Fat cats are the real winners

DURING his so-called address to the nation, Enda Kenny said: “To make sure we keep as many jobs as we can, to make sure you get to bring home as much as you can, and to make sure you know where you stand with your wages.

To give you some certainty for the year ahead, we’re leaving income tax untouched.”

What sort of rubbish is this? How stupid does he think people are? Apart from having no mandate for policies that were already rejected by the electorate, his statement conveys faulty assumptions: that income taxes will reduce jobs, that cuts are not taxes on somebody, that cuts instead of taxes can save jobs and that his €2.2 billion in cuts and €1.6bn in taxes provide us with greater certainty, letting us know where we stand, by excluding income tax — the clearest, most obvious, form of taxation there is. Taxes can be targeted, and the money raised can be invested in creating jobs. If €3.8bn is taken out of the economy, no matter what way it’s done: by cuts, by taxes or a mixture of both, as in this case, then that €3.8bn is being taken from somebody. The only questions are: Who is it taken from? Who loses and who wins?

The real winners are investment bankers in Ireland, France, Germany and the US, including profiteers making a profit at our expense, who bought bonds at knockdown prices from other bankers, only to be paid the full price by our priceless Government, which claims that we’ve no money. Then there’s the unguaranteed bondholders, inexplicably and mysteriously paid €720m by the Government in November, when there was no obligation to do so, and who they now plan to pay a further €1.25bn to, in January, and yet another €1bn-plus in June 2012.

The other winners are the wealthy and those on higher incomes here, who will lose least, or actually gain. The clear losers will again be the least well off because the cuts and stealth taxes, not based on income, will affect those on lower incomes far more than those on higher incomes. These cuts and taxes will cost jobs. The savings index has risen sharply here since 2008. It is those on higher incomes and the wealthy that are doing the saving, not those on lower incomes. This saved money is not being re-circulated in the economy. Increasing taxes on the income of those on higher incomes and the wealthy would reverse this. Those on lower incomes spend almost all of their income, re-circulating it immediately. Cutting their income is not only unjust, it will cost jobs. Yet again the least well off, the most vulnerable, children, the young and the unemployed, are to be those most harmed by the actions of banks and their close friends in politics.

Paul Farrell

River Forest

Leixlip

Co Kildare