Celtic Tiger officially dead? (Budget 09)

[Mokong]

k obviously this is one for the few Irish folk here on the forums, but the rest of ye can come in and view our depression i guess.

 

So yesterday the government announced its new Budget for 2009 and holy shit it is a bleak despressing bastard, that could very well be worse for our economy rather than save it. All taxes are increased and new taxes coming out of nowhere.

 

Things like this 1% levy on ALL income, is ridiculous. This isn't an extra 1% on your "taxable income" after your "tax free allowance" but 1% tax on everything, your tax free allowance saves you nothing, every Euro earned the government takes a cent... k doesn't sound like much, but it will certainly add up.

 

And with workers currently not in the best of positions, many of those who still have jobs are on short-time (3 days a week), of which I am one, more money lost is something we can't afford.

 

Then they want to introduce a 10 euro departure tax at all Irish airports (starts March 09), WTF? Ok again 10 euro doesn't sound like much, but in the long run it will still be a deterrant to prevent people from travelling/going on holiday. And it could run the risk of discouraging tourists coming into Ireland, double negative effect. They say this is more of an "Enviromental Tax", well if it is then there should also be something to show as to what enviromental investments this tax is going into, but there are none.

 

Unleaded Petrol had an extra 8 cents per litre go onto it and this (for me anyway) seemed to happen in dramatic fashion. Yesterday the price of Oil was falling and the price of petrol followed. Yesterday a litre of Unleaded Petrol cost 1.13 euro, the lowest I have seen it in months, maybe 18months if not more. It was a great day after having Petrol prices up so high for so long. Today I passed the same station I filled up at yesterday and Unleaded Petrol was 1.27 euro/litre WTF? (more than the 8 cents too) Which is higher than the previous highest of teh last 6 months I can remember of 1.25 euro/litre

 

Not directly effecting me, but causing massive worry is the removal of the automatic Medical Card for people over 70 years old. Now we are going to have thousands of elderly people at risk of being unable to afford the proper medical care they need, when they were given this automatic Medical Card they would have given up their health insurance as of course they didn't need it anymore. Now they face having no medical and no insurance/can't afford insurance. Many families might have no choice but to put their elderly relatives into nursing homes, which then would be state funded and would infact cost the state more than if that person was on a Medical Card.

 

There's a whole ton of things more that I can't rightly remember now, but in general it looks like the government is looking to take back a little too much in this attempt to save the economy and could make our recession worse.

 

All this is (from how I understand it) to help with the governments 2billion euro bailout of Irish banks, that is 2billion euro of tax payer money, and now the government wants to get that money back not from the banks in the near future when they stablise themselves, but from the taxpayers again, in effect we are paying 4billion euro for a mess that the government, banks, construction industry caused themselves. All because they thought the "Celtic Tiger" would live forever dispite people telling them for years not to expect it to last who would just end up ignored and called crazy, but hey look they were right after all...woops

 

I don't know much about economies but I know enough to know that a stable economy needs money to be moving to be spent. Now if people have less take home pay and higher costs of living they are going to be spending less which is not what we need, cause if there's no money spent there's no demand for products, if there's no demand then production of products is reduced which in turn means companies need less workers to produce the product, which means increased unemployment and even less money available for spending.

 

I'm gonna go watch the football now and hopefully after that we'll have something to be happy about

[Guest Jordan]

You think this is bad? Its going to get ALOT worse. The FTSE looks another plummet today and the Dow isn't doing great either.

[Sparko]

I've just started working in the financial sector so yesterday afternoon we were following all the budget updates. One of my managers said something that summed up how I feel about the whole thing, basically we're being screwed before we get our money with the income levy, then we're getting screwed again when we try to spend it with the VAT increase and all the other increases. And the Government had the cheek to say the budget was nothing to be scared about.. Maybe for those ridiculously overpaid, underqualified politicians who think they deserve to be paid more than the majority of other worldwide politicians.

[darksnowman]

I had to give it some Wikipedia to see what this Celtic Tiger is. Its not what you want to hear (or what anyone wants to hear, for that matter) but all that seems to be happening is that things are plummeting further and further with every passing day. The Celtic Tiger ain't gonna be the only casualty of this mayhem.

[Raining_again]

Its looking pretty scary for a lot of people. My aunt is on the brink of losing her house. She's got a ton of negative equity now with all the house prices falling, and a mortgage she just cannot afford anymore.

 

I want to be moving out within the next few years, but I just can't see it being viable on my own. I won't get a mortgage I can afford, and rent is just as damn bad! My job is about as stable as a 3 legged chair, and there just aren't really any good jobs in this area. =(

 

Hopefully this blows over, sooner rather than later, before we all end up in poverty.

[Pyxis]

I work for Barclays Commercial Bank and they've put a cap on their head count. They aren't employing any more people and have too many after employing hundreds in the last 6 months. They seem to be trying as hard as they can to fire people and I was sooo close to getting fired today for no good reason...

 

3 people in my department have been sent home in the last couple of months for really trivial things like having an arguement or something not quite matching up in their CV, despite them having worked there for ages. I could get fired at any time and its stressing me out!

 

It sounds like Ireland is heading towards a mess. I hate environment taxes because as Mokong said, they don't actually go towards covering the environmental costs of pollution. Politicians couldn't care less and a departure tax sounds funny, doesn't North Korea have that?

[Shino]

I think the idea IS to keep the spending down, because of interest rates and indebted families. I wouldn't mind paying any taxes if I knew exactly what it was going for, they should implement a system that you would go too a website and see what part of what tax goes to where.

 

Just be glad you (and other smaller states) are in the Euro, without it we probably wouldn't stand this turbulence. (i.e. Iceland).

[Mokong]

It sounds like Ireland is heading towards a mess. I hate environment taxes because as Mokong said, they don't actually go towards covering the environmental costs of pollution. Politicians couldn't care less and a departure tax sounds funny, doesn't North Korea have that?

 

Actually a few countries have Departure taxes that are paid at the airport, I know from experience the Philippines has it in their airports, a Argentina do it too, China i think too... loads of places actually, but they've had it for ages and are call it what it is, not using "the environment" as an excuse... prolly because they've done it since before the environment became an issue

 

I think the idea IS to keep the spending down, because of interest rates and indebted families.

 

But there's very little in the budget that benifits families especially those struggling to pay bills, they will actually find it harder to pay bills after this, see sense this does not make. We're gonna end up with more people on social welfare and not enough workforce to fund it sooner or later

 

I had to give it some Wikipedia to see what this Celtic Tiger is.

 

You live in Ireland and never heard of the Celtic Tiger... i didn't think that was possible

[conzer16]

I have to be honest, it could have been alot worse. I was expecting an increase in income tax rates even bigger duties on alcohol and fuel.

 

The levy is punishing low paid workers and families but overall I think it could be much worse.

 

In a rush now....reserving this space for later!