David McWilliams: Irish bound to repeat economic mistakes

Given Ireland’s boom and bust past, many view the latest spurt of economic growth and property price increases with suspicion. Economist David McWilliams is one of them. On this week’s “Róisín Meets…” podcast, he explains his belief that we are bound by nature to repeat the mistakes of the past.

“What I love is the commentary that ‘this big crisis is going to force on us this existential change in humanity’. It doesn’t work like that!” says McWilliams. “The beauty of humanity is that we don’t learn. We always make mistakes”.

“Economists talk about the business cycle. The business cycle is nothing more than you and me. We react to adversity, and we pull our horns in, and then gradually the unbelievable human spirit of believing in ourselves returns” he says. “Because we’re conditioned to optimism, we always, always make mistakes again”.

McWilliams is critical of Ireland's response to what he sees as the opportunity the economic crisis presented, comparing its response to that of Finland, who made changes to their economy, education system and even the national diet in the aftermath of a similar crisis in 1992.

“They seemed to galvanise the crisis to flip the economy and the society - it strikes me that what we have done is very little”.

But he does not foresee future economic peril like the recession we have just emerged from, which he blames on an “insidious combination” of low interest rates, “half-arsed patriotism” and German credit.

“I don’t think that’s going to happen again.”

One of McWilliams’ aims as an economic commentator is to help people get past the perception of economics as too complex to even attempt to understand. “What is important is never complicated, and what is complicated is never important” he says. “If you say the economics is very hard, it remains hard and is very inaccessible”

In 2010 he co-founded the Kilkenomics festival, a mixture of economic discussion and comedy, which will return this November. The idea is that, like a spoonful of sugar, the comedy will help the economics go down.

“We get economist who usually have €100,000 fees, and because I know them they come for free” he says. “We’re putting people on stage for between €10 - €15 that you wouldn’t ever get a chance to see unless you were a millionaire”.

To listen to the dicussion, log on to the show’s Soundcloud page or subscribe for free via iTunes or Stitc.