THERE ARE similarities between the Irish and American economies, many of them negative, according to a leading American academic in Dublin this weekend.
Prof Fred Magdoff, director of the Monthly Review Foundation, Fred Magdoff, said ghost estates, increasing unemployment and policies favouring exports were the results of recession for both countries.“Changes in employment in the US and Ireland started at the same time. What happened then is both [countries] are trying to export goods to stop that,” he said.
“If everyone is trying to export in that way, it can’t work.”
Growth in the US economy is decreasing to levels last seen during the Great Depression, according to Prof Magdoff. He was speaking ahead of the opening of the Desmond Greaves Summer School last night.
“The closest decade to this one as far as real growth in gross domestic product was the 1930s. There was 1.3 per cent growth per year then, and 1.6 per cent in the 2000s,” he said. He said his talk was based on theories developed by his father Harry Magdoff, a Marxist economist who worked for former US president Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Prof Magdoff discusses contemporary capitalism with sociologist Kieran Allen from University College Dublin and lecturer in feminism at Trinity College Mary Cullen tomorrow.
A discussion on “Ireland and the Euro Zone Crisis” takes place this afternoon, with adviser to the left-wing Germany party Die Linke Fabio de Masi, and National Platform director Anthony Coughlan.
Mr de Masi said yesterday his main focus is on how the crisis evolved, but he will also discuss the domestic economic debate in Germany. “I would have very different views to Angela Merkel. Her position is broadly that some countries in the euro zone have lived beyond their means. I think this did not cause the crisis,” he said.
This morning’s talk, questioning the democratic nature of Irish society, is given by head of policy at the Tasc think tank Sinéad Pentony, solicitor Kevin McCorry and DIT journalism lecturer Harry Browne. In the final talk tomorrow Sinn Féin Senator Kathryn Reilly, Ictu’s Peter Bunting, and John Bradley, formerly of the ESRI, discuss an all-Ireland economy.
Director of the summer school Frank Keoghan described Desmond Greaves as a historian and Marxist who had supported cross-Border economic integration and wrote influential books on trade unionism in Ireland.
Tickets, available at 27 Pearse Street, Dublin 2, are €25 for the weekend or €6 per session.