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Anti-Empire
Human Rights in IrelandIndymedia Ireland is a volunteer-run non-commercial open publishing website for local and international news, opinion & analysis, press releases and events. Its main objective is to enable the public to participate in reporting and analysis of the news and other important events and aspects of our daily lives and thereby give a voice to people.
Lockdown Skeptics
Voltaire NetworkVoltaire, international edition
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Why are "opposition" parties silent on corporation tax increases, instead of cutting public services national |
worker & community struggles and protests |
opinion/analysis
 Thursday November 27, 2008 11:06 by party animal
 its time for business to pay its share at last after their good times during the celtic tiger It was well known in political and media circles that drastic cuts in corporation would not be sustainable when the economy went into decline, however the 'spin' put out at the time was that these cuts in taxes paid by business would create greater profits and that this would mean almost full employment. Now that we know both the spin and the theory are nonsense what are the opposition parties saying? A few years ago the builders and bankers etc used their influence over Fianna Fail to secure generous and massive cuts in the corporation taxes that they paid. Thw media spun this out to convince people that it woul usher in a time of great wealth and prosperity. Now that these builders and bankers have destroyed the economy the media is spinning the 'solution' of cuts in the public sector and services. So what is the opposition putting forward as their solution? The Silence from the "opposition" parties is deafening on the issue of increasing corporation taxes which means that they will ultimately have to accept cuts in services instead of making business pay its rightful share. It is not just FG who will not even discuss this issue but what are Sinn Fein saying or the Labour Party? We have a right to know this if they expect us to vote for them. |
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Comments (2 of 2)
Jump To Comment: 1 2In the parliamentary form of democracy, you have good reason to suppose that the coalition in power supports its own programs.
But you have no reasonable grounds to suppose that the "opposition" considered collectively is similarly united in purpose. In theory and often in practice they could be farther from each other than any of them is from the coalition in power and in opposite directions. In other words, your question makes sense if and only if you present reasons why the opposition factions you named would/should be opposed on the particular issue irregardless of position of the ruling coalition.
If opposition parties are taking positions against ONLY because the ruling coalition is for on that issue (and vice versa) they will scarcely be taken seriously by sane voters. Not like an academic debating society where we arbitrarily assign positions to defend and then judge on how well the job done.
The main opposition party agrees with the government about maintaining very low rates of corporation tax. If the labour party wants to get into government they will have no choice but to go along with the bigger party on this issue and most others. And SF seem to have done a u turn on this issue they used to be in favour of higher rates of corporation tax, but suddenly changed their policy in the middle of the last general election campaign, I have not been able to research whether they have changed it back again since then or not.
I suspect that only Joe Higgins would be prepared to stick his neck out on this issue as the Tony O Reilly owned media would turn very nasty against any party brave enough to call for business to pay more and the P.A.Y.E worker to pay less of the tax burden. Perhaps some of the independents have positions on this, possibly this research is already out there and available?