Sir, – Hurray! Your second Editorial (May 30th), is the first I have read in any newspaper since this current economic fiasco began that cuts to the very core of the problem.
The demise of growth; the impossibility and futility of trying to stimulate growth that is no longer needed or possible is what stumps all efforts at revival. We have reached the promised land in most areas of growth; at least in developed economies. Some areas of growth will always remain; new products and processes, underdeveloped parts of the economic world, replenishment and replacement of already completed and ageing infrastructure but the heavy work is done. Technology has taken us to a new plane of achievement and will provide any new growth necessary in fractions of the time taken heretofore with minimal employment implications.
That is why we must devise new policies of employing people; reducing the workload of each with shorter hours, longer holidays and earlier retirement; an absolute reversal of the lunatic policies being enacted by Croke Park II.
Technological success is at the core of our present economic malaise and inability to understand that unprecedented production capabilities and the demise of large sections of work require a very different approach than that proposed by the EU establishment and so enthusiastically embraced by our own administration.
Well done Editor; you have breached the dam of silence on the role of modern technology and achievement in the present economic calamity. Now push ahead and initiate the real debate of how we cope with a world where everything is available in abundance except work. – Yours, etc,
PADRAIC NEARY,
Tubbercurry, Co Sligo.