PERVERSE THINGS are happening in the sharing of recession pain. It’s not just the immorality of all of us having to repay bank debts we did not incur while bank boards argue that top pay for their managers is inadequate at 13 times the average industrial wage.
On top of all this is the lashing of the young. Five examples will show how it is tougher on them.
Youth unemployment is at more than 25 per cent – almost double the overall rate. Spending on education is threatened by cuts, with a move to increase class sizes that are already the second largest in the EU. Separate and lower pay scales are being imposed on young people fortunate enough to get work. Negative equity affects the young disproportionately. And diminished pensions are being imposed on new entrant workers based on flawed projections.
Do not be young in this recession – that is the clear message.
Do not be four years old, about to start school in classes larger than your older siblings experienced. We are in debt and you must grin and bear it.
Do not be a student teacher, talented and idealistic but emerging into schools with more children and fewer teaching jobs.
Do not expect steady work or pay. Accept that you may eventually get to retire at 68 and will need an uncertain private pension plan to augment your income. Suck that up as well.
None of the problems we face were caused by our young people. Our chasing of the Celtic Tiger made us a more unequal society, unwilling to balance personal enrichment with societal well-being.
The hangover from the Tiger years for government is a fiscal problem as much on the revenue as on the spending side. We are at the bottom end of the OECD scale in revenue-raising. Within this, income taxes rather than capital, property or energy taxes predominate.
Those of us in middle age and beyond surely owe something to younger people in society. Our generation’s foolishness cost this country its economic independence. Why then are younger people, from children to new home-owners, paying the greater price? A new contract of practical intergenerational solidarity is required.
Chancellor Kohl’s Solidarity Surcharge, a measure of national interdependence, helped fund German reunification. Here in Ireland we have no end of resented surcharges to atone for the excesses of banking and insurance magnates who show no hint of thanks.
But we are without the gesture that would show younger generations that we feel and will help tackle their pain.
Call it what you will – an Intergenerational Solidarity Charge, an Education Levy or a Mol an Óige deduction. Dedicate the proceeds to stopping the €300 million-plus cuts being faced in schools and put it towards job initiatives.
A solidarity levy on earnings of more than €100,000, a tax on wealth of more than €2 million and a corporate profit levy of 2.5 per cent, for the duration of the crisis, could bring in more than €700m each year. This in turn could protect education and stimulate employment. Most of all it would be a powerful alternative to loading our troubles on to the young.
Children get just one opportunity in the education system. This has to do them for life. In a system with the EU’s second-biggest classes and very low per-student funding by international standards, there is no scope for further cuts. Education cuts do not heal easily. And so, in advance of the budget, teachers at all levels will seek wider support for a “give kids their chance” campaign for the present generation of schoolchildren.
The success of the campaign to protect education and the questions of revenue raising and intergenerational solidarity are clearly linked.
It is not possible to turn this country around without a highly educated and skilled population. We will not achieve this by slashing the education budget.
Last month’s Dublin Web Summit gave us all a brief preview of Ireland’s employment prospects. The obvious potential in our young people will never be realised if we choke off today’s education funding.
There is a better way. It will involve some pain for those on higher incomes and a step back from squeezing younger people who did not cause our crisis. To carry on as we are risks creating an embittered, resentful new generation – those who have not been sent off on the modern equivalent of the emigrant ship, that is.
It is shocking to be told that, due to the obesity epidemic, our children will be the first generation not to outlive their parents. Just as that situation is preventable with the right approach, so too we can choose not to have schoolchildren, younger people and “new entrant” workers shoulder the burden for recent economic madness.
It’s a choice, not an inevitability.
Noel Ward is deputy general secretary of the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation
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