The McCarthy report
I have the greatest of regard for some economists, people like Mohammed Yunus (founder of the Grameen Bank) and Oxford’s Professor Paul Collier.
Sadly the aficionados of the dismal science in Western Europe have been taken over by nasty ideological corner–boys, puppets of the likes of Hayek and Friedman. Many of these people have never read Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations – otherwise they would know what a contradictory book it was, albeit one penned by a genial Scotsman who did not wish harm on his fellow men.
The McCarthy report could be summed up in one word, but, because I’m anxious not to encourage bad language I’m reluctant to use any of them.
It is a rather tired and predictable recipe based on Reagano-Thatcherite principles. It is unoriginal and unimaginative.
It is also cowardly as its recommendations seem to rely for their effectiveness on the Public Spending Paradox. They attack unfairly the weakest in our society, the sick, the poor and the nation’s children – those who cannot be blamed for the economic morass in which the country stands and who never benefited during the years when the Celtic tiger was roaring. But of course attacking the poor and the vulnerable is music to the ears of some right-wing commentators.
More than anything it is dishonest. First McCarthy speaks about the almost imperative need to cut spending in areas like health, education and social welfare. One would assume that spending in all these areas stood on a high plateau of government generosity. The fact of anyone with exposure to areas like health and education is that they have been suffering for years from cutbacks and indeed cannot endure any more.
But the report’s greatest dishonesty is in its aims; to pull the country out of an economic quagmire and restore it to health. Nothing could be further from its goals, which are to entrench and consolidate the economic hierarchy of this country, while strengthening, deepening and widening the gaping inequalities in Irish society. Put in fewer words, it’s about making sure the rich stay rich and the poor get poorer. This is why the report has been taken up with such unashamed glee by the right. McCarthy has pressed all the right buttons, or more accurately he has pressed the right button – he wants to cut social welfare payments. Indeed, it is only because he is too afraid of antagonising the liberal lefties that he has not advocated the real solution: cutting social welfare payments altogether and forcing the work-shy to work while throwing the poor onto the good offices of groups like the St Vincent de Paul society.
Income disparity is a fact of life, and within reason it’s not necessarily a bad thing. This is not the form of inequality I’m talking about. The worst form is the way many jobs are held by people who try to shield their incompetence behind some self-important title. These people, more often than not, owe their positions to family and political connections. Others who would be far better in the jobs are confined to the bottom rungs of the economy and society, frequently have no jobs and are denied an opportunity to make a worthwhile contribution to society.
We all know about the “haves” and “have-nots”; contemporary Ireland is about the “always-haves” and the “never-haves”. Why is it that those lucky to be born near the apex of the economic pyramid can take hope for granted. They know that hard work will be rewarded and even mediocre effort is tolerated. For those who are disadvantaged, whether by economics or say by disability, labour as hard as they might, they will never break out of the bottom rungs, so the smarter ones just don’t bother.
I hate always reverting to personalities but I cannot but say there is something seriously wrong with a society that allows a person with a doctorate, who has written nine books plus over a hundred articles, speaks a dozen languages, to languor at the bottom, dependant solely on a miserable blind pension which he expects to be cut still further.
I want to finish by asking a question of a historic personality, Patrick Pearse. What the hell did you bother for?
