The Gospel, has a very challenging relationship with economics. Justice, is at the heart of the Gospel message. In growing and vibrant economy those who have, benefit most. The gospel speaks counter culturally to this reality. We live in a thriving economy. Billions and billions of euro in surplus, makes for extraordinary responsibility, regarding how best to spend, or prudently safeguard, for our future. Jesus had a clear preferential option to enhance the quality of lives for those who were on the periphery. I wonder how he would spend the billions of euro recently received from Apple. Pope Francis highlighted a central theme from his Evangelii Gaudium: the need to address the problems of the poor by rejecting the absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation. He pointed out that “we all depend on the poor, even the rich.”20 Sept 2024

Here’s a question. If you won the Lotto what would you do with, say, a €4 million euro prize? It’s a question with multiple possible answers falling somewhere between twin possible extremes – spend the lot on a party or put some away for the rainy day. In other words, the short view or the long view. The answer depends on where you’re coming from – between the extremes of someone who needs a house for their family and an investment banker in thrall to one particular form of economic wisdom.

Two realities impinge on deciding what to do with the Apple money. One is that there are now polls of every description almost every few days depicting the latest popular preference of the ever-increasing demands of a fussy electorate. There is now a constant wealth of information on voters’ intentions with clear indications about what they want, expect or demand the new government to do. At least for today or this week!

It’s the price we pay for our modern communications and media networks, internet, social media, radio and television and, of course, the mass opinion-polling we take for granted today. Now everyone’s opinion –   regardless of common sense (or other mitigating factors) – receives attention (sometimes, maybe often) beyond its due.

When Abraham Lincoln memorably proposed government ‘of the people, by the people, for the people’, communications and media networks were basic and ineffective with no facility for the mass opinion-polling we take for granted today.

The difficult truth now is that while ‘of the people’ and ‘for the people’ seem to make democratic sense, the notion of direct government ‘by the people’ makes no sense at all because the obvious truth is that the public is notoriously fickle, changing their minds and, with respect, many are incapable of even understanding some of the choices that government financial experts are faced with.

What did people want from the recent budget. Some wanted lower taxes. Others wanted better services. And some wanted lower taxes and better services, even when it’s clear that you can’t have both. Some wanted a stringent response to climate change but believed that farmers, for example, shouldn’t have to change their practices. Others wanted more housing but would be unhappy if they were pressurised into selling land or even if a new housing estate was proposed near them. And there are some who wanted everything and some who clearly didn’t know what they wanted.

There is a point at which governments have to make decisions, not based on the often contradictory demands of a volatile electorate because, as Matthew Parris wrote recently in the London Times, ‘public demand is evanescent, often unrealistic, even contradictory, and frequently plain daft’.

An example of this daft madness is the often-vacuous outpourings of self-styled leaders of the anti-immigrant movement who spout the greatest nonsense and imagine that the louder they shout and the more obnoxious they are in confronting politicians the more people will cheer them. What they don’t seem to understand is that spouting political simplicities and presuming they can speak for the people  – ‘Ballydehob says NO to immigrants’ (even though the people of Ballydehob said no such thing) – simply convinces those they are trying to impress that such self-appointed ‘leaders’ need to be given as wide a possible berth as possible.

Politicians who try to bring such extremists with them are effectively giving a public platform and an undue status to malcontents who will never be satisfied no matter how politicians twist and turn to appease them. And while politicians will instinctively always try to ‘run with the hare and hunt with the hound’ in the interests of maximising their vote, appeasing discontents is, what a Northern politician once controversially described as, ‘the dangerous practice of feeding the crocodile’.

What is needed is an adult response to the present windfall of the Apple tax with a responsible allocation based on need, not least the long-term implications that the mixed benefit the windfall brings with it – including the inevitable damage to the country’s reputation (deserved or undeserved) for dodgy forms of tax relief. Strident populist voices encouraging the equivalent of a booze-up need to be stoutly resisted.

With the Apple €14 billion dangling before political parties now framing their election manifestos, we need sensible and responsible leadership in our prosperous times.

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