What the Election Should Have Been About

From the Irish Examiner

The final leaders’ debate is on tomorrow. Miriam O’Callaghan will doubtless introduce it as a debate about the issues. But these things are never about the issues. Not around here.

The Irish nation doesn’t do thinking in generalities. Whether that’s the media’s fault or the politicians’ fault is a chicken-and-egg situation – we would have a higher level of political debate if the media would report it, politicians would frame issues in a different way if they thought the media would report it that way. Who knows?

The only thing we do know is that one leader saying that, if elected, he or she will hire 500 new guards, and the next seeing the five hundred guards and raising 300 teachers, is rubbish. Rubbish. Here are the questions that should be asked during tomorrow night’s leaders’ debate, but won’t.

The Economy
As an open economy that does not control its own currency, what would different parties do to exert control on the economy? If inflation is rising, for instance, a government will usually raise interest rates to make it harder to borrow. This lessons the money in the economy and means that prices don’t go up quite as high.

But if inflation is rising in Ireland but flat in the Eurozone, that’s not an option for Ireland. One of the reasons the crash happened was that interest rates were too low relative to the money available, and this created a bubble. What has the current government done to protect the state from that happening again, or from recession in China? What will an alternative government do to protect the state from those and other external economic threats?

The Electoral System Itself
Irish politics is engineered to favour clientelism at every step. To survive, a TD must put local interest ahead of the national interest, even though TDs are elected to govern the nation, not the local area. This is partly why it will be so very difficult to form a government after this election. What steps has the current government taken to address this systemic failure? What steps will the alternative governments take to address this issue?

Education
One of the reasons for Ireland’s current economic prosperity is that the reputation of Ireland’s workforce as being well-educated is very good. But grade inflation has become more and more obvious in STEM subjects at secondary level, and it’s only a matter of time before the tech firms realise the educational system isn’t quite as advertised. What steps has the current government taken to address this issue? What steps will the alternative governments take?

The Distribution of the Recovery
Although elected to govern for the entire state, and by aspiration the entire island, successive governments have favoured the development of Dublin at the expense of the rest of country. A spatial developmental strategy was proposed as far back as 1969, yet nothing has been done about this issue. There are number of reasons for this, bribery, corruption and plain stupidity among them. What steps has the current government taken to address this issue? What steps will the alternative governments take?

Health
Hard case stories are terrible, but governments have to look at big pictures. When it comes to patients on trollies, there are questions not being asked. Are patients on trollies localized – do some hospitals regularly have more patients on trollies than others? Which ones? Why? Are patients on trollies seasonal – are there more patients on trollies in winter than in summer? On Saturdays rather than Wednesdays? This isn’t a medical issue. A medical issue is finding a cure for cancer. The vast majority of issues in the health service come down to poor management. What steps has the current government taken to address this issue? What steps will the alternative governments take?

Crime
We have a Special Criminal Court in this state. We have abolished trial by jury in certain circumstances, an extraordinarily totalitarian situation about which the normally vocal liberal lobby are strangely quiet. Why not use these extraordinary powers to break up Irish gangland, rather than seeing them being glamorized in the gutter press and in TV dramas? What is the Government’s position on this? What are the alternative governments’ positions?

Media Ownership
There can be no real democracy without a free press. A free press keeps the people informed on what their leaders are doing. Without a free press, how can the people know how they’re being governed. Recent technological and business changes have turned the Irish media landscape on its head, to the extent that whether or not a free and independent indigenous media is now under question. What is the Government’s position on this? What are the alternative governments’ positions?

Dismal Reporting of the Dismal Science

First published in the Western People on Tuesday

Of all the many surprises adulthood has in store – some wonderful, some completely horrid – one of the least-expected is a sudden and intense interest in what Victorian philosopher and critic Thomas Carlyle called the “dismal science,” economics.

Prior to about 2008, the nation was happy to be interested in economics only insofar as it affected the price of beer, wine or Ryanair flights. And then suddenly Lehman Brothers bit the bullet in the States and we all turned to each other and asked “who or what in blazes are Lehman Brothers, and why are they scaring me so?”

Five years of relative misery later, we’re still no wiser. Not really. Some people have read up on economics, in a desperate attempt to get some sort of handle on what’s going on. They’re still reading. An Taoiseach told the nation at Christmas 2011 that “these are not our debts,” but still continued to pay them. Why would we pay bills that aren’t ours? Aren’t our own bad enough?

And then there are the good-hearted innocents of Ballyhea, County Cork, who still protest the bank bailout weekly, turning the village into something out of one of the poorer episodes of the Irish RM. God love them.

Into this general confusion stepped one Mr Ashoka Mody, who spoke at length on the News at One on RTÉ Radio One last Sunday week. Mr Mody, who was part of the original IMF team that visited Ireland when the then Government were saying there was no way, no how the IMF were coming here, told the News at One that the current policy of austerity is wrong, and that innovative alternatives were needed. He did not say what those innovative alternatives were, of course, even though we’d all be curious to know.

The IMF itself reacted quickly on Monday, saying that Mr Mody didn’t work for them any more and did not represent their views. “There is no evidence that Ireland’s fiscal consolidation is self-defeating”, they said.

So who to believe? This is where it gets interesting, especially for those of us who always feel a bit thick when we can’t keep up with economic conversation.

RTÉ describes Ashoka Mody as the former IMF chief of mission to Ireland. However, a November 19th, 2010 article in the Irish Times describes Ashoka Mody as “assistant director in the European Department of the IMF.” Mody is described in a November 19th Irish Times article as “the IMF’s expert on Irish affairs.”

When Ashoka Mody was described as IMF chief of mission when he was interviewed on RTÉ in April of this year, also criticizing the bailout, but when exactly was Mody chief of mission? The current chief of mission is Craig Beaumont. When did he take over? How long did Mody reign?

The questions continue. Do any of these titles matter? What exactly is a chief of mission anyway? Is it better or worse than Head Bottle Washer?

Sometimes, when the plain people of Ireland scratch our heads at this stuff, we’re told it’s our responsibility to inform ourselves. And so it is, but it’s also journalism’s job to explain these things a little better too. Not everyone has a degree in economics.

This is a quote from the RTÉ interview with Ashoka Mody – brace yourselves: “At this point it looks like, given the debt dynamics, if debt levels remain where they are and growth remains where it is, there is never going to be a reduction in the debt ratio the foreseeable future and so logically we are left with the only other option: Generating growth by abandoning the severe commitment to austerity and hoping there will be a short-term boost to growth, which not only improves growth, but brings down debt levels.”

What does that mean, exactly? Debt dynamics are what, exactly? What’s a good debt ratio? What’s a bad debt ratio? Who are you people? How did I get here?

If you read the quote carefully, you’ll notice a hostage to fortune in the text. It’s “hoping.” Mr Mody is “hoping there will be short-term boost to growth.”. Mody hopes that abandoning austerity would work, but that’s really not the same as counting on it. Not least if you’re in Government, and have to put the nation’s money where your mouth is.

So how has it come to pass that this man addresses the nation instead of someone else, like the lugubrious but straight-shooting Colm McCarthy? Why aren’t we quite sure of what exactly Ashoka Mody’s job title was with the IMF? And why isn’t he asked these questions?

There’s no doubt that Ashoka Mody knows his stuff. He lectures at Princeton, he has a knockout CV, he’s very far from a daw. But it’s journalists’ duty to be accurate in how they describe people, what those people do, and what those people say.

Journalists have to break the jargon down into terms the people can understand, without breaking down so much the people can’t understand them. That’s the job.

Which is another reminder of what a terrible loss George Lee is to RTÉ News. George may have been one of the most hopeless politicians ever, but as a newsman on economic issues he was superb. Standing in the rain outside the Central Bank or the Dáil, blinking behind his glasses, reaming off fact after fact.

There was also something in his delivery – a certain tension, a repressed twitch, an edge to voice that suggested that George had seen the books and they made the Third Secret of Fatima look like something out of Spongebob Squarepants. Ireland needs George. We need to know what’s going on. We are surely owed that much.

We Must Teach Economics as a Core Subject in Schools

Every now and again someone in public life likes to pound the table and declare that the absence of this subject or that subject is a blight on the Irish education system. Some people think the children should be taught how to play a musical instrument. Some think it would be something of a miracle to get the little monsters to read and/or write, to say nothing of asking them to bang out sonatas on the piano. And so the long day wears on.

The latest to enter the lists is Senator Professor John Crown, who got busy on the Twitter machine over the weekend. The Senator is concerned about a certain level of scientific ignorance in the general population, remarking that “high levels of scientific ignorance in a society are very dangerous.” He went on say that “every person should do science in school right up to school leaving age,” on the basis that precise analytical skills will stand to students in their adult lives.

And that’s very laudable, of course. It would be lovely if people were more scientifically minded. Unfortunately, right now the nation cannot afford it. We cannot afford it in terms of money but more importantly, we cannot afford it in terms of time.

If any mathematically based subject should be brought front and centre in Irish education right now it isn’t science. It is economics.

Last week the sovereign Irish nation allowed the state to ratify the Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance in the Economic and Monetary Union done at Brussels on the 2nd day of March 2012. All the evidence is that this was a blind vote on the nation’s behalf.

The nation voted on a Treaty that it didn’t understand, and that couldn’t be explained to it in the time frame given. The level of economic literacy needed to understand the arguments about the worth or otherwise of the Treaty doesn’t exist in the general populace.

What’s going on currently in Europe is extremely complex. Because of our history, we are brought up with the notion that states are formed because of nationhood – that no-one can set a boundary on the march of a nation, as Parnell put it.

But states can be formed for economic benefit too, and that is what is currently happening in Europe. A common language and culture is fine in a state, but what really butters the parsnips in a state is a common currency.

One of the reasons that the Euro failed is because it was created without the protections that exist for other, “proper” currencies – a central government and a central bank that regulates the flow of currency. One of the results of the referendum, of the establishment of the EU Stability treaty and the Spanish banks sliding slowly and surely to their doom, is that the European Central Bank is now being built, brick by brick, with the European Government to follow.

What that means in Ireland is referenda a go-go. Matt Cooper outlined this position in the Sunday Times and his article makes for distressing reading. More and more referenda will come down the line and each one will, by definition, trade sovereignty for economic benefit. And each referendum will be more and more fraught, for two reasons. The first is because sovereignty was so hard won in the first place and the second reason is because people genuinely don’t understand the economics of what’s happening.

One of early reactions to the Treaty vote was to identify a clear class division in Ireland, between a pro-austerity middle class and an anti-austerity working class. But is that true? Does the electorate understand how all this works? Are they sufficiently informed to make a judgment? Do the people really understand the full implications of austerity, the alternatives to austerity or the possibility of implementing one of the other?

Chances are they don’t. Economics isn’t taught as a core subject in Irish schools and it really ought to be. Generations have grown up and gone into the world without ever fully understanding just how money makes it go round.

Why is the West richer than the East? The West is richer than the East because the West is better able to generate money through borrowing and lending with banks. The East has a religious object to usury – there is no such problem in the West. Banks create wealth in a capitalist economy.

Why did the British Empire triumph and the Spanish Empire fall? The sinking of the Spanish Armada in 1588 certainly, but also because the British were so much better at trading. All the gold the Spanish looted from South America became worth less and less, because money is a measure of worth, and not actual wealth in and of itself.

That’s how the modern world was created, but most people don’t know it because it’s not taught in school.

It would be lovely if all subjects were taught in school. It would be lovely if the state could produce a population that saw all forms of knowledge as having their own particular merit. But in modern Ireland, the nation is being lost through lack of economic understanding. If it must be a choice between science and economics, the best bet is to follow the money.