Judging by the emails I’ve received, I seem to have struck a nerve with this post here. I’m not familiar with all the personalities that some of you had suggested the post was based on, and it was a composite of at least two people that I’ve met in Irish politics. But I will say that at least two of you each hit on one of the people.
Oh, how the worm handbrake turns. From today’s Irish Times:
“Labour leader Eamon Gilmore today said he opposed the idea as many people had already paid a property tax in the form of stamp duty. People who are struggling to pay their mortgage cannot be asked to pay a property tax on top of that, he said. “It would be perverse to ask people to pay a property tax on a property on which they are paying a mortgage and the size of the mortgage is now in many cases more than what the value of what the property is worth,” he added.”
All of which is true, and all of which the PDs used to say last time Labour brought in the Residential Property Tax. This is the thing about Labour, and where right wing PDs were always wrong about Labour. Labour talks left, but when it comes to the point of actually taxing people for the common good, Labour is now as wedded to low taxes as the late lamented Progressive Democrats. They’ll support taxes on the fictionally taxable super rich, but when it comes to Swedish style taxes on all to fund services for all, Labour is much more Ayn Rand than Willi Brandt.
