No votes for public sector employees?!

You may think that I am on occasion anti-public sector in my pronouncements (actually I’m not; I just think that Irish public sector management is lazy and inefficient and provides poor leadership).  Anyway, compared to the guy quoted below, I am a pussycat.

Dr J C Lester argues that only (net) taxpayers should be allowed to vote, thus ruling out state sector employees!

Why should people who are not taxpayers be allowed to vote money away from those who are? If we must have state services, it should at least be for those who pay for them to vote for which services they want and how much they wish to pay. To allow those providing, or living off, the services to vote is like allowing a shopkeeper to vote on what you must buy from him, or a beggar to vote on what you must give him….

… Consider state distribution of tax-money. We can see that this must create two social categories: those who are net taxpayers and those who are net tax recipients. Only the net taxpayers can be said to provide the state with tax-funds. The net tax recipients are paid out of taxation, plus any payments in newly created state-currency (which effectively taxes those who hold money). So to the extent that people are in the pay of the state they cannot be genuine taxpayers. A proof of this is that if their jobs were abolished the state would have more money to spend elsewhere, unlike those jobs in the genuinely taxpaying sector.

The writer, Jan Lester, is a leading member of the Libertarian Alliance.  The public sector seems to be a prevalent theme of writing on the LA website.  Its home page currently has a lead article by D.J. Webb called “Living off our Taxes”, of which the introduction gives a flavour:

There is nothing more frustrating than having to pay tax and national insurance so that public-sectors workers can earn more than you. People in the private sector face greater job insecurity and have less lavishly funded pension arrangements, where such arrangements even exist, and yet they are the golden goose that has to be repeated slaughtered in order that state workers can have secure and higher-paid jobs with astonishingly generous pension provision.

In case you were wondering, Webb was writing about the United Kingdom, not Ireland.  But, let’s be honest, he could have been writing about Ireland.

I’m sure it’s best to be uncertain

I recently met a friend whom I tend to envy, not because he is wealthy (although he is that), or successful with women (he doesn’t seem to be too concerned with such matters) but because his outlook on life seems untrammeled by any caution-giving uncertainties or by any debilitating doubts.  Every time we discuss a topical question, his views are expressed forcefully and in a manner which, even if it sometimes leaves room for further debate, makes it clear that his views will not be varied by such debate, and that for me to argue against him would just be misguided and/or silly.

But my envy is usually short-lived, and fades away in the light of even the most cursory reflection.  In fact, on such occasions I am reminded of the saying (of unknown provenance) that “I wish I was as certain about anything, as he is about everything”.

In reality, I prefer a more nuanced, analytical frame of mind, an attitude nicely expressed in a Frank Conroy essay, “Think About It”:

Indeed, in our intellectual lives, our creative lives, it is perhaps those problems that will never resolve that rightly claim the lion’s share of our energies. The physical body exists in a constant state of tension as it maintains homeostasis, and so too does the active mind embrace the tension of never being certain, never being absolutely sure, never being done, as it engages the world. That is our special fate, our inexpressibly valuable condition.

Even the super-controlling business hero Steve Jobs once admitted:

I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

Obviously, as Yeats knew, it can be dangerous to lack conviction about one’s beliefs :

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

So lack of conviction is to be regretted?   Arguably so, assuming one’s beliefs are of a democratic and peaceful nature.  But Yeats himself was anti-democratic and was even regarded as an admirer of fascism.  So there’s a dilemma here:  for society to progress, or even for it to be managed properly, we need people of conviction, “men of action”.  But such men or women are just as likely to be wrong-headed or evil as they are to be clever and benign.

In a multimedia age, where the soundbite is king, voters can too easily confuse certainty with smartness.  TV current affairs and news programme producers avoid panellists/interviewees who express views with caution, and choose instead those who have strongly held views of a black-and-white nature.  Hedgehogs, not foxes.

I have great admiration for public figures and commentators who are prepared to admit that they are unsure of the answer to any given question.  I think I do, at any rate.

Rational politicians, irrational voters

This short paper (Smart Taxes: An Open Invitation to Join the Pigou Club) is worth reading for its discussion of Pigovian taxes, of gasoline taxes (in a USA context), and generally of “topics about which there is a large gap between the beliefs of economists and those of the general public”. It’s written by an economist whom I have mentioned previously, Gregory Mankiw.

As the financial world goes into meltdown mode, the following extract from Mankiw’s paper struck me as an encapsulation of where it all went  wrong for free-market democracies in most of the western world.

In a democracy, of course, economic policy is set not by economists but by the general public. One of my favorite books of recent years is Bryan Caplan’s treatise The Myth of the Rational Voter, subtitled Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies. The answer Caplan offers is that voters are worse than ignorant about basic economic principles of good policy. Ignorance, at least, would have the virtue of being random and so perhaps would average out to zero in a large population. Instead of being merely ignorant, voters hold onto systematically mistaken beliefs. And politicians, whose main job is to get elected, mold those mistaken beliefs into bad public policy. To quote Caplan, “What happens if fully rational politicians compete for the support of irrational voters–specifically, voters with irrational beliefs about the effects of various policies? It is a recipe for mendacity.”

Of course, while admitting that free-market democracies are having it tough, it must also be emphasised that alternative systems work even less well, at least in anything other than the short term – as the USSR found out, and as China undoubtedly will in the near future.  That’s why it’s distressing to find commentators wobbling in their support for free-market solutions.  See, for instance, the Telegraph’s Charles  Moore who wrote a recent article* headlined “I’m starting to think that the Left might actually be right”.  Just the bathwater, please, not the baby too.

Not surprisingly, there’s no easy solution to this crisis of economics and politics. But any long-term fix must include a much more rigorous teaching of the basic principles of economics to all citizens. We allow all those of a certain age to vote for whatever government they want, yet we fail to educate those voters properly about the economic consequences of so doing. We should not then be surprised when (as Caplan noted) rational politicians compete for the support of irrational voters with ultimately calamitous policies.

*Although one is tempted to have some sympathy with Moore’s views on banks: “…. when the banks that look after our money take it away, lose it and then, because of government guarantee, are not punished themselves, something much worse happens. It turns out – as the Left always claims – that a system purporting to advance the many has been perverted in order to enrich the few. The global banking system is an adventure playground for the participants,  complete with spongy, health-and-safety approved flooring so that they bounce when they fall off. The role of the rest of us is simply to pay.”

The great Murdoch conspiracy

This article  in yesterday’s Telegraph is the most interesting and effective summary (so far, and to my eyes) of the infection of British politics by the Murdoch virus.  The relegation of the role of Westminster to a bit player in policy formation, and an afterthought in policy announcement, has echoes in the Irish political scene.

Here are a couple of extracts from a fascinating article.

During the Blair years, News International executives, Mrs Brooks among them, would attend the annual Labour Party conference, but they were scarcely treated as journalists. When Tony Blair gave his leadership speech, they would be awarded seats just behind the cabinet, as if they had been co-opted into the Government. Arguably they had. The first telephone call that Blair made after he had escaped from the conference hall was routinely to Rupert Murdoch himself….

…There was a very sinister element to these relationships. At exactly the same time that Mrs Brooks was getting on so famously with the most powerful men and women in Britain, the employees of her newspapers (as we now know) were listening in to their voicemails and illicitly gaining access to deeply personal information.

One News of the World journalist once told me how this information would be gathered into dossiers; sometimes these dossiers were published, sometimes not. The knowledge that News International held such destructive power must have been at the back of everyone’s minds at the apparently cheerful social events where the company’s executives mingled with their client politicians.

Let’s take the case of Tessa Jowell. When she was Culture Secretary five years ago, News International hacked into her phone and spied on her in other ways. What was going on amounted to industrial espionage, since Ms Jowell was then charged with the regulation and supervision of News International,  and the media group can scarcely have avoided discovering commercially sensitive information, even though its primary purpose was to discover details about Ms Jowell’s private life.

Couldn’t happen here, of course.  Irish politicians traditionally don’t have a great fear of what newspapers might reveal: the thicker the envelope, the thicker the skin.

Still waiting for tough decisions ….

A letter in the Irish Times on 21st April expressed a feeling that has been growing on me.

Madam, – With all the bad economic news hitting us day in day out, my belief is that until the Government starts to make some hard decisions we will continue the slide into economic chaos. I haven’t seen one hard decision made as yet. Get a move on. – Yours, etc,  ENDA TREACY, Killalane, Skerries, Co Dublin

We are almost half way through the famous 100 days that Fine Gael promised would see a blizzard of activity as programs are implemented.  There has been a fair bit of shape-throwing and lots of talking the talk.  Now is the time to walk the walk. 

FG can’t let Labour, who hold less than 33% of the seats in the coalition government, block tough but sensible policies.

We need a Limit on Election Posters

We have become used to the idea of spending limits for election candidates.  I have yet to see a serious suggestion that there should be a limit imposed on the number and size of posters that candidates erect for every election.

Consider these facts:

• to a large extent candidates only erect posters to counteract the fact that their opponents are doing so, and failure to “front up” with thousands of posters might be seen as evidence of a lacklustre campaign; just as we had a nuclear disarmament treaty, we now need a postering decommissioning regulation
• election posters are almost invariably uninformative as to policy, consisting only of a carefully taken (and touched up) photo of the candidate, and an exhortation to Vote No.1 for Joe Schmoe (the suggestion that a party’s second candidate should also be supported can sometimes be found, but in the smallest print size that decency allows)
• posters are damaging to the environment, whether in their manufacture, their printing, their propensity to cause litter, or their subsequent disposal
• erecting posters is a time-consuming and energy-intensive procedure
• posters, as erected in Ireland, are a danger to life and limb; this is because they often cause obstruction of pathways and the covering up of, or the distraction from, road signs for motorists
• many jurisdictions do not allow uncontrolled postering, and some go as far (in local elections at least) as to insist that all candidates limit themselves to a poster or statement which are collectively erected at one central position in the electoral area

Why not impose a limit of (say) 500 square metres of poster area per candidate in a general election?  He/she could choose whether to go for lots of small posters, or fewer but larger ones.  I suspect everybody would be relieved at such a regulation, which would allow the focus to be on more productive aspects of campaigning.

Vote for Eric!

I see from this morning’s paper that at least one candidate in the general election has had the good sense (?) to adopt my somewhat unusual political manifesto, which I set out in a post last September (link), and which I repeat here:

1. I will not put purely local constituency interests before national interests.
2. I will not help you to jump a queue for spurious reasons.
3. I will not help you get something to which you are not in principle entitled.
4. I will not hold “clinics” – here are my contact details – please make an appointment to see me, or send me an email,  if it’s important.
5. If you want assistance on a purely local government matter, well here’s a list of all the local government representatives.  Don’t bother me about it…..
6. I will not support any Government measure which will increase expenditure significantly, unless it is clear where the extra taxation will come from.
7. I will not claim for reimbursement of any unvouched expenses.
8. I will publish online all the expenses I have claimed.
9. I will not go to your funeral (or that of any member of your family) unless I actually know and like you.
10. I will not perform the opening ceremony for your shop/pub/hairdressing business/laundry/….
11. If you break the law, I will not plead with the Minister, or with officialdom, for clemency
12. I will not accept additional payment for serving on any Oireachtas committee.
13. I will spend almost all my available time on legislative and parliamentary matters.

 According to The Irish Times,

Eric Coyle-Higgins, an Independent candidate in Kildare North, has made a bold election pledge.   “I promise never to attend a funeral, save where the deceased was personally known to me.”   But that’s not his only electoral promise by any means. He also pledges “never to call to constituents’ doors seeking their votes” or to hold traditional party clinics.   He continues: “I promise never to accept so much as a single cent in travel expenses . . . or to pursue the interests of Kildare North with indifference to the overall national interests . . . or to otherwise engage in political gombeenism”.

Well done, Eric.  That’s putting it up to the voters, who keep screaming that crap politicians get elected to Dáil Éireann, but who insist on electing those same crap politicians because “they are good for the constituency”. 

It should be interesting to watch -  I just wish I had a vote in Kildare North.  But I’m not holding my breath: I fear local gombeenism will continue to triumph over national issues, because it will take a change to our electoral system to make any appreciable difference.



Quote of the Day

One of the language-usage blogs I follow is “You Don’t Say” written by the Baltimore Sun’s self-styled “moderate prescriptivist”, John McIntyre.

Today he has this: “No one would have taken greater joy in the tea party phenomenon than Henry Mencken, who reflexively distrusted all True Believers but found their antics hugely amusing. I myself am happily awaiting the discovery, already beginning to dawn in Washington, that campaigning is comparatively easy but governance is hard.”

For some reason, I immediately though of Sinn Féin when I read the (so true) last phrase.  How great it must be to have the luxury of making bold assertions about how the country’s problems can be solved, in the knowledge that they will not be in Government after the next election.

Did your dog vote for the Lisbon treaty?

I have commented before (for instance here, and here) on how the EU pays lip service to the principle of subsidiarity, while in practice it seeks to expand continuously the range of areas over which it takes action.  Almost every month there are fresh examples of matters that should be dealt with at national level, but on which the EU sees fit to initiate legislation.  A good example surfaced today.

Belgium wants to use its EU presidency to underline the key societal role played by companion animals like dogs and cats, Belgian Deputy Prime Minister for Health and Social Affairs Laurette Onkelinx announced yesterday (9 September)…… “During our country’s presidency of the Council, we are underlining the important role of companion animals in civil society,” said Onkelinx, speaking at the launch of a website on dog welfare in Brussels.  “Dog and cat overpopulation creates a lot of suffering for unwanted animals,” she added, explaining that “sharing information and experience is the basis for every development in animal welfare, and here, for a Europe-wide solution and strategy to create an appropriate and responsible attitude by us humans towards animals”.  Onkelinx pointed to the Treaty of Lisbon, Article 13 of which reads “the [European] Union and the member states shall, since animals are sentient beings, pay full regard to the welfare requirements of animals,” as a possible basis for further EU action in this area.

It’s no wonder that EU citizens have to stump up €8 billion a year (out of a total EU budget of €130 billion) to pay for the cost of administration – it must take a lot of Commission officials to look after Fido’s welfare.

Disclaimer follows …..  In citing the above example, I am making no statement as to whether or not I think the effect of any proposed legislation is good or bad (it would presumably be good, on balance); only that I think national legislatures should be responsible for enacting it (or not enacting it).   So please don’t attack me, dog-lovers and cat-lovers!

Could Canada 1993 be a pointer to Fianna Fáil’s fate?

Could it happen?  Could Fianna Fáil be about to disappear as the dominant political party, and fade into obscurity?   We have seen such transformations before: the political scene in our closest neighbour was once dominated by the Liberal Party, but they declined rapidly into a marginal electoral force in the early decades of the last century.

However, one doesn’t have to go so far back to find a precedent for a political party collapsing almost overnight.  The story of the 1993 Canadian federal election should be enough to give Fianna Fáil loyalists nightmares.   

Why Minister Noel Dempsey lacks courage

The Government, and particularly Minister for Transport Noel Dempsey,  seem determined to annoy the majority of the population by reducing the permitted blood alcohol limit for drivers from 80m milligrams to 50 milligrams per 100 millilitres of blood.  So as usual we get more legislation, when what we need is better enforcement of existing laws.  This contrasts sharply with the UK, where the Government sensibly opted for applying resources to law enforcement rather than reducing the limit from 80mg to 50mg.

The adverse social effects of the proposed change will be enormous, particularly in rural areas, and are simply not outweighed by potential savings in road deaths or injuries.  There is no evidence that any such savings exist to any material extent.

In an earlier post on this topic, I said:

Islamic treatment of women: why are we not more upset?

Anybody who grew up witnessing the years of struggle against apartheid in South Africa, as I did, would surely have been impressed by the cumulative effect of international sanctions against the former regime there.  Institutionalised discrimination against people on grounds of skin colour was ultimately defeated and South Africa became a respectable member of the world community.

For many years now, a related question has been preying on my mind.  Why is there no equivalent international agitation against regimes that have institutionalised discrimination against people on grounds of their gender?