Take it off them!

national | anti-capitalism | other press

Tuesday July 31, 2007 16:50

by Clive Sullish - -

33,000 millionaires

According to a report published by the Bank of Ireland, there are now more millionaires per head of the population in our little republic than in the USA.

Tony O'Reilly: appalled by 'gaping gulf in wealth'

Fully 33,000 Irish residents are dollar millionaires – and these are not little old lads and ladies made notionally rich by increasing property prices, for the ‘primary’ residence was not taken into account by the Bank when it was drawing up its hit list. Meanwhile, 285,000 people are surviving on less than 190 euros a week.
Even the Irish Independent is appalled by what it describes as this ‘gaping gulf in wealth’.
http://www.independent.ie/national-news/anger-as-gaping....html
Is it not time that somebody demanded a little bit of redistribution - that we take their millions from them? Not Labour, it seems, for that party’s anodyne response is to criticise the government for ‘ignoring the most vulnerable’.
And it is a rather hypocritical position, because if are to be guided by Labour’s taxation policy in the recent election, they themsleves favour ignoring the least vulnerable, and their vast wealth. ‘Fleece the rich’ might have proved to be a more electorally popular policy than ‘Give your next preference to FG’. As a slogan, it might well be enough to reverse Sinn Fein’s recent setback.
If these parties, and the Greens indeed, remain as afraid now to take on vested interests as they manifestly were two months ago, they might advise the rich that a sacrifice now would be for their own good (The rest of us are used to being told that).
The fact is that millionaires are being killed by their wealth. According to the Irish Times (31/08/07), the Department of Transport’s chief investigator attributes the great rise in air traffic accidents to the great increase in the number of helicopters and private planes.

Comments (2 of 2)

Food Poverty

by gruel

Tue Jul 31, 2007 20:11

Food Poverty occurs when you can not afford to buy a balanced diet. There are a quarter of a million people at very least in Ireland who are living in Food Poverty. In most societies they end up putting a bit of weighty pressure on the health service. I'd love to wax lyrical about my far distant ancestors doing deals with foreign crowns for a bit of goatmeat on the table of every family at least once a month and fresh fish every other. I'd love to get boring and compare the poorest in Ireland's assistance and disparity with a widow in Cuba. Sure yes - after a life of rolling cigars she can't afford a packet of Irish cigarettes on her monthly cash wage but she gets a balanced diet of beans and saltfish. Poverty they see is always with us - why yes it is the most disagreeable and unsentimental consquence of greed. Poverty they say is relative - why yes anyone who has hadn't had a power cut in a few years thinks life has got better. But the islands on the northwestern shelf of Europe are the most income disparate places on Earth. Why yes - you could compare the grids of LA and find worse. Why yes - you could pick a square ten kilometres of Mumbia and see worse. But the nations which are so messily cluttered together in these islands demonstrate the widest gaps of rich and poor on any nationstate level. Just see it. Know the difference between the west of Ireland and the east, the north of England and the south.

link to a map by Combat Ireland on income disparity which first appeared on this website in 2005. Not much has changed. The poor kids of the north of England still have little choice but go into the army and the poor kids of Ireland seem to just kill themselves. Why is that? Aren't there better ways to make Ireland proud and peaceful again? Aren't there better ways to compare ourselves with our neighbours?

the darker the area the worse the food

On the Q???

by Ronoc

Tue Jul 31, 2007 21:53

I wonder? €190 is just short of what the dole is giving out. Theres plenty of work to be had by all, so much so we can employ 400,000 foreigners or what ever the figures of working foreigners is???. How many people are on the dole? How many people living on under €190 a week. If anyone has the figures please post them.
Though saying that, the wealth isnt distributed evenly. Though if your working full time and not on the dole you can earn enough to get by and enjoy life and have holidays and so. But I was living abroad for 3 years and noticed that I was earning less but had a better standard of life, rent, food, beer, eating out, clothes everything was cheaper, though i wasnt getting paid all too good but it worked out better for me... Ireland is for the wealthy. oh they probably make so much because they step on others to get where they are. that must be how we got to this greedy rip off of a country it seems to be now...