In commenting on the difference between the gloomy prognostications of the CSO and the more bullish posture of the ESRI, Marc Coleman, Economics Editor of the Irish Times, says that regardless of what the final rate might be "we are entering a phase of yellow-pack growth". This felicitous phrase adverts to the situation where growth comes comes increasingly from consumer spending and will also reflect weaker corporate profits. Yellow-pack growth might also usefully refer to a state of affairs where the focus on driving up employment levels is taken to be the sole criteria of economic health.
It's understandable that, after decades of relatively high unemployment and emigration, the idea that any job is a good job should seem like common sense. But what of the social consequences of this type of growth - for the workplace and for work-life balance? A new collection of writings edited by Gerry Boucher and Grainne Collins has just been published that looks at just such issues. The New World of Work: Labour Markets in Contemporary Ireland focuses on how changing patterns of work have profound social consequences.
The book is highly critical of what it terms "Irish neo-liberalism", although I can find no rigorous definition of the latter term but the editors claim that it is "reflected in the shrinking of the Irish state and in negative social outcomes". Interestingly, the contradiction between the European style corporatist type structure (ie social partnership) and the content of individualised policies at the level of the firm is strongly highlighted.
It also struck me that not one of the authors is an economist, at least in terms of being attached to an economics department of any third level college. It seems there is a great institutionalised gulf between the perspectives of economists, in the strict sense of professional affiliation, and many other academics who write about economic issues but who are mostly attached to sociology or social policy departments.
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