Indo - "There is no cost of living crisis for majority of people in Ireland says IBEC CEO"

www.irishexaminer.com

Irish food and alcohol prices among highest in Eurozone, with basic groceries far above EU average

CSO figures reveal Irish consumers pay steep markups for essentials as charities warn of worsening cost-of-living crisis
www.irishexaminer.com www.irishexaminer.com
Ireland is the second most expensive country in the Eurozone for food and alcohol, with consumers paying significantly more for items like milk and bread compared to the EU average, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) has said.

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Irish consumers pay 12% more for food than the EU average, while alcohol prices are nearly double the European average.
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joe sod said:
it was after euro came in 2002 that everything went craz
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Not nitpicking, but it's also worth remembering though that the Euro came into being on 1 January 1999, although it was 3 years later when coins and banknotes replaced their Irish pound equivalent.

Its inflationary effects, especially on property, were obvious in Ireland almost overnight, and government and the the Central Bank were stumped in how to react to that.

I remember the ESRI economist Terry Baker arguing that a tax on mortgages might have worked as a response but that came to nothing sadly.

It was all a terrible folly that culminated in disaster post 2008 and it's eminently arguable that Ireland hasn't been fully right since.
 
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T McGibney said:
remember the ESRI economist Terry Baker arguing that a tax mortgages might have worked as a response but that came to nothing sadly.

It was all a terrible folly that culminated in disaster post 2008 and it's eminently arguable that Ireland hasn't been fully right since.
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Yes, I would also argue that manipulating our tax code to allow multinationals to move their IP here and all the corporation tax to flow in has also not been healthy. It has been grossly inflationary and allowed the state to act like drunken sailors. The moribund state architecture is not able to cope with such large revenue inflows. Ultimately I think it will be proven to be folly aswell.
 
ClubMan said:
I didn't write the article. You might want to contact the Indo or the CSO if you have issues with the data and analysis.
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I didn't say you did. I was just pointing out how The Cork Examiner was, as usual, misrepresenting the data in order to be sensationalist.
 
Purple said:
. . . from the linked article it looks like those are gross figures and not adjusted for purchasing power.
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The article compares prices in the eurozone. I'm not sure that purchasing power has any relevance in this context.

Purchasing power is a concept used to compare the relative value of currencies by comparing what can be bought with each currency.

For example, suppose a basket of consumer goods and services can be bought in the US for $100, and in euroland the same basked costs €120. Ifd a US person going to euroland is to have the same purchasing power in euroland as they have at home (and vice versa), $1 should buy $1.20; €1.20 is the purchasing power parity (PPP) exchange rate.

If, in fact, $1 will only buy €1.10 then the dollar is undervalued according to PPP.

You can use the concept to compare living standards by adjusting GDP figures, houshold income figures or whatever by reference to the PPP exchange rate. (You can also use it as a tool to predict exchange rate movements if you think that currencies do, in fact, tend to trade at PPP rates, but not everybody does think that.)

But in this case all the places being compared are in euroland, and all the prices are in euros, so the purchasing power of different currencies doesn't enter into the question at all.
 
ClubMan said:
They're just using the data from the CSO.
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Yep, and they should, as a newspaper, present the information in context.
It reminds me of the Jimmy Carr joke that people in some developing countries survive on a dollar a day, which just goes to show we are being ripped off for groceries.
 
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