Michael O'Sullivan (author of Ireland and the Global Question) has written a lucid article on what's required for job creation in today's Irish Times.
While Ben Bernanke, head of the Federal Reserve, voiced “grave concern” over high unemployment for “the enormous suffering and waste of human talent it entails”, Michael O'Sullivan argues that we are failing to address the fundamental barriers to job growth here.
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This is ho-hum stuff. The reality of our economic predicament is still not appreciated - well at least in public commentaries. In private it may be different.
It needed heroic levels of credit to develop and sustain the 1996-2000 and 2002-2007 'booms' in Ireland. There is never going to be a reprise of this (well, maybe never) and the need to re-pay the unsustainable debt overhang will ensure we experience an economic Regression (back to mid 1990s), from which we are likely to regress even further. Commentators who either suppose or espouse 'growth' as our salvation are either delusional or clueless. Growth is stalled. It may resume at low levels (<1% pa) but that is hopeless. Within a decade we will experience increasingly severe energy shocks. That should see 'growth' move into negative territory.
In fact those twin 'faux booms' neatly masked the deflationary effects of the entry of millions of low-paid workers into the global economy. These workers have completely skewed our labour markets and they can now compete with us (western developed economies)on very unfavourable terms - apart from our low-level, service-style indigenous jobs.
There are no barriers to job creation here in Ireland. Just a simple vanilla lack of demand. So, how does one create that demand? For 250,000 unemployed folk? You do not!
It's not new thinking that is needed Nat; it's new leaders. Our current bunch are useless. And that's me at my charitable best.
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