. First, it is as clear a demonstration as can be of what is called mental accounting; second it demonstrates an unconscious or conscious demand for cuts to be made, and third, there is a concomitant sotto voce element usually that suggests that the money if it has to be borrowed would be best directed elsewhere. All three are challengeable if not demonstrably fallacious.