A chara, – Your reporting on the TASC report is unbelievably misleading, from the headline, "How unequal is Ireland?" to the graphic of a red "fat cat" unbalancing the scales.
I don’t know about you, but the amount of money that ends up monthly in my bank account is my net pay after tax, USC and social welfare deductions. Therefore showing an artificial Gini income equality bar chart, with gross income only, can only have been designed to show Ireland in the worst possible light, especially as we have the most progressive tax system in the OECD.
A chart of net income puts Ireland about average in the EU, tending towards a more, rather than less, equal income distribution.
In fact, the report itself says, “This [gross] measure ignores the real world of taxes and welfare, which play a major role in reducing inequality in Ireland.” If a gross-income Gini, by TASC’s own admission “ignores the real world”, why is it presented as a representation of the facts? The answer to the question posed in the headline is that Ireland is a pretty equal place.
The combination of a "When did you stop beating your wife?" headline and bogus graphs seem clearly designed to hide an inconvenient truth for a left-wing think tank. – Is mise, PETER O'DWYER Pembroke St, Dublin 2. Sir, – The reaction to the TASC report on income inequality was predictably reactionary. However the analysis of Jim Clarken’s analysis from Oxfam was surprisingly shallow
A country with high levels of inequality in gross income (before redistribution) and more typical levels (“close to the EU average“) after social transfers and income tax can be inferred to have the strong levels of redistribution he desires.
Why does he ignore this, preferring instead to launch a political statement on global tax policy.
Is it too much to ask that a so-called “think tank” sticks to rigorous analysis and supposedly non-partisan NGOs stay out of the political sphere? Otherwise perhaps TASC can clarify their exact political position and relationship with the Labour Party and Oxfam can register as a political party and stand in the next election?
Many neutral people looking at the distributions of gross income in our economy will wonder how so many people can command such a high price for their skills while so there is so little demand for the contributions of others.
I believe closed shops in many professions lead to the former while failures in education and free movement of low skilled labour lead to the latter. – Yours, etc, PAUL KEAN Conyngham Rd, Dublin 8.