I’ve always been proud of my Irish heritage, but now I’m having to reconsider. As is so often the case when something goes awry, the blame belongs to a politician (this Craig Ferguson joke is right on the mark).
Michael Higgins, the President-Elect of Ireland, has lived a very comfortable life sucking on the government teat. He began his adult life as a sociologist in academia. He then moved into politics, and for decades enjoyed lucrative pay as a member of the political elite (well above $100,000 annually in recent years).
Now he’ll pull in more than $300,000 per year for a largely ceremonial job as Ireland’s President. As the old saying goes, nice work if you can get it. This guy’s definitely part of the top 1 percent.
He’s also an economic illiterate or a cynical hack who apparently thinks noble poverty is a good idea for the other 99 percent.
Here’s some of what the Daily Mail reported about one of his recent speeches.
Michael D Higgins launched a savage attack on the Celtic Tiger in his first speech as President elect. In his acceptance speech, the Labour Party candidate…rejected the years of materialism and selfishness that drove the country to ruin. …Michael D declared: ‘We leave behind a narrow individualism that valued the person for what was assumed to be their accumulated wealth but neglected the connection between the person, the social, the community and the nation. …Mr Higgins called on Irish people to return to ‘co-operative and collective values’.
Isn’t this just wonderful? This pampered and cosseted member of the political elite thinks that Ireland somehow was demeaned by being the Celtic Tiger. Does this mean he wants to go back the mid-1980s, before Ireland began to reform? Back when government was consuming more than 50 percent of the nation’s output? Back when the the corporate tax rate was 50 percent? Back when other tax rates were at extortionary levels?
If that’s true, he wants to dramatically reduce the living standards of the Irish people.
Here’s a chart based on World Bank data for gross domestic product and gross national income.
Prior to the market-based reforms of the Celtic Tiger era, Ireland was a relatively poor nation with per-capita income and output well below $10,000. Today, by contrast, output and income are four or five times higher.
But here are two important caveats. First, the World Bank GDP/GNI numbers are not adjusted for inflation, so the chart overstates the rise in living standards. This World Bank data suggests that the price level in Ireland roughly doubled between 1985 and 2010, so the people of Ireland are perhaps “only” twice as rich as they were in the era before free-market reform.
The second caveat is that some of Ireland’s prosperity in recent years was hollow, the result of a real estate bubble. But even with the big decline since 2007-2008, the Irish people are still much better off than they were a generation ago.
But Mr. Higgins apparently doesn’t approve of this big jump in living standards.
He’s against “materialism,” so let’s look at some real world examples of how the lives of ordinary people have improved.
Maybe I’m just old fashioned, but I’d rather live in a “selfish” world that gives me doctors, cars, and central heating.
But to a member of the political elite like Mr. Higgins, this kind of prosperity probably spoils people and makes them uppity. Better for people to live noble lives of poverty and deprivation.
Last but not least, this post isn’t an endorsement of the “Irish model.” Yes, there are some admirable policies in Ireland, most notably the 12.5 percent corporate tax. And Ireland’s score from the Economic Freedom of the World has jumped from 6.3 in 1985 to 7.4 in 2009.
But that’s considerably below free-market jurisdictions such as Hong Kong (9.0) and Singapore (8.7).
Simply stated, government is too big in Ireland and many policies are grossly inconsistent with sound economics.
But if I get to choose between today’s Irish economy and the pre-Celtic Tiger economy of the early 1980s, it’s not a close call.
Maybe Mr. Higgins should spend a year or two living at 1985 living standards before he makes another jackass speech.
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He doesn’t like people with money? Ireland should cut his pay to a $30k a year equivalent. Them hear him cry how important his own money is.
Good Jesus what a dreadful analysis by some knob living overseas. Someones a cynical hack Dan, right enough. Comparing Ireland from the mid 80’s to the late naughties and tweens and simply saying ‘before’…’AFTER’ is grossly misleading and quietly ignores the level of staggering greed that engulfed the country in the middle of that period, that has left a large middle class in hock up to their eyeballs for years to come.
Higgins was only selected as the best of a pretty poor bunch.
It is yet another indictment of Irelands political elite, that the nation had to select from a group of candidates who were tarnished with everything from uncontrollable arrogance to questionable sexual ethics and complicity in terrorist activities.
Higgins is a throwback to seventies Ireland and his views offer little confidence to a nation with a young population that is devoid of any dynamic leadership that can offer a credible route forward.
If you would like to give up your Irishness on the basis of the people democratically electing someone, than please go ahead. We won’t miss you.
This article nails it. In fact Higgins – in his first radio interview as president-elect – specifically singled out Hayek and Mises as proponents of “extreme individualism” (whatever that is).
A lifetime of fine dining at the expense of the working people whose interests he professes to have at heart has given Higgins an impressive detachment from reality. In addition to providing a continuous stream of nonsensical platitudes on things economic, he’s also appointed himself as general in a one-man war against what he sees as the wanton destruction of “traditional” Irish culture, specifically the Irish language. To this “noble” end, he was behind the formation of a state TV company called TG4, ostensibly founded with the goal of increasing common use of this cryptic and contrived cultural anachronism. (No report that I’m aware of has ever found that this project has been even moderately successful, and much of it’s current programming output is imported from overseas content providers such as HBO. As it happens it seems that they can afford to buy the shows but not to hire the translators to do the subtitles – these shows go out in their original English language versions – so really it’s just another state fiefdom skewing the market and ultimately damaging consumer choice).
In short Higgins is a disgrace, an embarrassment. He exemplifies the cynical elitism of the champagne socialists, none of whom have ever come close to demonstrating that their policies would – if enacted – have a measurably positive impact on the lives of the working people that their lavish lifestyles.
You certainly use a lot of “ifs” in this article. You might have tried using more of those “ifs” in the opposite direction of the scenario you are “painting”.
You assume great license when you take a call to return to ‘co-operative and collective values’ as a method to whisk readers away to a time 30 years ago so that your fantasy sounds more plausible. You have manipulated words like “materialism” so that they are pigeonholed into your narrow definition (or perhaps understanding) of the word, at which point your entire article went to rubbish.
Nothing Mr Higgins said was an indication that he favored lower living standards or that we should live in deprivation. His words reflected that when things went well, that people got carried away by greed and were so blinded by that greed that they were not good stewards of their community or of their nation and they ran it into the ground with the attitude of “hooray for today and to hell with tomorrow”.
He is not saying that the Republic should not strive to prosper by embracing new business partnerships and technologies. He is saying that we will run at it again and succeed and keep the money in our own pockets and in our own communities instead of allowing our greed to push us toward lining the pockets of the banks who give not a damn about us.
Unfortunately, Ireland has forgotten the lessons hard learned in the Eighties. Now misplaced dependency on the state is greater now than it was back then and the state is now spending more than 50% of National income.
http://www.ronanlyons.com/2011/09/20/a-budget-2012-proposal-make-all-income-from-the-state-taxable/
And they elected him why? It doesn’t look like you had to go far to discover the stark differences between Ireland of yore contrasted with today. And I had no idea they dealt with a 50% corporate tax. I’m keeping my eyes wide open that we don’t make the same mistake here and praying it doesn’t come down to a lesser evil choice.
When you don’t folow the original recipe, you don’t get palatable results.
@Drik
We did that in 2008 by getting rid of the really bad president (Bush) and replacing him with Obama. Nobody was held accountable, some small civil liberties changes occurred, but the people continued to suffer. (Remember that Bush signed into law first stimulus).
Here we are 2012, looking to get rid of the really bad president (Obama) and replace him with someone else.
The system the people are working within is flawed, plain and simple.
Sometimes it takes the election of a really bad president before the people of a country take notice and begin to participate and demand that the incompetent be gotten rid of or held accountable.
Case in point, America.
Cynical hack.