Ringfencing exorbitant salaries will fuel anarchy

MUCH and all as we want to be positive, government really goes out of its way to make being positive almost an impossibility.

It’s becoming easier by the day to accept the argument made by more and more people that our ministers and politicians in general are little more than marionettes totally manipulated by firstly our home-grown mandarins and secondly by our now European masters operating at the behest of world bankers and their local surrogates. We are merely dispensable pawns set to do their bidding.

Obviously, the 30 odd years that Enda Kenny has been ensconced in Dáil Éireann has ensured that he is as removed from the ordinary Irish taxpayer as anybody can be. Who in his right mind — at any time, but particularly when different forms of bread have just been defined as luxuries and thus subject to VAT for the first time — would suggest that “VAT hike gives people more choices than income tax rise”?

It’s like saying would you rather be hung or shot? He might have a point if we were in an ideal world, but we are not. In this little statelet of ours, anything that can be taxed effectively is already taxed. This basically means that we have no choice because the range of what are termed staples and basics in a modern society are so extensive.

Tuesday’s Irish Examiner article on “discretionary spending” sets it all out in black and white. The following items will be covered by the new 23% VAT rate: toilet rolls, toothpaste, towels, soap, shampoo, detergents, disinfectants, exam papers, cooking foil, fruit juices, spectacles, coffins and bottled water. They all sound fairly basic to me. On the other hand, the following items are zero VAT rated: smoked salmon, caviar, crab and concert tickets. Clearly discretionary spending has a different meaning for our would-be lords and masters. It all sounds a little like Marie Antoinette and her exhortation to the starving peasants to “let them eat cake”. If this was the only problem it would be bad enough, but it’s not.

It’s very hard for Irish taxpayers already pinned to their collar seeing headlines reporting on yet another senior public servant retiring at 60 and walking away with over €600,000 in his first year of retirement followed by a pension that is four or five times the average industrial wage juxtaposed with headlines telling us that the children’s allowance is to be cut by €10, the dole by €8 and VHI will remove further items from those covered in our insurance.

Meanwhile, the largesse the Government bestows upon itself steam rolls on unabated. It argues that it cannot do anything because they are written into people’s contracts and they have a reasonable expectation that it will be received. When did that ever become a problem when the powers that be wanted to change it? People who have saved in pension policies for years also have an expectation that their pensions will pay out just like it says on the offer. However, there does not appear to be any problem in changing them.

The basis of an individual’s salary is also a contract — I will do X and you will pay me Y for doing it. Yet that can be changed. Now most of us reluctantly accept that we must take a cut if the money is just not there to pay us.

Unfortunately, out ministers, politicians, bankers, senior public servants and many others do not seem to follow this simple concept.

At this stage it’s gone way beyond a joke. Government must dramatically reduce the salaries and perks for the very many thousands of public sector employees and it must introduce considerable tax increases on those earning four or five times the average industrial wage.

The alternative is both unfair and unreasonable and will sooner rather than later lead to disruption if not downright anarchy.