Did you know that there is more than a 90pc chance that Dublin will win today because Fine Gael are in power? Eight of Dublin’s last nine All-Ireland wins have happened under Fine Gael governments.
Does the sea of blue on the Hill signal a subliminal message of urban support for the party of Dublin GAA, Fine Gael? Is Sam Maguire, when Dublin win, a Blueshirt? What do you think?
This is not provocative; it’s a fact.
Going back 40 odd years of Dublin All-Ireland victories, only in 1977, when Fianna Fáil clearly bought the election, have the Dubs triumphed under the Soldiers of Destiny. On every other occasion, there was a Fine Gael Taoiseach in power when a Dublin captain marched up to the sacred podium.
In 1974 and 1976, Heffo’s Dubs won under the austere eye of Liam Cosgrove.
In 1983, the Boys in Blue won under Garret Fitzgerald’s watch.
The renowned footballing aficionado, Fitzgerald, was the boss in Leinster House. This was a man so steeped in GAA and Irish traditions that in 1982, when he saw a sea of red during the campaign in Cork, he mistook Cork fans for politically engaged anti-communist activists wearing the red of Poland’s opposition Solidarity movement!
Fast-forward 12 barren years to 1995 and that other great Fine Gael GAA champion, John Bruton, was in power when the Dubs lifted Sam. Then, after 16 years in the wilderness, the victories of 2011, 2013, 2015, and 2016 all occurred under another Fine Gael government.
So, should Dublin supporters vote Fine Gael to ensure victory?
The superstitious might agree but others would say any link between Fine Gael and Dublin GAA is just a coincidence.
In the real world, it’s easy to mix up coincidence with causation. When two things look related, many conclude that they must be connected. Often, two apparently linked phenomena can be parcelled up and tied together in order to suit someone’s narrative.
But if we mistake coincidence for causation, we can get things very wrong. This is particularly dangerous in the political theatre, where such spurious connections can lead to extremely poor results. Even though two things are merely coincidence, politicians often try to claim that they are related and in this way both credit and blame are apportioned when neither is warranted.
But before we talk economics, let’s think of other examples in daily life where people misdiagnose coincidences for causation.
When my mother loses her car keys, she prays to St Anthony. The next few minutes play out by the mother walking around the house murmuring invocations to the patron Saint of lost things. Then – miraculously – the keys emerge from under the cushion on the chair in front of the TV or under a few coats in the hall and nothing will persuade her that the prayer to St Anthony didn’t do the trick!
This tendency to see patterns where none exist is part of human make-up. It is just the way we are hardwired. We like to think that there are tangible reasons for things to happen over which we have some control. We are not comfortable with the complexity and serendipity of life. The purveyors of religion twigged this human frailty early on and therefore created all sorts of spurious cause and effect to help maintain the hocus pocus of religion.
Politics is another sort of hocus pocus – at least where politics mixes with the enormous complexity of the economy. As a result, we will hear politicians linking their own tenure in office with an upswing in the economy, when in fact no such connection exits.
Think about how the business cycle works in general; economies tend to recover from recessions, then we get decent growth and this creates an effervescence, which makes people too confident about the future, so they invest and spend too much, the economy peaks, goes into a downturn and dips into recession – and off we go again. Normally, this process takes about a decade but because economic time has nothing to do with human time, as measured by the Roman calendar, the notion of comparing year on year in economics is ridiculous. But we do it anyway.
Now superimpose on this longer-term economic cycle the four-year political cycle and you can see why politicians might take credit for things that are simply coincidence and get blamed for things that are similarly unrelated. So, when you hear politicians saying that under this government unemployment fell, all they are noting is that unemployment troughed when they happened to be in power. However, the real reasons unemployment falls in a small open economy have as much to do with the international business cycle as anything that the government did here.
Given that the two main parties have almost identical policies on anything of significance, it is rationally impossible for them to have a material diverging impact on the economy.
Like Fine Gael and the Dubs, there is a coincidence – not any correlation or causation.
This is the general rule; however, there are times where there are specific and unambiguous links between government stance and economic outcomes.
One such example happened this week involving the land grab from the EU on taxing multinationals.
The EU wants to change the way multinationals pay tax so that companies like Google pay tax where they generate sales, not where they register profits.
This would have a profound and immediate impact on where multinationals locate. It is a direct threat to Ireland because multinationals based here generate their sales in the EU, but their profits are registered in Ireland, where they are legally based. This is the model of every city-state and successful small country throughout history.
Centuries ago, the Dutch figured out that in a globalised economy the big money accrues not to those who produce but those who broker, facilitate and trade.
Our political class – and that includes the civil servants who negotiate for us – must say no to the EU’s ambitions to change the rules on the way corporations are taxed. In the same way as Germany would baulk at the notion that VW profits should not be repatriated to Germany, where they are taxed, we should do the same.
VW is a German company legally, even if it produces all around the world, and its corporation tax is paid to the German government. The same should apply to companies legally based in Ireland.
Unlike taking credit for the economic cycle, where the connection between governments and the slow grind of the business cycle is at best coincidental, the issue of taxation of multinationals would have a direct and deleterious effect on Ireland. Put simply, our capital base is American. Without these companies, Ireland would be Albania with brutal weather.
Therefore, our politicians need to make a stand now against the French/German move to further integration because this is what they are there for. The connection between foreign investment and Irish prosperity is not spurious; it is real.
As for the Dubs and Fine Gael, 8 out of 10 Cats would bet on the Blueshirts!
To Conclude Or Be Dammed Many thanks David for your excellent article. I always enjoy reading them and the challenges it gives to any reader. Today Saturday as usual I read it in Starbucks at the railway station in Limerick watching the movement of people coming and going from all parts and in recent days many are Japanese. I refer to your statement ‘Like Fine Gael and the Dubs, there is a coincidence – not any correlation or causation’ and your reference to the word ‘pattern’. Superimposing both as you did and then concluding that it is a coincidence is… Read more »
Very relevant point made, there. Coincidence is not causation. The Irish soccer team tended to have it’s more hyped periods, when there was an increase in borrowing, in the economy – and at times when FF were in charge. The rising tides of over-leverage, soccer hype, binge boozing, vote buying, quango expansion, political nepotism, and obedience to Brussels – brings massive failure as a result. The result is not economic empowerment, but fantasy based fiddling that brings about economic misallocation. Economic improvement comes about as a result of hard work, and intelligent decision making. It does not arise as a… Read more »
Taxe Financiere Where does the Apple Fall ? Where it lands . The Minister for Finance has great difficulty understanding this and there is a good reason. He does not know the meaning of the word ‘Taxation’. This is not strange for any Irish politician .Their narrative prefers to fake and pretend and confuse the tax payer.A betrayal because of Fear. The success in negotiating with the EU must depend on the ‘initial condition’.Assuming to understand the meaning of the word Taxation is a journey to a Dante inferno. The Minister must rectify this obtuse. Being the only English speaking… Read more »
Like the proverb about insanity, Juncker’s speech is a reminder of what happens when those who are disconnected from reality make public policy. Greece was the first serious sign that something had gone extremely wrong, with the entire project of centralization in Europe. The fact that Iceland go into a similar problem, reacted in an agile manner, and saved their society was a lesson in how to fix a very serious problem. The Icelanders surrounded the parlaiment, got out their pots and cutlery and protested. Authority collapsed and then was rebuilt from the ground up. It was then based on… Read more »
What will happen next ? I think we should expect the unexpected. Well, one highly vulnerable location is Canada. The collapse of Home Capital/Trust in Toronto was not expected. The banking system there is overextended. The Prairie cereal crop is in a drought. Oil is down. And the auto trade in North America is in over supply. That is three of Canada’s largest export earners. Lumber is highly dependent on construction in the US and East Asia. The US construction sector is less consuming of lumber, as incomes continue to stagnate. And China has too much housing in many cities.… Read more »
Its a very good insightful article. This statement; “Therefore, our politicians need to make a stand now against the French/German move to further integration because this is what they are there for” is very subtle coming close to the end of the article and is enormous in its implications should those in power contemplate it’s meaning. It begs the question? if Europe tries to ram harmonisation down our throats do we go for irexit? Surely we will have to consider doing so if the next statement is true which I wholeheartedly believe it is; “This would have a profound and… Read more »
Ireland had an excellent opportunity after the Brexit referendum to make decentralization the theme of predomincance in the discussion on EU centralization.
Instead, the Irish political establishmen, went into Stockholm syndrom mode. They ran to the defence of their captors. And they have stayed there ever since.
Idiots !!!!
David, . U mention the Civil Servants ; . . In the main ; The Irish State’s Civil Servants are malign Masters of the Public . Not that it ever should mean an echo of Upstairs-Downstairs, but surely the relationship between the Public [ the Employers ] & the Public Servants, + even more the case with the Civil Servants, is totally out of kilter ? . Logically, the Servants should be serving the Masters ; Not, the Masters serving the Servants. . But, it is the following absurd relationship that we have in Irish State ; . X] The… Read more »
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“the hocus pocus of religion”
Haha love it David, well said.
Just as I post now ;
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There are in total only 15 posts since John Allen September 17, 2017 at 10:46 am.
Purveyors of religious hocus pocus? Who are the purveyors? Where is it being purveyed? And indeed what is being purveyed? I see much purveying and it is the purveying of conventional wisdom and its close cousing, received opinion, which is currently garbed in the righteous cloak of strident liberalism. It is purveyed on RTE, on radio, in the press and if you offend you are, like Hook, swiftly removed (this is called tolerance). This article is interesting in that it is the first time to my knowledge that David makes his standpoint clear regarding religion. I wonder why he did… Read more »
Off-Topic ;
I guess a bit like a Lady Godiva wading onto the pitch ….
But, very welcome nonetheless …. 8-)
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There may be some respite with this news on housing ;
Not a solution, mind ;
But, a welcome addition.
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http://www.politics.ie/forum/economy/259180-micro-flats-coming-london-could-help-solving-dublin-housing-affordability-crisis.html
In the current news is the effort to obtain the submission of NK http://www.theeventchronicle.com/finanace/three-countries-left-without-rothschild-central-bank/# The first step in having a Central Bank established in a country is to get them to accept an outrageous loans, which puts the country in debt to the Central Bankers and under the control of the Rothschilds. Afghanistan Iraq Sudan Libya Cuba North Korea Iran The first 4 countries have been bombed into submission. The last three are under intense pressure. Today there is huge pressure being applied to North Korea. Look for a minute at the activities of the missile actions and the development… Read more »
Meanwhile on the LEFT COAST the ridiculous machinations of the marxist/leninist merry band of political thieves conjure up more and more ways to kill the Californian dreamer state.
https://spectator.org/its-leftward-ho-and-no-end-in-sight/?utm_source=American+Spectator+Emails&utm_campaign=7a0e8c565e-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_09_21&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_797a38d487-7a0e8c565e-104365713
http://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/California-s-400-billion-debt-worries-analysts-6812264.php
CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM OF DAVID MCWILLIAMS’ MISUNDERSTANDING OF WHAT MADE THE DUTCH PROSPER Mr David McWilliams’ writes: “Centuries ago, the Dutch figured out that in a globalised economy the big money accrues not to those who produce but those who broker, facilitate and trade.” The question is – trade what? The Dutch didn’t accrue big money just from trading but from copying others products and manufacturing them cheaper and on a much larger scale while monopolising the trade routes. Take porcelain – in Delft, the Dutch introduced the strong division of labour which meant that the city was able to produce… Read more »
“Polish politicians went to visit the White House and Pentagon, where they were received with the highest honours”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VCu-LnlGFs