What price do you put on your vote? Has the Budget bought you? Let's put it another way. What price has the Government put on your vote? How expensive do they consider you?
If you are on a social welfare old age pension, you come cheap at £520 a year. That is what the Budget gave you.
If you are unable to work because you are disabled, you come cheaper still at £416 a year. Let's face it, if you are old or sick, they expect you to be grateful for anything.
If you are, however, out there working and contributing to society as you ought to be and earning £15,000 a year, you deserve a bit more, £576.
But on £15,000 you can't be a very discerning voter, not the kind of person who really needs wooing. Now if you were earning £100,000 a year, you could name a higher price for your vote - £2,532.
Perish the thought that budgets are about buying votes. This Budget purportedly valued children. Increased child benefit made no distinction between whether children are cared for at home or in a creche or by their granny. As a point of departure, this is a good principle. But budgetary measures need to be taken together to judge their true aims and effects. Place this in the context of tax cutting which favours the rich and continued individualisation and what do you get?
Let's say there are two of you out there working, with no kids, able to enjoy life a bit and earning £40,000 between you. You get £2,604 from the Budget. If you had two children, you would get £3,204.
Now one of you decides to give up your salary to care for the children. On your remaining earnings of £20,000, you would get £1,284 from the Budget. Small wonder the people who represent the poor and excluded are threatening to withdraw from social partnership.
Most of us won't vote simply on the basis of the price the Government puts on our heads. There are broader values and interests which sway us. A recent Irish Times/MRBI poll showed that the widening gap between rich and poor was considered by voters to be a bigger issue than tax cutting. House prices and healthcare were the most important issues.
What will the Budget do for these concerns? The ESRI expects that this give-away Budget will drive up inflation and house prices in particular. Nice one, Charlie.
Increased healthcare spending is welcome. Well done, Micheal. Pity with Charlie's tax relief package, the consultants are going to do so much better than the nurses. How is that going to help your staffing problems? Not to mention that the nurses' prospects of owning a house will be dimmer than ever.
As individuals we don't get a chance to give our verdict on the Budget, but the trade union movement does. Since the ICTU executive endorsed the Budget and pay review by 22 votes to three last week, I have found myself defending the trade union leadership in conversations.
Cynics say "they're on the top rate of tax. Whatever they say, of course they favour its reduction. That's why tax equity isn't a make-or-break issue for partnership." My conversational stance is that people such as Peter Cassells and Des Geraghty are staunchly defending partnership because they remember the 1980s all too clearly. With a rabid tax-cutting Government in power, they settle for limited achievement.
My defence gets a bit rattled when critics point out that they have condoned a Budget which increases inequality although, despite 13 years of social partnership, Ireland has one of the EU's more unequal distributions of income and one of the highest rates of relative poverty. In Sweden and the Netherlands, the discerning say, tax reform was achieved by negotiation with the social partners.
On a Prime Time panel discussion on the night of the Budget, Peter Cassells said inequality must be reduced. When Miriam O'Callaghan asked how the Budget might have achieved this, he and the rest of the panel were rather mute, except for an accountant, who proclaimed "the tax system can't solve inequality. You solve that through education and training." How might one apply this interesting concept? A recent ESRI study explored the identity of the poorest, those living on less than 60 per cent of average incomes and experiencing measurable deprivation. Nearly one fifth were retired, over one 10th were sick or disabled, nearly one third were in households headed by a single adult engaged in home duties (like a widow, separated person, carer, single parent). A further 15 per cent were either employed, self-employed or farmers. Just a quarter of the poorest households were headed by an unemployed person.
Educate and train the sick, the retired, separated mothers of five, the working poor and small farmers? What an inspired solution to inequality. So what has the Budget given you? An even more unequal society and some money in your pocket. As we compete with each other to buy houses and childcare and food, those who received more will be able to pay the higher prices that result. Those who received less will realise that, in real terms, they got nothing. The tax system is a very powerful means of lessening or increasing inequality.
mwren@irish-times.ie
