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Irish economics
24-09-2010, 09:18 PM
Pensions and freeloaders (http://sinnfeinkeepleft.blogspot.com/2010/09/costs-of-pensions-and-problem-with.html)

"Pretty soon, we’ll be having serious, completely un-self-conscious discussions in major magazines about the servant problem.". So wrote Paul Krugman as he discussed an article which highlighted how the richest percentile in America are feeling hard done by even though they make twice what their counterparts in 1980 did.

Krugman believes that today the American super rich have become coarsened by their super wealth, have lost even the sense they should be embarassed by thinking life is hard on then and move in circles "where complaining that you only have 9 or 10 times median family income is considered totally acceptable"

A small bit like Peter Sutherland then I guess.

Mr Sutherland claimed that our costs - in the main but not exclusively pay - were too high and need to go down.

'If we did so, it would be apparent that we are still way above average in many areas, particularly in the public sector and this says nothing about pension costs,' he said

Yes Peter. What about the pension costs? You as former Attorney General were still receiving a state pension of €51,538 in 2008. You have a fortune of €128 million.

Clearly you are a man of rare talents. Your career is an amazing series of pinnacles and that is impressive (although BP, RBS and Goldman Sachs makes you wonder - they all hit nasty speedbumps ). But for all your talent and your preaching on costs and pensions you were still hitting up the state even with your huge fortune for a measly €51,538 a year.

Another freeloader.

As far removed from reality as Krugman's top 1% in America. For the love of god man give up your paltry, in comparison, state pension before having the gall to talk about the cost of pensions and Dublin's expenditure.

PaddyJoe
24-09-2010, 11:25 PM
Interesting how there has been an upsurge of anger from the very well off in the US over the possibility that their Bush era tax cuts may be reversed. They have mounted a media campaign over the last days which has backfired to a large extent. There was a great story about a academic economist called Todd Henderson who complained bitterly on his blog about the hardship of living on $450,000 a year. He has now decided to bring his blogging days to an end after the storm of outrage he provoked.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/09/21/todd-henderson-rich_n_732813.html

Irish economics
25-09-2010, 08:28 AM
Paddyjoe,

thats the story that Krugman was thinking off. An economist called Brad deLong had a post on it as well.

divorced from reality