The fake drama of budget day is not just the creation of ministerial conceit, argues Vincent Browne. It is designed, or it least it serves, to conceal what is going on: the more minor adjustments to the order of things, an inherently unjust and indefensible order of things.
Today's Budget will be hailed for its generosity, for the welfare payment increases, for the assistance to first-time home buyers, for some adjustments to tax breaks, for the reductions on income-tax levels, maybe an initiative on stamp duty.
But will anybody, aside from Joe Higgins, rail against the residue, the deep inequalities left behind, the continued bias in favour of the privileged, the oppressiveness of the tinkered status quo? The drama is not all pointless.
Certainly, there is nothing in a budget nowadays that deserves the secretiveness and the build-up that continues to attach to it; aside, possibly, from increases on excise duties that usually take place on the midnight after the budget statement.
So we could have had over the last several months - were the Oireachtas so minded, which is doubtful - a debate on what the shape of the Budget should be. Instead, the discussion has taken place entirely within the Department of Finance and a Cabinet subcommittee. This morning the rest of the Cabinet will be told what is in the Budget and then Fianna Fáil and the PDs will vote it through, whether they approve of it or not. This is called democracy.
For instance, there could have been a debate on the PD proposal to lower the top rate of tax from 42 to 40 per cent. It would have been fascinating what arguments could have been adduced in favour of that as a priority over, for instance, improving welfare payments, giving money to mental health facilities for children, widening the tax net and taking more people out of the top tax bracket, or taking people out of the tax net entirely.
There might have been an opportunity to look at Irish society regarding the levels of inequality and injustice: the funding needed for mental health facilities for young people; the care of old people, or at least the cost of a robust inspection team for nursing homes; the costs of accommodating Travellers; or the cost of abolishing consistent poverty.
Instead, decisions on the distribution of wealth and the allocation of resources, which are central to the kind of society we have, are collapsed into this drama - a drama that suits the decision-makers by dispensing with consultation and democratic debate.
The build-up has been flavoured by the supposed impending generosity of Brian Cowen, as though he was about to lavish benefits on us from his own resources.
The reality is that this is a redistribution of some of society's resources and there has been no discussion on how best those resources should be distributed or redistributed in advance of this crucial redistributive mechanism having its annual jaunt. For central to our mindsets these days is the conviction that we "own" everything we earn, however unfair or arbitrary the market mechanism may be in determining earnings. All income and wealth is derived from social co-operation. Even if one is an artist in an ivory or other tower, one cannot earn anything unless there is some social co-operation - the provision of training, of materials, transport and the sale of the work of art.
It is, therefore, a matter for society to determine how the benefits of social co-operation should be distributed.
The market mechanism has a part to play in this, but only a part, and often it has to be adjusted or even discarded in the interests of justice or fairness. And the mechanism for adjustment is, crucially, the annual budget.
But none of the discussion on the budget comes to it from this perspective. It all has to do with what resources the Minister for Finance has to distribute and how this will be done.
The debate on the Budget will hardly refer to its redistributive function. The prepared salvoes of the Opposition will focus almost entirely on how the resources, which the State has chosen to appropriate to itself, are managed. Not on the disbursement of resources and not on the size of resources the State chooses to appropriate.
Societies unconsciously frame the agenda for public debate, usually to fit in with the interests of dominant forces. For now, the public debate is about managerialism: who best can manage the given resources, not in the sense of fairness, but of efficiency. No discussion on whether the existing distribution of resources is fair and how fairness could be achieved.
There may have been a time when politics was about thinking through what was in society's interest and then arguing for it, trying to persuade the public to support that view.
Now politics is about finding out what people think and then persuading them that one party rather than another is the best party to give them what they want. We had a graphic and disconcerting illustration of this on television on Sunday night, with the America spin guru offering lessons on same.