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Economic Justice
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Austerity is not just bad for the economy. The latest evidence shows that it is also bad for people’s health. Austerity has led to rising suicide rates, increased rates of disease and dramatic reductions in access to healthcare for people unable to pay for such care from their private resources. A new study entitled ‘The Body Economic: Why Austerity Kills’ concludes that "Recessions can hurt, but austerity kills."
This study shows that countries that cut their health and social protection budgets, like Greece, Italy and Spain, have seen far worse health outcomes than nations like Germany, Iceland and Sweden, which maintained their social safety nets and opted for stimulus over austerity.
The authors of this study are David Stuckler, a senior research leader in sociology at Oxford, and Sanjay Basu, an assistant professor of medicine and an epidemiologist in the Prevention Research Center at Stanford. In an article in the New York Times they stated: “As scholars of public health and political economy, we have watched aghast as politicians endlessly debate debts and deficits with little regard for the human costs of their decisions. Over the past decade, we mined huge data sets from across the globe to understand how economic shocks — from the Great Depression to the end of the Soviet Union to the Asian financial crisis to the Great Recession — affect our health. What we’ve found is that people do not inevitably get sick or die because the economy has faltered. Fiscal policy, it turns out, can be a matter of life or death.”
Read full review on Social Justice Ireland website.
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Cost of Bank Bailout: €71bn
The decision to pay back bank bondholders has left the National Pension Reserve Fund practically empty. This has privileged private speculators over the needs of Irish pensioners. Such a grotesque decision, when it was taken, reflected the interests of a very narrow and unrepresentative section of Irish society. They are also amongst the wealthiest. The Ballyhea Says No group have recently launched proposals to have this money returned. Read more about their proposals here ...
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In a talk organised by Vicky Donnelly of Anglo Not Our Debt Prof. Terrence Mc- Donough unravels some of the spin and smokescreen around the dramatic developments last week in Ireland on the Bank Deal. In a wide ranging talk he suggests the deal trumpeted by government and many sections of the media last week as a great success "was a scam" and may have been connected with a court case being taken by 4 TD's against the legality of the Promissory Notes which would have exposed elite interests in Ireland.
A picture of the flipchart used during the talk is available below ...
Read more: Prof. Terrence McDonough on the Irish Promissory Note Deal
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Don’t Force these Illegitimate Debts on Future Generations
Press release: Campaigners warn against government decision to replace promissory notes with sovereign bonds, say debt could be passed on to future generations.
The Anglo: Not Our Debt campaign comprised of community, faith based, global justice, trade union and academic groups, has said that a potential government move to replace the Anglo promissory note payments with long-term sovereign bonds would be unacceptable.
Read more: "Promissory Deal Unacceptable" - Anglo Not Our Debt
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Social Justice Ireland statement on Anglo/IBRC agreement
Deal on Anglo/IBRC compounds the injustice of the original deal
and copper-fastens it for generations to come.
The liquidation of IBRC and the related changes agreed between the Irish Government and the European Central Bank (ECB) has compounded the injustice of the original deal. It is clear that Government and the European Central Bank have decided that banks must be protected ahead of people and that bank gambling debts must be repaid by those of us who had no hand, act or part in causing the banking collapse in the first place.
