THE PUBLIC needs to pay more tax and reject the culture of “ravenous greed” and individualism which has been promoted for more than a decade by successive governments, an NGO has said.
Social Justice Ireland (SJI), which campaigns for a just society, also accused the Government of exacerbating the crisis by persevering with failed policies and making the plan to bail out the banks its top economic priority.
“Overpaying for bank assets as they transfer to the National Asset Management Agency, or allowing broke developers [to] keep ‘performing assets’ while the State carries the burden for their unperforming assets is simply unacceptable. As we rebuild the financial system of this country, we must avoid upwards redistribution in supporting banks and developers,” notes a socio-economic review published by SJI today.
An Agenda for a New Ireland says Irish policymaking has been guided by a series of false assumptions such as: low taxation is good; economic growth is good in itself; the higher the growth rate the better; reasonable levels of infrastructure and social services can be delivered by low taxes; and the benefits of economic growth would trickle down to everyone.
The report argues that these Government policies helped to create the economic crisis – a situation “which is dominated by individualism, anxiety and greed”.