Shopkeepers Of the World: Unite!

I originally wrote this as a comment about 'stimulus' on the ever excellent Cedar Lounge Revolution, but thought it deserved a smaller audience.

CM: Ah Mr Shopkeeper, back again already? How can I help you?
SK: Well Mr CreditMarkets, I’d like to, eh, borrow a little bit more please.
CM: So soon? Didn’t we lend you two billion last month?
SK: You did, you did. And thank you very much. But we’ve spent it.
CM: On improving the shop, like we discussed?
SK: Well after the interest payments to you and the expenses in the shop we didn’t have much left over so we had to stop the improvements as they got fierce expensive. Sales are still heading south.
CM: So what is the new money for?
SK: [cheerfully] We’re going to spend it in the shop!
CM: Sorry?
SK: We’re going to raise our sales by spending the loan money in it. Sure we’ll get half of it back again. Maybe even more!
CM: Half of it back?
SK: Yes! And then we’ll spend that half in the shop too! Or employ some more staff. They spend most of their wages in the shop you know.
CM: But.. surely, that can’t go on forever.
SK: Oh but it can, as long as you keep lending us the money. It’s called the ‘multiplier effect’. I would have thought a man in your position would know of it. It’s very popular amongst all the shopkeepers these days.
CM: How silly of me. Now tell me, how are sales going?
SK: Oh sales are still heading south at a rate of knots…
CM: Times are indeed tough for everyone.
SK: And we’re really quite expensive, what with all the staff and such. A lot of customers are going elsewhere
CM: But you have to cut your expenses! This is madness!
SK: Oh but we have. The staff now make a significant contribution to the cake fund.
CM: The cake fund? What the ..? Listen. How long more do you think we’re going to keep loaning all this money? I know it’s all backed by that cousin of yours in Brussels-
SK: He’s in Frankfurt actually.
CM: Whatever. What happens when he gets tired of shelling out all that money when the only security he has is on all that overpriced stock you have?
SK: Well [winks] he is rather depending on us for that vote thingie in October isn’t he?
CM: So he is, so he is.
SK: So, about that money ..?
CM: Will a cheque do?
SK: Cash if you don’t mind.
CM: Yeah, I wouldn’t trust the banks around your way either.
SK: See you in October!

New Definition Proposed

Election (n): That event that occurs every five years where the Irish people exercise their right to vote in a new Opposition.

But, it turns out we are happy

... and what's worse for Labour, it's because of our adoption of the dreaded Anglo Saxon model of capitalism.

I've been dealing with a French company at work extensively for the past few months. I have to send replies to emails from them with large cc: lists. The game is to try and see what is the most number of I'm-out-of-the-office autoreplies you can get with one email. Sending on a Monday is obviously good. Just after Christmas is better but anytime when they 'faire le pont' (take a day's holiday between a public holiday and the weekend), you are pretty much guaranteed a 33% rate of 'Je suis en congés jusqu'au ...' responses.

With a minimum 25 days holiday, more public holidays than here and the magic of RTT (réduction du temps de travail) whereby any hours over 35 in a week can be built up and used as extra holidays, it means they can easily have over 45 working days off in a year. I am envious. Everyone in the office is envious. It sounds so civilised, such a great way to live, so happy.

Except French workers are not happy at work. And we are.

What gives?

Some research on happiness in OECD countries by Deutsche Bank helps explain. Looking at the different models of capitalism in each country and comparing it with their level of happiness, the report identifies three broad groups of countries: "happy", "less happy" and "unhappy". The surprising result: the happy group were the Anglo-Saxon model capitalists (including us), the Nordic countries and Spain. The less happy group included France, Germany, Austria and Belgium. The unhappy group were the Southern Europeans (Italy, Greece and Portugal) and Japan and Korea.

Ten indicators were identified as being conducive to happiness: High levels of trust in fellow citizens, low corruption, low unemployment, high levels of education, high income, high employment rate of older people (retire later), small shadow economy, extensive economic freedom, low levels of employment protection and high birth rates.

Comparing Ireland and France on each of the indicators we are broadly similar on levels of corruption, high levels of income, size of shadow economy and birth rates. Where Ireland does better than France is on levels of trust, unemployment, education, employment rate of older people, extensive economic freedom and low levels of employment protection. The level of trust in a society is not really something you can legislate for, it is either there or it is not. Leaving aside education, the remaining cluster of indicators (economic freedom, low levels of employment protection, low unemployment rate and later retirement) are all related. With the exception of education, what appears to make Irish people happier than French people is that we are more economically free - despite our crap number of holidays.

It a case of happiness resulting from being closer to Boston than spending more time in Biarritz.

Fecklessnessiosity

The ESRI released a report last week on participation levels in sport amongst different classes in Ireland and the resulting policy implications. It found that people with low income or low educational attainment had much lower participation in sport.

Regarding income, more people who play sport come from the top 25 per cent of earners than from the bottom 50 per cent. Regarding education, 43 per cent of people who play sport have a third-level qualification, compared to 28 per cent in the wider population.

It appears that around 53% of top half earners (the 'rich') play sport as opposed to only 30% of bottom half earners (the 'poor'). Uh oh, I know what you're thinking; lots of ammunition for the less PC / more rabid columnists at the Sunday Independent in those stats. Well the ESRI thought of that and are very eager to head it off at the pass:

It could be argued that there is no direct impact of income or education on playing sport, but that people with high motivation are simply more inclined to work hard to earn money, to obtain qualifications, and also to make the physical effort required to play sport. If this were to be true, then the relationship between income, educational attainment and playing sport revealed in the last chapter would be driven by a common underlying cause, motivation, and it would be incorrect to assert that low income and low educational attainment themselves cause people to play less. However, this hypothesis based on motivation finds little support in the data.

They go on to give the stats on levels of interest and non-interest in playing across the income quartiles. It turns out that a fairly consistent 58% or so, say they are interested in playing sport - with little variation due to income. So that's alright then. But it strikes me that interest and motivation are two different things. I, for one, am interested in playing sport but not sufficiently motivated to do so (it's too cold, I left my P.E. gear at home, I have a note).

For sheer devilment, lets assume that only those interested in playing sport are actually playing it. Based on this around 90% of the 'rich' that are interested in playing sport, do so but only around 52% of the 'poor' that are interested in playing sport, do so. This means that 48% of the poor who want to play sport, don't, compared to 10% of the rich.

The ESRI seeks external reasons for the disparity (what in society is preventing poor people playing sport). The report says the participation differences are not down to lack of facilities or sport being too expensive. It has a little to do with not having a car or not living in a big city, but these are only relatively minor effects. The report never really examines the case for 'internal' reasons (what is different about poor people that they do no play sport, even if interested) being the cause. It does, however, admit:-

Overall, it is not possible to rule out underlying psychological causes, such as motivation.

.. while being anxious to point out ..

But there is nothing in the data to suggest that this is a helpful approach for explaining the strong relationships between income, educational attainment and playing sport.

One could imagine that if there was something in the data that suggested that poorer people were interested but just lacked the motivation to play sport, the ESRI would think very, very hard about publishing it. They know that the day after they did, the newspapers would be full of 'ESRI Says The Poor Are Feckless' headlines. Fintan O'Toole et al would have a conniption. There would be apoplexy on the Joe Duffy show, questions in the Dail and righteous indignation all over the blogosphere . Probably best not to go looking for such data too hard, eh?

Beyond Irony

Meanwhile in Kerry, an embittered old man polishes his father's medals and stares into the middle distance, while a nation celebrates.

The only sound, other than singing, during God Save The Queen was of a large portion of the Irish media muttering "Ah crap, there goes my pre-written story". Their attempts to whip up some controversy last week over the matter were despicable and pathetic. We deserve better.

Some Dutch Gold To Ease Our Election Angst

Maybe Bertie communes with CJH using Ray Burke as a medium.
Maybe Enda has trouble fighting off a cold let alone knife wielding muggers.
Maybe Michael wears a leather overcoat and peaked cap in the privacy of his own home.
Maybe Pat keeps a €20 note printing press in the back of his wardrobe.
Maybe Trevor dreams of hunting endangered species in an SUV with no catalytic converter.

Maybe, maybe, maybe.

Call me hopelessly naive and old fashioned but isn't voting for a new government meant to have some small relation to picking the party or candidates with the policies you are most in agreement with? Sure character is important both in terms of having the credibility and ability to get their policies implemented and also for the nature of the response to unknown future events that a five year term are bound to throw up. But whatever about their character, the important thing is for voters to want to get done what the parties say they will do.

"I like Bertie Enda Pat Etc. He'll get things done. I just disagree with what he wants to do."

During the Dutch elections an online service called Vote Match helped take some of the personality element out of the voting equation.

The Vote Match system compares your political preferences with questions and statements taken from election documents of political parties contesting the elections. You can give your views on these statements by clicking on 'agree', 'disagree', ‘neutral’ or 'don’t know'. After responding to all statements, you can indicate which issues you consider of extra importance. The program will then calculate which party has opinions closest to yours, and rank the other parties in descending order.

So who wants to create an Irish election version of this? And given the recent policy gyrations, would there be any point?

Because Tonight All the Parties Think It's 1979

Labour promises to keep changing policies until they discover one votes like lower tax rates. The PDs promise to buy votes increase social welfare spending on pensions. Fianna Fail warns everyone not to get carried away and talks about fiscal responsibility.

Who has been spiking the drinking water at Leinster House?

An Outrageous Suggestion

US Military Flights For Knock?

You have got to be kidding. Haven't the poor bastard soldiers suffered enough?

Prosperity = Good, Poverty = Bad

There was a piece in the Irish Times by academic Joe Clery on Saturday about Fairytale of New York, the Pogues classic, it concludes:

"And when our home-grown neoliberals summon up the sorry ghost of the 1980s to remind us we have never had it so good, MacColl's and MacGowan's duet can be a reminder that not all back then was misery and despair; there was also resilience and resistance."

The fact that hard times can bring out good qualities in people is no argument to return to them. Out of necessity, solidarity in Blitz time London was sky high, but I don't see anyone making a case against peace. Have people really forgotten just how fucking miserable the 80's were in Ireland? It Sucked-with-a-capital-S. We were a poor, insular, insecure, Church-ridden, tax-dodging, miserable little people. I got out as soon as I could and so did 50% of my friends and classmates to London, New York, Amsterdam. There was 16.7% unemployment when I left college. I can remember only a handful of Irish companies recruiting on the Milk Round and loads and loads of UK ones. Tell that to the young people today, and they just won't believe you...

So anytime I hear someone bemoaning our recent prosperity (I can't bring myself to write 'C____c T___r') or the "Oh dear what have we become" brigade, I get quite uptight. Give me the problems of prosperity over those of poverty any day. Yeah even the traffic. Or the house prices. Or the 'loss of our spirituality', whatever that is. As Des Bishop points out, we have traffic jams because now people have jobs to go to and can afford cars to do so. If you had a decent enough job in the 80's life wasn't too bad because relative to everyone else you were quids in. Back then my father was able to drive from the northside of Dublin to his job in Ballsbridge in about 40 minutes. Great. Wonderful. But two of his three sons had to emigrate. We're both back now, because of prosperity.

It wasn't just poverty that made Ireland in the 80's shite. Hand-in-hand with it, went the small-town, small-mind, squinting-window begrudger attitude. Nobody could disentangle cause and effect relationship with those two. We were poor because we were shite and vice versa. I suspect there are at least two types of people people complaining now that everything has gone to hell in a hand basket since we 'got rich':

• Those who were pretty comfortable during the bad times and now only see the down side of prosperity. Their relative position in society has slipped. After all what's the point of being able to go on a second foreign holiday if your house painter can too?
  
• Those who object to how we got here because it does not fit with their political ideology. We got here through a combination of many things but most people agree that our low tax policy and foreign direct investment primarily from U.S. companies were key. If you denigrate the outcome, you denigrate the process by which we got here.
  

Prosperity clearly has not benefited everyone equally or even fairly. Growth has created huge problems, exacerbated by our sometimes pitiful Governmental response to it. But it has resulted in the greater good to the greater number. People are a) happier despite what our commentariat tell us and b) here. It gives us the means to assist those who, for whatever reason, have not benefited from it - if we want to. Would the Niall Mellon house building initiative in South Africa been possible in the 80's (if apartheid had not existed)? It has also gone hand in hand with a dismantling of a lot of the old begrudger attitudes. Success can be admired now rather than be derided as the product of 'pull' or dodgy-dealing or luck.

Repeat after me. Prosperity = Good, Poverty = Bad.

Even when the prosperity we have is unbalanced and sometimes inequitable. If pointing this out makes me a 'neoliberal', I'll take that risk.

Missives to Madam #1

Ah! The ever entertaining Irish Times Letters Page ...

MURDER ON THE STREETS

"I would have thought that our bustling financial centre would be a safe haven from the criminals."

[perhaps the letter writer thought there is some sort of fellow professional criminal courtesy code?]

FF'S EUROPEAN PARTNERS

"This week it was confirmed that MEPs from the extreme right-wing "League of Polish Families" and "Northern League" (Italy) will join forces with Fianna Fáil in the European Parliament."

[insert obvious PD joke here]

REHOUSING THE OIREACHTAS

"Why cannot the Oireachtas be brought back to the building designed to house it? Perhaps if we ceased using our noblest public building [Bank of Ireland's College Green premises] as a temple to Mammon it would do something to restore national respect for the democratic process and the younger generation might even be tempted to get out and vote."

[there must be few purposes less salubrious than banking for the old House of Lords, but being the Dail debating chamber would certainly be one of them]

Sure They'll Never Notice. Grrr

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