Subsidies, Strikes and the Coming July Clash

0:00David McWilliams: Just a quick heads up on what's coming up on the podcast. It is going to be hot July. We're going to be talking about the implications of throwing money at problems in Ireland and why July this year will be a perfect storm. One, the subsidy to the truckers will have evaporated by July. Two, it's going to be warm and hot and long nights, which are perfect for rioting and protesting. and three, the European presidency is here and the Irish government will be at its most vulnerable. That's all coming up in a couple of minutes. When you manage procurement for multiple facilities, every order matters.

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1:56David McWilliams: Just before we start, a big announcement. It is Dawki Book Festival Week. The tickets are on sale at dawkibookfestival.org. We have an extraordinary lineup. 100 events, more than 100 writers from 21 different countries, bringing, I think it's fair to say, a little bit for everybody. So that is Doki Book Festival, third weekend of June. Tickets are now on sale, dokibookfestival.org. To understand the economy, you have to understand human nature. This podcast is powered by Acast. how you doing there it is time for the podcast and we have a little bit of a gem not least because john is back in the room from his australian yeah without going overboard john yes because it isn't a travel log right i can tell you about the birds i've seen i know and All that kind of stuff.

3:03Crimson what? Oh, that was the Crimson Rosario.

3:06David McWilliams: Okay. Which I came across in the forest in Otway National Park. And I nearly lost my mind. It's the most beautiful bird. Like it's a really brilliant crimson red. You should see him. And electric blue. And I flew in front of the car. I was down this little dirt track. And I got out of the car and I was trying to take pictures and everything. And I was going back to trying to look it up. this rare bird and all the rest. And then I discovered that they're common as muck. But they're beautiful. Beautiful. But you really enjoyed it, didn't you? Really enjoyed it. Yeah, yeah. Drove a lot and saw a lot.

3:47But when you say you saw a lot of Australia, I didn't. I saw a tiny little piece.

3:53David McWilliams: Yeah, yeah, yeah. By the way, dear listener, this podcast is not going to be about Australia. It is going to be all about the legacy of and the reaction to those strikes, blockades, protesters, what it says about Ireland, why we are going to have the hottest 12th of July on both sides of the border. We're going to talk about that in a couple of minutes. But it is lovely to have you back. I was kind of missing you. You know, it's not the same. It's not the same. I know we did a couple of pods from Australia, but it's never the same. It's nice to be back in HQ. But actually, let me kick this one off because we're going to talk about the fuel protests and all the rest.

4:34It was interesting to see how the fuel crisis was dealt with in Australia, because straight away there was, like everywhere else, people were up in arms and shouting and roaring and stuff. But the Australian government reacted really quickly and they introduced a cap on diesel and petrol and fuel. because they have to. Like I was saying, it's such a vast country that you need cars and transport. You know, there's no getting around that kind of country otherwise. And then the other thing that they did was they made public transport in the cities free for the whole month of April.

5:15David McWilliams: That's very clever as well. It's just very simple though. It's simple, but it's also clever because what it means is you're doing something. It's symbolic. You're doing something positive, right? Whether or not it leads to a whole host of people taking the bus or the train instead of driving, that actually doesn't matter. What matters is the sense that the state is in control. So the Aussies took these decisions ahead of organized protests. What we did in Ireland was we waited for the protest. We waited for the government to be blindsided. We waited for the protesters to be tactically in the driving seat.

5:53David McWilliams: And then, in a sort of chaotic way, but it's funny, you mentioned that Aussie bailout just before we went on the pod, so I decided to do a little calculation, John, just to see whether Irish people are getting value for money for their government's subsidies. The Aussie subsidy cap was 2.5 billion Aussie dollars. That's about 1.5 billion euros. Divided by the 29-odd million Aussies that live there, that ends up costing the state about 50 euros per head for this subsidy. Okay. Ireland has a subsidy. costs us 750 million euros in total, which is half the Aussie figure, but there's only 5 million of us living here.

6:41So therefore, our subsidy costs 150 euros per head.

6:48David McWilliams: So that is three times the cost of the Aussie subsidy per head to achieve the same thing, which is to quieten down the resentment, which is to make the farmers and the truckers feel that they can stay in business and which is to buy themselves a little bit of time. That certainly puts it in perspective, doesn't it? It's bonkers. It's back to what we were talking about last week. Who is writing the checks? Who is taking responsibility? Who's sticking their hands up and saying, yes, this figure is right. The Aussie figure. Now think about petrol and diesel. It's a global price. So it's the same everywhere.

7:22David McWilliams: The problem is it's a fecking global price, same everywhere. And yet our bailout, when the check has been written, was an extraordinary 150 euros per head to buy three months piece, okay? And the Aussies was 50 euros per head. It's bonkers. It's totally bonkers. So that's what I want to talk about, John, right? And that feeds in nicely from what we were talking about last week, which is that who is in control? Who is writing these checks? I mean, again, we've just looked at those figures. I mean, it is back in the envelope, but it gives you a sense of proportion. in terms of how much it costs the state.

8:03David McWilliams: Now, what did these protests reveal in Ireland? And I think the first thing they reveal, John, is there is a certain group of workers who have enormous bargaining power. And those workers... So for so long, workers have complained that they don't have bargaining power, that one of the problems with neoliberalism and all that sort of stuff is that the gradual... The power of the worker has diminished and the power of the corporation has increased. And the unions have diminished and the power of the corporation has increased immeasurably. But what we're actually seeing with these guys is a tiny, tiny, tiny minority.

8:40David McWilliams: There's only 3 % of the population are farmers, right? And truckers managed to fight, as the Iranians would call it, an asymmetrical war against the state. And how did they do this? They did this by turning the M50 into the Straits of Hormuz, right? That's the choke point. Yeah. And what they did... They mined it. They mined it. They, in effect, turned the motorway system into the Straits of Hormuz. Yeah. And they could do this with four or five tractors. Yes. Yeah, yeah. It doesn't take much. Right? And they parked them there. So what they identified was these choke points. and therefore rather than protecting these choke points, the states don't go for it.

9:28David McWilliams: It's a bit like, you know, when people said Donald Trump, you didn't think the Iranians were going to mind the Straits of Ormuz? Felix L. DeMille Martin, you didn't think the truckers were going to put their trucks on the M50? But it's just a lack of dialogue. It's a lack of dialogue and it's a lack of organisation. So what you had was when the battle lines were drawn, the tiny force, in this case the farmers, the truckers, could actually bring the big force, the state, with the guards and the army, but also the negotiation mechanisms of the state, you know, the TDs, and they could bring that whole apparatus to its knees in 24 hours.

10:09David McWilliams: Now, what that suggests to me is then that's tactically brilliant. I mean, most of our listeners will be really pissed off at them. I was really pissed off about it, right? But the point is, see it from their side, that they decided that the government is weak, but not the government is weak, the system is weak. And what we can do is we can ransom the country by closing off the Straits of Hormuz, that is the M50 and the couple of choke points, the Red Cow Roundabout, all those things, right? And what is it, White Gate down in Corp? Corp. Safe in the knowledge that this government will capitulate.

10:47Yeah.

10:47David McWilliams: And this government will do a deal. and the deal will be of extraordinary proportions in comparison to what you just said about the Aussies. Yeah, but how did they come up with that figure of 750 million? I've no idea. Was that suggested by the farmers and the truckers or what? It seems to me, John, that if you're in the business of overpaying and our state is in the business of overpaying for everything, Well, we've seen that, yeah. That figures are to use that great Anglo-Irish bank just plucked out of their arse. Do you remember that? Save the drum. Exactly. Just pluck it out of your arse. That's what I'm doing.

11:33David McWilliams: And when you look and you contrast the Aussie figures to ours, just because we did it, you think, hold on a second, something's wrong here. But more importantly, John, more importantly, is now those protesters know that the state will back down. Now, once you know that, once you know your enemy's weak point, why on earth would you not do it again? So this is only a three-month solve, isn't it? That's all. It's a sticky plaster for three months. What happens in three months' time? Because we've no idea what's going to be happening in the real Straits of Hormuz. Well, exactly. Who knows what's going to happen?

12:12David McWilliams: So you're basically mortgaging your system against an eventuality that you can do nothing about. Okay? Nothing about, which is what happens with the Iranians and the Israelis and the Americans. Is this a little bit like COVID? You know, because we jumped in and we shut everything down more than most. Well, I think the COVID thing is at least the rest of the world did the same thing. Now, whether in hindsight it was right or wrong is... But we seem to do it more than most. This is the good boy in the class idea, right? I'm going to talk about this in two seconds, right? But the subsidies came in on the 12th of April, John.

12:49David McWilliams: Three months after the 12th of April is the 12th of July. 12th of July is a particularly fiery day in the calendar of this island. What we're going to have is we're going to have the 12th of July for Catholics, right? Now imagine what's going to happen. We're going to subsidize the petrol bombs. Subsidize the bonies up north. No, so what's going to happen? these subsidies are going to be phased out yes the farmers and the truckers are going to scream yeah we can't do business because yeah because in effect we're subsidizing private business which is again a ridiculous idea yeah and it's coming up to harvest season well July it's warm yeah the nights are long yeah the chances of rioting are much nicer in the warmth than in the cold yeah you know that what coppers always look for is rain yes That's what a cop loves.

13:40David McWilliams: A cop loves rain. Yeah. Because rain pisses off rioters and protesters, and they go home, and they watch EastEnders, right? Okay. But imagine subsidies phase out on the 12th of July. Yeah. It's warm. The nights are long. People are bored. These guys realize the Straits of Hormuz are open. Yeah. So they'll close them down again, right? But much more importantly, John, do you know who's coming to town in July? The EU presidency, right? Of course, yes, of course. So the EU presidency is the greatest opportunity for social unrest in this country. Yeah. Because the state will be bringing in on those black mercs.

14:25David McWilliams: You know this was the whizz all around? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Those black mercs. In the rear of those black mercs will be the rear end of very swanky European politicians, president of France, president of this place, prime minister of X, Y, and Z, right? Ireland will be putting on its best show. Yeah. And those protesters will have a field day because Ireland reacts much more to shame than to incentives, right? Yeah. This is the good room mentality, John. Yeah, yeah, go on. So what is going to happen, right? So the good room, I've talked about it before, we'll talk about it again, right? When John and I were kids, everybody's granny and even maybe your mother had a good room.

15:10David McWilliams: And our good room in our house was so good, I wasn't good enough to go into it, right? It was just kept for people who were gooder than us, right? Particularly my granny's case down in Cork. And in the good room, we were supposed to be on our best behavior. And so on a Sunday morning after mass, the good room would be opened and in would come the priest or the local Fine Gael strong farmer or the solicitor. There'd be always an oily solicitor. An oily country solicitor would come in. And then my granny, out of nowhere, would produce china plates. And I'd be sitting there with the three twins, my cousins, and we'd be having my wadi out of cut glass, out of water for glass, right?

15:56David McWilliams: Real heavy. Real heavy stuff. You'd be petrified that she'd actually drop the thing, right? And, of course, granny wouldn't let you speak. You'd just have to kind of nod your head. And of course, the China, the cut glass was all taken out for that one day. Yeah. For that one moment. Yeah. And of course, the idea was the really posh people knew that we didn't live like this. We knew we didn't live like this. But for that moment, in order for parity of esteem to remain parity. Yeah. Okay. The provost used to say in the North, parity of esteem, right? for parity of esteem to hold, they pretended that they thought we lived like this.

16:40David McWilliams: We pretended that we thought, they thought that we lived like this. And for that moment, we were all equal. So that's the good room mentality. So it's when people who are posher than you come into the Irish house, you put on your finery and you do whatever, you know, I remember my poor sisters having to play piano recitals and things. Oh, right. And they practice all week. We'd practice all week for hearts and flowers or something like this, right? And we're all sitting there going, well, that solicitor ever just fuck off and so we can go out and play football out in the back garden like we actually do every day, right?

17:13David McWilliams: So take that image. Although the good room has sort of disappeared from the Irish social calendar in the sense that people use every room in their houses, right? Because they have to. Because their kids are living with them. With the girlfriend and the kids. Exactly, exactly. But the state has the same mentality. So when the EU presidency starts at the end of June this year, Ireland will turn into one big good room. So everything will look perfect. Everything will have to be swanky. We will have to portray an image of the country, which is that we are the most sophisticated, the high tech, the globalized trading entrepôs.

17:57David McWilliams: We have immigrants, we have multilanguage, blah, blah, blah. They'll put a lick of paint in all the derelict houses. It'll be a lick of paint, exactly. It'll be a Potemkin village, John. Do you remember a Potemkin village? So Ireland will turn into a good room, or another way of looking at it is a Potemkin village. Russian history, Potemkin villages were villages that General Potemkin, who was Catherine the Great's lover, made up, they were transportable villages. And they used to bring all the Western... Clapperboards. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They used to bring all the Western dignitaries down to Dniper, down into Ukraine, when they subjugated Ukraine, the Russians.

18:30David McWilliams: And they'd see all these people waving, saying, Catherine the Great, you're beautiful, you're amazing. We love being a Russian subject. We love being a colony of Russian. And all the people would say, the French would say, that's amazing, the Russians run the place so well. And of course, what happened is the royal barge would park, attempting to signal to the villages, they'd be put up on wheels and they'd be driven off to the next part of the river and away the same. Ireland would be a big potential village, a big good room, right? so what will be driving the Irish establishment will not be economics, it will be this thing that's much more powerful in the Irish mind which is as your mother would say, mortification right, you don't want to be mortified by anybody, and the mortification of having those yahoos in their trucks and on their tractors right, so blocking all the entrances to the airport it's a brilliant opportunity it's an amazing opportunity, so think about this perfect storm You have the EU presidency arrives in, right?

19:28Yeah. All the black marks are leased from Frankfurt.

19:32David McWilliams: Yeah. And everyone is turned into a Dremoland castle, sort of Disneyland, right? Everything's going to be perfect. It's going to be beautiful. There'll be drone shots of Ireland. Yeah. Diddly idly. Diddly idly. Fulcher, Ireland will have the wild Atlantic way. There'll be sun. Everyone will be up and beautiful. Ireland will be fantastic. Dublin Castle will look amazing. and then fuck it. These yahoos will strike. Why? Because the subsidies will come to an end on the 12th of July. So you'll have bonfires on both sides of the border. Yes. You'll have the loyalists going mental up north, right? Fucking petrol bombs of people and burning things and effigies of immigrants and the Pope and everything, you know?

20:19David McWilliams: And we'll have effigies of Trump. Yes. Okay. But the point is, I can see what has happened. Once you tell your enemy your tactic, which is if you block off those choke points, we will capitulate. And then you give them a target for a rerun of that, which is the 12th of July. Yeah. And you add into that all the Ireland is full anti-immigrant fellas who love a little rumble on the street with the cops. Yeah, yeah. And completely anti-EU as well. Completely anti-EU, yeah. Exactly, because they hate the EU, right? Yeah. And it's a little bit warm and the nights are long. Yeah. And the clink of cans of Heineken will be everywhere, right?

21:11David McWilliams: Beer, summer. Yeah. Anger, long nights. Clusterfuck. Yeah. That's what they've set themselves up for. And nobody's talking about this. nobody's talking about you know okay great we've just done this deal with the farmers nobody's saying the deal is over in July and July is exactly the date when Ireland wants to be on its best behaviour and it's exactly the date when these people did they not kind of consider the dates I mean was that just another along with the money and the figure being pulled out of your arse that was the date just pulled out of your arse three months and not actually consider ooh that might be a little bit awkward.

21:52David McWilliams: Exactly. Because who might be in town? Yeah. And the Nordics are going to be rioting anyway. If they made it four months. Exactly. Or two months even, and then at least they can have that cleared. Well, the point is they should have done it until June. Because at least then the EU presidency fellas won't be in the country, right? But it just seems to me, and this... The country may have burnt down at that point. But this, this you know i know we're seeing the humorous side of this yeah right yeah yeah but it's it's real i mean this is what you elect public officials to do so i come back to my public officials right yeah contempt versus care do you have contempt for the people you're supposed to run or do you have care are you actually operating at the top of your game for your 150 or 200 grand salaries that the heads of the departments are given right and all the bloody advisors and all the media advisors and there's sort of the jamboree around government in Ireland, right?

22:50David McWilliams: There's so many snouts and so many troughs, right? And then you think, we have now unveiled the most expensive subsidy in the world, from what I can see. Listeners may well tell me I'm wrong, but I suspect yes. We have given the opposition, the enemy in this case, the farmers and the truckers a target, which is the day the subsidies evaporate. And we have told them that on that day, we are at our most vulnerable because we want to show off to the presidents and the prime ministers of this, that, the other. It's unbelievably, I mean, it's incompetence on a monumental scale. And of course, you know, years ago, what I was doing when I worked in bank was risk management like what's your risk right who's the risk manager in there who's the person who's saying okay look here's the four or five options here's the return here's the risk maybe we should think of a different date so i suppose then that when they're coming up to this it may start dawning on them so then in classic irish official style problem looming let's throw money at it more money So this is where I want to go on the second part of this podcast, right?

24:11David McWilliams: Which is that once you start solving everything by throwing money at everything, one is that you're assuming that the pot of money remains flush. But the second is you're assuming that people will change their behavior, which is that I reward you, you don't come back to the trough looking for more. Yeah, yeah. But of course, if I reward you, you do come back looking for more. Yeah, well, there is supposed to be some sort of social contract, isn't there? But this is the point, is that there isn't a social contract. As far as I can see, they didn't say to these protesters, if we do this now, you will be on your best behavior.

24:51David McWilliams: They just said, here's the money. Problem solved, move on to the next dilemma. Yeah. And there's no organizational consequence for what is going on. So yeah, like you were saying, so this is part of the same old ding dong as my mother used to say, you know, just throw money at it and it will go away. But let's talk about that after a bit of this.

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27:03So Mac, we're talking about throwing money at problems as the kind of, it seems like the only fix that the government seems to be able to come up with. They have the money. Yeah. So they spend it. So just throw it at the problem. So Irish public expenditure has been growing anyway. So this is just yet another part of this pattern and this approach to problem solving.

27:27David McWilliams: I think so. I think the first thing is when you have an international issue like a spike in oil prices, we know there's absolutely nothing our state can do to control this. We are price takers, like everywhere in Europe. Yeah, yeah. So therefore, the wisdom of throwing tax money at that, when you're actually hostage to events many, many thousands of miles away, which you have no control, seem a bit bonkers, right? But the problem for the Irish state is they allowed this to get to such a place where lots of people in rural Ireland from the farming background, but not just from the farming, farming adjacent, you know, people from the countryside, right?

28:10David McWilliams: Came together with an alliance of truckers. And of course, the truckers are also from the countryside because they're moving stuff around the country. That's why they're called truckers, right? And then you have a, not so much the anti-immigrant far right said, okay, this is our opportunity. It's a street protest. We can get our people out in the streets. And suddenly the state is faced with not an existential crisis, but a serious crisis. The likes of which we haven't faced for ages because it's a rebellion. Now, whether rebellion is too grandiose a term or not doesn't really matter. But the point is, it is a grassroots movement.

28:47David McWilliams: It's the new populism. It's the new populism. Now, let's see what the Irish state normally does. It throws money at the problem because, as we said before, we got this money from the multinationals. Just to give you a sense, right, in 1994, right, it cost 15 billion euros to run this country every year. Okay. Okay, 15 billion euros equivalent was in puns then, right? Yeah. It now costs 133 billion. So that's an eightfold increase in how much it costs to run the country, which is amazing. Spending doubled in Ireland from 2000 to 2010, right? The Celtic Tiger period. 26 billion to about 61 billion.

29:27David McWilliams: But what's more interesting is in the last decade alone, public spending has increased by 100%. Right? It has doubled. The health budget alone is now$25.8 billion. That was almost the entire state budget 25 years ago. The entire state budget, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And state spending on housing grew from$1.2 billion in 2015, so 10 years ago, to$9.3 billion. Again, an eightfold increase. And this is, again, what we're talking about. It's loads of money being thrown at problems. But nothing been fixed. Yeah. But, you know, including those figures, though, is inflation and a population increase.

30:16David McWilliams: Ask, John, and you will receive. I have here at hand the inflation-adjusted figures. 1994, it's 30 billion to run the place. 2025, this is an inflation-adjusted figure. It's 107 billion. So we're still talking monumental increases in state spending. Now, again, the state is growing. We need to provide services to a much bigger population. So you'd expect the state to be growing. So therefore, I've done something for you, John, because I knew this is the next question. Excellent. Which is state spending per head of population. So adjusted for both inflation and for the population. And what you see is that Ireland's nominal government spending is$133 billion, and there's 5.3 million of us living here.

31:10David McWilliams: That means the government spending per person is€25 ,000, 198 per year. Really? Wow. Right? This measure, which is probably more accurate than all the other ones, places Ireland miles above free spend in France. Right. The French spent 23 ,000 euros per head. Okay. Okay, per person, right? We're also above Finland, well above Spain, which spends only 17 ,000 euros per head, and well above Italy, which spends 20 ,000 euros, 100. So what we're talking about is Ireland is spending, not only what masks are spending is the fact that our GDP figures are really, really strong. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This leprechaun economics that Paul Krugman talks about, right?

32:00David McWilliams: that mask everything but once you get down what you see is that on a per head basis which then adjusts for the increase in population yeah we are spending enormous amounts of money and far more than our european peers yeah but we come back to the point we were talking about last week what are we getting for this yes this is the whole point so what i see here is we're back to the same idea. We throw money at the problem. Nobody puts in infrastructure to fix anything on a permanent basis. It's all endemic short-termism, and it's all stumbled to the next crisis. But also, everything then is highly politicized.

32:42David McWilliams: You see what I mean? So other countries might deal with a protest like this, a massive, massive protest, with a technocratic solution that the public servants talk to the protesters and figure something out. Here in Ireland, everything goes straight to the tea shop. It's highly politicised. And of course, why is that? It's because the split between rural and urban, in the TDs, in the Dáil, all that sort of stuff. It's really us and them. It's us and them sort of stuff. But what you're looking at is the incipient evidence of a serious populist movement across the country. Yeah. So the government are doing everything possible to nurture populism.

33:28To make it worse. Yeah.

33:30David McWilliams: That's what it seems like. It's like a child. You put a child into a sweet shop, you say to the child, you can eat whatever you want. And you know what? When you puke, I'll give you more sweets. Right? And there is no boundaries. We come back to that idea of boundaries. And so what I think we have set ourselves up for is a monumental clash in the summer between a disaffected population, mainly in rural Ireland, and an anti-immigrant population in urban Ireland, both of whom have a grievance. Both of whom feel that they are not being seen or being listened to by others. It is now becoming a historical grievance.

34:14David McWilliams: We have a ticking time bomb, which is the subsidies are going to actually end in July. And we have a good room dilemma which is the state is going to be at its weakest because it's afraid of mortification and humiliation and shame rather than organisation. Do you know what? Can I add one other thing that's going to happen in this? Is that if, as they say, as they're projecting that we're going to run out of airline fuel that no one would be able to go away on holidays. So people are going to be here frustrated and going mad. If only Troy Parrott could have scored a brace, we would have had the World Cup.

34:56David McWilliams: We'd have been completely distracted. We wouldn't have given a shite about fuel prices. It would have been ole, ole, ole. You know what? This could be the podcast that identifies the role of Ireland's soccer team in the implosion of democracy and the emergence of a populist movement that would have been dampened down by the alcoholic frenzy that would have been the World Cup in the middle of July. We might have even supported the Nordies. Anyone. Anyone at all. And, of course, the loyalists show us the blueprint. Yeah. This is the problem. We've always thought that loyalism up there, that's an up-there, Nordy problem.

35:35David McWilliams: This is the left-behinds. These are the people. These are the kind of Trumpians. These are the MAGA movement of the North. It's loyalism. the MAGA movement of the south is this protest that we're seeing so that is why the 12th of July John will be it'll be it'll be King Billy for Catholics right I really think that we're heading down that direction and I believe that one of the reasons is that nobody who is charged with thinking about the future yeah is actually thinking about the future we have an amazing podcast coming up on Thursday with Sinead O'Sullivan, which actually puts some sort of intellectual framework on our ridiculous ramblings.

36:17David McWilliams: But there we have it. We'll see you on Thursday.

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