Ireland just had an emergency budget which was released today, it's not too surprising of an increase in taxes and levies etc... it was just a question of how much of an increase it was. See http://budget.gov.ie/ for the current budget.

What I thought was weird, stupid and strange was the introduction of the VAT to the sale of second hand cars. Also the increase in DIRT seems like a nice way to make people spend money, but right now interest rates are low so it should (I think) not generate too much income for the goverment. It's certainly inciting me to blow my savings on something rather than to leave it in the bank waiting for it to be taxed. I'm feeling smug that I didn't buy a house/apartment a few years ago nor have I replaced my car with a new one. Plus I have no children so I'm less screwed that the average joe of my age bracket. I mean wtf were people thinking that buying 1 or 2bed apartments for over 200k euro and houses for 400k euro or more?

sigh The banks bailed out the builders, and now the government is bailing out the banks which in turn means the government is screwing over the general public.

What could I buy with my savings? Food? Farming land for myself in case of total collapse of economy so I can grow my own food. If we did go mad max then I would be better off stake my claim on a piece of land. I'm glad (or not) that we live in a country with fairly good gun control/culture. I could see people stocking up for guns right about now if we had a gun culture.

I wonder if the people would like to move to a more socialist type of government. Ireland has often claimed to have lots of millionaires. Perhaps the trick is to just skim a bit of the cream of the crop and perhaps create a rich people's tax and just take 50% of the wealth of the richer people and redistribute the wealth? Reduce VAT a little bit to encourage spending, and either keep income levels the same or slightly less. People keep saying that Ireland isn't a consumer based economy and it exports a lot and keeping industry in Ireland is a key thing to keep the economy in running, I guess this means the corporations won't get taxed more to generate more income.

Note, this is a stream of consciousness as I listen to the live feed from the Irish Dail (Irish parliament).

One of the guys in work suggested that since this is a race to the bottom, but since Ireland is less screwed than the US, now is a good time to poach academics and experts from around the world (read this as the US) to further build up the Irish knowledge based economy. Take the hit now and go into the a recession/depression now, and be early in coming out of it ahead of the pack with a high end workforce. Given how screwed Ireland can be with the price of labor and the cost differentials of having cheaper workforces in India and China, Ireland should really prepare itself for a complete overhaul of where it should be headed.

It's no shock anymore every time when some breaking news reaches me. It's all broken.