Vincent Browne "the vulnerable are paying for the crisis"

Brendan Burgess

Brendan Burgess

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Vincent Browne had an opinion piece in yesterday's [broken link removed]comparing how government policy has affected the rich and poor differently.

For the second-poorest 10 per cent of earners, the drop in Ireland was 14 per cent.... For the second-richest tenth in Ireland it was just 2 per cent. But, the most revealing figure of all, for the richest 10 per cent ..., in Ireland the top 10 per cent showed an increase of 8 per cent.
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Séamus Coffey has taken this interpretation apart on Irish Economy.ie in a piece called opinion vs. reality

I don’t know anything about the Icelandic data used in the graph but it may be worth noting a couple of points on the Irish element of the graph:


  1. It does not show real changes.
  2. It does not reflect earnings.
  3. It does not relate to couples.
  4. It does not illustrate data from 2008-2009
...


Figure 1 shows that over this 4 year period, the distributional impacts show a strongly progressive pattern, with the lowest income group losing by about 4 to 5 per cent and the highest income group losing by close to 13 per cent. The scale of the progressive impact of earlier budgets, which raised income tax, abolished the ceiling on PRSI payments, and introduced the Universal Social Charge is much greater than the regressive impact of Budget 2012. The net effect over the whole period is therefore strongly progressive.


...


We have plenty to be angry about in this country without needing to make things up to give out about.
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We have plenty to be angry about in this country without needing to make things up to give out about.
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Vincent wants the facts to suit his agenda. He's a very clever man but he's probably the most biased broadcaster in Ireland.
 
I agree that he is a clever man and I like the way he can badger people for answers, especially politicians. I'm obviously totally opposed to his ideals, but that is not what bothers me most. He is of course entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts; and that is an area where I find him seriously lacking in any kind of credibility.
 
I don't take VB seriously either, and am certainly no fanboy, but I'm not at all sure (after reading Séamus Coffey's piece) that the selective manipulation of facts is all on one side. As one comment points out:
Seamus ‘was not at the presentation so am unclear as to whether the graph was presented’ but carries on to deliver a sermon about a detail of Browne’s article.
It gives the impression that you do not think that the most vulnerable have borne the brunt of the economic collapse.

Instead of telling what is not, you could do more service by saying clearly what is.
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Browne, like most opinion columnists, uses statistics like a drunk uses a lamppost — more for support than for illumination. He's not an economist, he's a journalist. And yes, he has a (frequently tiresome) agenda which colours everything he writes. But take out all the "left-leaning/right-leaning" rhetoric and I still find the basic substance of his article — that Irish government policy in the past few years has inequitably affected lower vs higher-income households — to be entirely plausible.

Another comment reads:
So what if the data refers to households instead of “couples” (whatever that means) or to disposable income as opposed to earnings. And it is irrelevant that a great chunk of the loss of disposable income is as a result of unemployment rather than budgetary forces.

“Suffice to say, it says close to nothing about the impact of budgetary changes on household income.”
Again, so what? Isn't the point of VB’s article about end results, about how the depression has affected the bottom line in households?

The basic message of VB’s article remains valid. If you are unhappy with the data used for comparison, and can think other sets of data concerning disposable income that would be better, then go do the comparison.

It is specious to juxtapose the graph on disposable income with the graph on budgetary impact. So what if the impact on the top decile was 12% between 2008 and 2012 - this is the cohort that disproportionately benefited from the bubble.

All the last two graphs tell me, when taken together, is that even more of the adjustment should have been borne by the top decile. If the top decile could grow their “equivalised disposable income” in 2010, then they could easily have shouldered more of the burden.
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Discuss.
 
DrMoriarty said:
I don't take VB seriously either, and am certainly no fanboy, but I'm not at all sure (after reading Séamus Coffey's piece) that the selective manipulation of facts is all on one side. As one comment points out:

Browne, like most opinion columnists, uses statistics like a drunk uses a lamppost — more for support than for illumination. He's not an economist, he's a journalist. And yes, he has a (frequently tiresome) agenda which colours everything he writes. But take out all the "left-leaning/right-leaning" rhetoric and I still find the basic substance of his article — that Irish government policy in the past few years has inequitably affected lower vs higher-income households — to be entirely plausible.

Another comment reads:


Discuss.
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Saying that average incomes have dropped because of government policy suggests that it is due to taxation and social welfare policy. That’s simply untrue. Suggesting that the increases in unemployment we have seen are also due to government policy is also untrue. The increases in unemployment we have seen are due to the collapse in the construction sector and the international credit/financial crisis and recession. All of these were exacerbated by policies of the previous government which were both socialist and capitalist at the same time and went something along the lines of “Give everyone everything they want and damn the cost”. There’s nothing this government could have done to fix the mess in one go, despite the “click your heels together three times and you’ll be back in Kansas” economics of Vincent Brown and people like Richard Boyd Barrett and his People against Reality group.

If Vincent's dogma predisposed him against doctors he would have written a diatribe blaming them because the average life expectancy of the adult male in Western Europe dropped between 1914 and 1920, he’d ignore the First World War and the Spanish Flu or blame them for not sorting it out.
 
Purple said:
Saying that average incomes have dropped because of government policy suggests that it is due to taxation and social welfare policy. That’s simply untrue. Suggesting that the increases in unemployment we have seen are also due to government policy is also untrue. The increases in unemployment we have seen are due to the collapse in the construction sector and the international credit/financial crisis and recession. .
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Really? The governments continued support and enactment of the previous FF austerity polices has increased unemployment by deflating the economy. The governments increases in personal taxation via e.g. the universal social charge etc, regressive taxation policies e.g. "household charges", increased tax takes from bank deposit interest has had a direct impact on spending thus increasing unemployment. The government’s failure to increase real business lending from the now publicly owned banks has been disastrous for small and medium businesses as well
 
werner said:
Really? The governments continued support and enactment of the previous FF austerity polices has increased unemployment by deflating the economy. The governments increases in personal taxation via e.g. the universal social charge etc, regressive taxation policies e.g. "household charges", increased tax takes from bank deposit interest has had a direct impact on spending thus increasing unemployment. The government’s failure to increase real business lending from the now publicly owned banks has been disastrous for small and medium businesses as well
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What austerity? There has only been talk of cutting spending, but it has not actually happened. Here is total government spending from 2007 to 2011. Where on earth is there one cent of reduced spending?
2011: €48bn
2010: €47bn
2009: €45bn
2008: €44bn
2007: €41bn

And for the 10 months to the end of October 2012, government has spent €2.5bn more than in the same period last year.

The reason unemployment is not going down is because government is increasing spending and increasing taxes, not because there is some fictitious austerity.
 
The Devil is in the detail .

I don't have the detail but from what I can see in Irish society, more of the spending is being diverted to different strands of society while other strands are feeling the squeeze.

If I , as head of my household spent a 50k household budget in 2011 and all my wife's and kids needs where met that would be fine

If in 2012 I spend 55k on household budget but had developed a gambling problem and lost 20k of that money during the year

on the face of it my spending went up, but in reality my family suffered due to less funds available for "GOOD" things.
 
GDUFFY said:
The Devil is in the detail .

I don't have the detail but from what I can see in Irish society, more of the spending is being diverted to different strands of society while other strands are feeling the squeeze.

If I , as head of my household spent a 50k household budget in 2011 and all my wife's and kids needs where met that would be fine

If in 2012 I spend 55k on household budget but had developed a gambling problem and lost 20k of that money during the year

on the face of it my spending went up, but in reality my family suffered due to less funds available for "GOOD" things.
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The figures I listed did not include the gamble on the banks if that is what you are trying to get at. Those figures are way worse and available from Eurostat as follows:
2010: €103,923bn
2009: €78,099bn
2008: €76,821bn
 
on his show last night, Vincent made a point to the guy from Chambers Ireland that during the 1950's, the USA had a top rate of tax of 90% on high earners and that the 1950's were a boom time for America!
So you can see what his thinking is, if you were ever in doubt!
 
Delboy said:
on his show last night, Vincent made a point to the guy from Chambers Ireland that during the 1950's, the USA had a top rate of tax of 90% on high earners and that the 1950's were a boom time for America!
So you can see what his thinking is, if you were ever in doubt!
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They applied to incomes over $200'000. Adjusted for inflation it would apply to incomes over $1'860'000. I bet Vincent "selective with the facts" Browne didn't happen to mention that, did he?
 
Didn't the French bring in a very high marginal income tax this year as well?

But it applies at a very high level and so very few people will actually pay it.
 
Delboy said:
on his show last night, Vincent made a point to the guy from Chambers Ireland that during the 1950's, the USA had a top rate of tax of 90% on high earners and that the 1950's were a boom time for America!
So you can see what his thinking is, if you were ever in doubt!
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Purple said:
They applied to incomes over $200'000. Adjusted for inflation it would apply to incomes over $1'860'000. I bet Vincent "selective with the facts" Browne didn't happen to mention that, did he?
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He is simply regurgitating nonsense that Warren Buffet put out in an opinion piece, which was completely selective in its facts.
Great article that refutes that opinion is out today:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324705104578151601554982808.html


Brendan Burgess said:
Didn't the French bring in a very high marginal income tax this year as well?

But it applies at a very high level and so very few people will actually pay it.
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Yes, and it has sparked high earners to flee, including the CEO of LVMH: http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-09-10/as-taxes-rise-frances-richest-man-eyes-belgium
 
Just wondering ,
Define Vulnerable ?
Are the Vulnerable paying in Sept 2013 for the Crisis?
Who are the Vulnerable?

Are they being hit?
 
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