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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   12383 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 8, 2026

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I'm told that this time it's different. I'm told not to worry about troubling financial signals, because Line Goes Up, and it goes up more than enough to cover the risk.

Oh, yeah. Same old song. I lived through the Celtic Tiger era in Ireland and that time too it was going to be different. This wasn't like the last times we had economic boosts following after slumps and then petering out and being followed by the next slump. This time the good times would last forever, this time we would keep on getting richer and richer, this time we were finally a modern economy with permanent high-skilled, high-paying jobs and we'd all be middle to upper-middle class and eating avocado toast as we commuted to our office jobs in the Big City forever.

That it was undergirded by the construction boom, and that the subsequent property bubble inevitably burst, was handwaved away as pessimism. And then it all came tumbling down, triggered by the 2008 US crisis with its own property bubble and mortgage lending, but the house of cards at home was exposed as built on sand. Enter the austerity years, begging for bailouts, and the return of the emigrant ship as the solution to "too many people at home, not enough jobs". This time had not been different, after all.

The US economy is generally robust and may not suffer as much during a downturn or even a crash, but the ripple effects will be felt globally.

Is the Irish economy that bad? I thought they were still doing pretty decently in the context of EU countries, albeit with an American leash and collar.

We're much too over-dependent on the tax take from the multinationals, and for the employment in Big Tech. When the likes of Meta do global layoffs, that hits us too, and there isn't really the slack for "okay all the laid-off software engineers can instead go work for the other IT companies" because they're laying off or not hiring, too.

The government is also looking to borrow to keep programmes going, instead of socking away the surplus for a rainy day as had originally been the plan, as well as the usual budget over-runs (the health service is a constant black hole of sucking up money and running out and needing more):

IFAC chair Seamus Coffey said: "The key concern is that corporation tax that was planned to be put in these funds is actually being spent."

He added €5 out of every €6 which is collected by the State in corporation tax is now being spent.

The warnings come as concerns rise that Ireland is becoming increasingly dependent on volatile corporation tax payments.

The top taxpayers have been pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly and technology giants Microsoft and Apple.

The three groups have been responsible for half of Ireland’s corporation tax payments.

...He noted that the Irish economy is performing very, very well at the current time.

"Unemployment is low, wages are at least at the moment above inflation," he said.

"So the Government is stimulating the economy now when it doesn't need it. The risk is that we won't have the resources available in a downturn we might need," he cautioned.

"We have a bad history with this over 40, 50 years of spending the money when it comes in during the good times and then leaving ourselves exposed when the downturn hits," he said.

He said that when we talk about declining surpluses, we are in a very different position to other EU member states.

"The issue is that we're maybe not leaving ourselves sufficiently insulated against what might be coming down the track," he said.

"So, we must understand the Irish economy is in a strong position. When we talk about the public finances, we're talking about declining surpluses," he said.

"We're not borrowing money to run the government on a day-to-day basis. We are talking about borrowing money to save, which is maybe an unusual position to be in," he added.

We're not in crisis yet, but a bad day for the USA and/or the global economy is going to hit us hard, and the one lesson we should have learned is that the rainy day always comes:

A Government analysis on the impact of Donald Trump's proposed tariffs warned of a decline in GDP of up to 4% and a decline in employment by more than 3%.

The research modelled multiple possibilities including unilateral tariffs, a trade war with the European Union, or a wider trade war.

It said every single scenario would have "significant negative implications" for the Irish economy.

The unpublished analysis said GDP could be expected to fall by between 2.75% and 4% over the medium term.

The employment decline would be between 2.5% and 3.25% while domestic demand would drop between 1.75% and 2.5%.

It also warned of price level increases of between 2-3% and said the modelling may underestimate the actual impact.

The government is also looking to borrow to keep programmes going, instead of socking away the surplus for a rainy day as had originally been the plan, as well as the usual budget over-runs (the health service is a constant black hole of sucking up money and running out and needing more):

In other news, Captain Renault is shocked-shocked!-to find that gambling is going on in here!

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