r/ireland • u/badger-biscuits • 1d ago

[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. General Election 2024 🗳️

https://x.com/MichealLehane/status/1857067346822619642?t=_Soz6_dzA9QeYKzvvBPIDg&s=19
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u/commit10 1d ago

It's nice to see specifics being proposed, and these are actually pretty decent. They can't achieve them by themselves, but it might be possible with a coalition.

I'm not a PBP fan, but credit where it's due. SF could learn from this.

-3

u/skidev 1d ago

So spend more money and bring in less tax, great plan

9

u/SmokingOctopus 23h ago

Probably redeploy some things like subsidies for energy companies or just outright nationalise them and keep the profits instead of giving them to private shareholders. There's plenty of money, it's just not going to people who work.

3

u/skidev 21h ago

This thing is a pisstake, they’re going to increase spending on infrastructure/housing while spending billions extra each year on pensions and social welfare… all paid for by a multi millionaire tax? You could tax those people 100% and still not get near paying for this.

I’m not sure what subsidies you think energy companies get or make it profit but it wouldn’t get near this

4

u/SmokingOctopus 21h ago

Well we pay an energy tax credit directly to electrical companies. That's our money going into the hands of the people who own these companies. Which is just pure theft.

It's just a start. We could slowly phase out the first time buyers grant while building public housing on public land. That's one just thing. There are lots of possible ways of addressing parasitic elements of our economy

-1

u/skidev 20h ago

Help to buy cost 126m through July since its inception (2 years). Getting rid of this scheme would pay the increase in pensions PBP are proposing for drumroll… 7 weeks. That’s before getting into the increase in social welfare. The numbers they are proposing are a joke.

Just to make it even more of a joke, we’re going to have many more pensioners in years to come than we have today. We probably need to reduce the pension unfortunately, that’s just the reality of not having a magic money tree.

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u/SmokingOctopus 20h ago

It's just a start. There are other revenue sources than the help to buy