What can we retrieve from all of this?

Posted on April 01, 2010 at 01:33 AM

It is hard to imagine what the impact on the lives of Irish people collectively and individually will be from the billions due to be given to the banks to purchase their loans and to recapitalise them. How will it play out?  Will it work and save our banking system? How much money will be left to run our country? What will it mean for younger people and children in terms of the lifestyles and opportunities they will have? What can we retrieve from all of this? It feels a bit like we will have to start from scratch and build a very different type of economy and society to the one we have had up until now. We can't go back to what we had before.  Even if we wanted to try we shouldn't because it is an economic model that has failed us.  Labour must articulate an alternative economic model,and we must go out and persuade people of the merits of democratic socialism as a way to organise our economy and society.  We must promote the public realm for our common good and the redistribution of what wealth we create for the benefit of all of us.  Countries that have had such a model, even if only in part, are faring better than Ireland in face of economic downturn.  They have a better quality of life that all of their citizens reap the benefit of, and none have what we have to face in terms of the extent of our national wealth that will now have to be used to bail out our banks.

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