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In Poland and Ireland the demographic timebomb is ticking away. There are ever fewer workers to support ever greater numbers of burdensome old folk. Amazingly, Ireland has found a dual solution: mass redundancies and more procreation:

Irish Times: Birth Rate Highest for 110 Years

Central Statistics Office: Irish Unemployment Rate Reaches 12.2%

Another oddity is that house prices also go down:

Irish Times: Irish House Prices Fall 24% since 2007

And remember how home-taping — sorry, the internet — was killing music?

Irish Times: Profits at Warner Music’s Irish Subsidiary Increase by 70%
Whodathunkit? And although some gloomy types might bring up that old recession, there’s a light at the end of the tunnel.

Irish Times: Welfare fraud action saves €300,000

See? There’s loads of cash swilling around the old country. Just nabbing a few dole cheats will enable us to plug the hole in the economy and bail out the bankers.

Leszek Balcerowicz, Polish economic guru, is nothing if not dependable. No matter what the question, the answer is always to liberalise, deregulate etc. etc. I was reminded of him by today’s piece in the Irish Times by Frances Ruane of the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI). The subhead says it all. No really: all. “An international upturn will not translate into a recovery here unless Ireland cuts costs.” It’s funny how I’ve been hearing this since the 1980s - through slump, boom, slump, boom, slump the medicine is always the same no matter what the patient’s condition. Cuts.

The ESRI’s record for accuracy.

Three years ago I wrote briefly about high-flying academics working in Ireland who were being given extemely generous salaries in order to prevent them from emigrating from badly depressed, going-nowhere Ireland (funny no one thought of doing that in the 80s for ordinary workers). Today those bonuses are being savagely cut back, at least in University College Dublin, where the vice-president for research will now have to scrape by on just €320,000 a year. Bad news too for usual suspect Brigid Laffan, who will have to forgo €25,000 a year (all according to today’s Irish Times).

Poland is no stranger to calls for higher pay for profs. Indeed, scarcely a day goes by without genuine, heart felt, grass roots demands for US salaries for Polish lecturers.

A delve into the archives has turned up the following job advertisement in a US periodical from 50 years ago. It says more about “human capital” and the real reasons behind encouraging people to invest in themselves than many a learned disquisition.

“How a ‘crazy rumour’ got me promoted!

What I overheard one morning shook me right out of a rut! ‘Company’s getting ready to cut back … bound to be layoffs,’ I heard them say. ‘Just another crazy rumour,’ I told myself. Just the same, I took quick stock of myself that night. [...] I wasn’t in trouble But I sure wasn’t ‘in solid’ like I should be. That’s when I made up my mind to enroll for training with I.C.S. [...] That was a year ago. There have been two layoffs since then. While some of the others were just hanging on or being released, I was moving up. [...] Don’t wait for a ‘crazy rumour’ to set you straight. Take out your ‘job insurance’ right now. [...]”

But why pay “job insurance” to ICS or whoever? Why not pay it directly to your employer, who could use a portion of it to train you to do the job for which you were employed. He could deduct the “job insurance” straight from your pay cheque and call it a pay cut.

Yesterday Gazeta Wyborcza announced plans by the government to stop paying for students to do two degrees – one’s your limit. Today’s paper lets the cat well and truly out of the bag. There’s an interview with professor Kazimierz Stępień, chairman of the Rada Nauki (Education Council, more or less) at the Ministry for Privatising Education. He says quite openly (that is to say: he doesn’t hide behind childish arguments like “free education is a myth,” a headline in last week’s newspaper) that the constitutional guarantee of free studies should be abolished (“konstytucyjny zapis o bezpłatnych studiach powinien być zniesiony”). But wait – what’s this – oh he does go for the childish argument: “Studiów bezpłatnych nie ma, ponieważ płaci za nie całe społeczeństwo” (There is no such thing as free education because society as a whole pays for it). It’s depressing that such a weak argument can be made (and made repeatedly) in serious newspapers. Aside from the government’s desire to exclude poor people from university education, there is the question of when Gazeta Wyborcza is going to wise up to all this. It’s quite alright to have ago at the poor, the sick, the old and the working classes but university educated people…? They’re the ones who buy the newspaper. If you alienate them, who’s going to buy your product?

Pretending that the crisis is a good thing, that is. Last weekend’s “High Heels” (Gazeta Wyborcza’s ladies’ supplement) has a subhead on page 37 (above an interview with Karolina Korwin-Piotrowska, a teevee journo) that reads “This crisis has its good sides. Perhaps we will start eating bread again and I won’t have to constantly hear ‘hey, let’s go for some sushi’.”

I’ve solved the economic crisis. After months of study and intensive thought I’ve finally cracked it. To be fair, I arrived at my earth-righting conclusion by standing on the shoulders of giants. I’ve been reading the newspapers, turning over in my mind the pronouncements of the experts, sifting through the policy initiatives of the finest political minds on the planet and tallying the melodious discourses of our leaders. The solution is this: we must all buy more cars. That will keep car manufacturers in business, which will keep people in jobs, which will mean they can afford to buy cars. Or wash each other’s linen – whatever.

Alain Bihr’s contempt for the term “human capital” is almost tangible: “As if capital, that cold monster, that accumulation of dead work, which lives only because it constantly preys on living work and exploits the labour of billions of people whose lives mean nothing to it, condemning more billions to poverty, insecurity, unemployment and socio-economic exclusion - as if there was anything human about capital.” He launches then into an explanation of how it’s all just exploitation anyway.

But the term always seemed a little fishy to me too. It smacks of blaming the victim: if you can’t get a job it’s your fault for not investing in yourself, not the fault of a failing economy. It’s plainly selfish too. After investing in yourself you might get that desirable job but only at the expense of someone who could not afford the “investment.”

Inevitably the EU is promoting some human capital type invest in yourself hokum in Poland these days. But for those who think that education and bettering oneself is the key there’s a – surely accidental – warning note in this week’s Polityka. In a feature on the used car import business they talk to an importer called Maciek, who now has over one hundred competitors in his town, including two who used to work for him – even though, as he says, he always tried to employ morons to avoid competition.

So when you walk, fresh out of your “prestigious” university, straight into a nice job as, say, a financial adviser (subject of scathing criticism in another article in the same issue of Polityka) don’t be so sure it’s all thanks to (your parents) investing in you.

Here’s a report from the Irish national broadcaster’s news site which may be beyond parody but by jingo that isn’t going to stop me. For those unfamiliar with the subject, two pieces of background information: (1) the Irish economy has hit a brick wall (2) “Tánaiste” is the Irish name for the post of deputy prime minister.

Govt made very good decisions - Tánaiste

(The government is great, says government)

Saturday, 28 March 2009 15:16

Tánaiste Mary Coughlan has said the Government made very good decisions about how to invest our money in recent years.

(Token Fianna Fail woman Mary Coughlan has said she gambled our money wisely in recent years.)

Minister Coughlan defended how the Government handled the economy during an interview with Marian Finucance on RTÉ radio.

(Coughlan was being grilled by Smoky Finucane on the radio when she complimented herself.)

She admitted that there was an over reliance on the construction industry and said the country took its eye off the ball and was over exuberant.

(She admitted being in the pocket of a handful of building barons and blamed everybody else for her carelessness and champagne-tent insouciance)

However she said we did not blow the boom because we paid off our debt, invested in pensions and provided new services.

(However, not all of our short term winnings were wasted: Bobo Justus got his dues without having to work us over with the oranges, the “legitimate” financial industry also got paid and a few people got meals on wheels or new blackboards or what-have-you.)

The Minister for Enterprise Trade and Employment also said competitiveness is hugely important and she is looking at ways we can reduce costs and attract more investment here.

(Coughlan, who is also the minister for outsourcing and laying off people, said that for Irish business to succeed, Irish workers must earn less, and that she is looking at ways of attracting back the mercurial investment capital that has stood us in such good stead in these hard times.)

However she said we are not a low cost economy and that is not necessarily where the Irish people want to be.

(However, she reiterated that workers earn too much and that is not necessarily where capital wants to be.)

A great deal between employers and unions is being trumpeted around about now in Poland. In return for an end to “temporary” work contracts with durations of up to twenty years, the unions have agreed to increased elasticity of working hours. Many people will be familiar with the abuse of temporary work contracts; the three month probation period followed by the one year contract followed by the sack followed by – six months later, to get around the law – another one-year contract and so on until you drop down dead without a pension. Presumably, many people will soon become familiar with the abuse of “elastic” working hours.

Permit me to indulge in my radicalism here – but why did the unions agree to give anything in return for an end to this abuse? They are effectively buying their way out of exploitation. When an East European prostitute finally earns enough money to buy her passport back from the gangster who confiscated it after telling her she would be working in a German restaurant this is hardly to be greeted as a great victory for workers’ rights.