I bumped into a lady in the ILAC centre on Saturday. She was from Dundalk and had got up at the crack of dawn to travel to Dublin to do her Christmas shopping. On principle she wouldn't shop in the North as she believed money should be kept in the South. I had to admire her stance.
I think she is a reflection of why our prices are so high in the first place - we have been happy to rip ourselves off for years.
The VAT difference is only 6.5%, apart from that most of the rest is just ripoff margin. A lot of goods come from China, USA and mainland Europe etc. so the final prices should be similar except for the VAT.
but dont a lot of the higher costs faced by southern companies arise from the manic greed and government ineptness during the tiger years??
going out of their way to fuel property growth meant the government left companies (and households) paying above the odds for propertys as the price was inflated by Interest and Tax breaks, companys are now faced with paying rent on propertys far in excess of similar property's elsewhere in europe and such these costs have to be absorbed into the price of their goods and services...i'm not justifying the high costs we have here i'm just pointing out the love-in between the property developers and Fianna Fail created a lot of it.
Regardless of who is to blame I think the results will be the same. People flocking to the North, decreasing tax revenues and increasing unemployment it’s about time we stopped fixing the blame and fixed the problems in this economy. Like it or not we are too expensive and inefficient this must change.
This government is unpopular; this gives them real power to do what is necessary. Think about it, they cut public sector pay, eliminate stupid outdated work practices, reward work, and punish laziness creating a fine tuned efficient organisation. The unions will strike, let them, public sympathy will soon turn against them and even if it doesn’t they will run out of money. This is a chance for the government to break their backs. The Brian and Mary show have absolutely nothing to loose at this point and everything to gain. If they play this right they could been seen as the people who pulled us back from the abyss.
I suspect they have already written off the local elections.
They will never have a better opportunity to shake up the public sector. They should take it.
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