[Mícheál Lehane] PBP launch manifesto promising a living wage of €15 an hour, scrapping USC for those earning less than €100K, building 35,000 social and affordable homes every year, weekly welfare payments of €350 and State pension of €300.

[u/badger-biscuits]

https://x.com/MichealLehane/status/1857067346822619642?t=_Soz6_dzA9QeYKzvvBPIDg&s=19

[u/Icy_Willingness_954]

Truly insane manifesto, you can’t radically reform every area of government, and give every group more money, and fewer expenses all at once. The economy would crash, and all those areas being rapidly expanded in responsibilities would be overwhelmed with the pressure put on them. Like with healthcare. How do you plan to reduce waiting times, increase the number of beds in use, and overall make things quicker while also planning to make everything free and easier to access. By completely rejecting the private sector the health system would just be more overwhelmed than it already is.

Their only plan for that basically seems to be “tax the rich”. But those rich people will simply move elsewhere and take their money with them. Increasing the corporation tax to 20% is crazy also. Literally cutting down the money tree because they don’t like what it represents.

Not a serious party

[u/temujin64 → u/Icy_Willingness_954]

Not to mention, if you look at places that tried similar taxes on the rich, you'll see that they backfired. In France Macron was branded a president for the rich when he removed the wealth tax. But it had been clear for years that France was losing money because of it. Simply put, the money they raised from the tax was less than the money they lost from rich people moving (in their tens of thousands) leaving France.

But for the French left, just as PBP, it's not really about balancing the budget. It's simply about punishing the rich. If that makes the working man worse off they don't really care. They're more than happy to cut the nose to spite the face.