About 66,500 companies received a total of €2. 9 billion from the now-expired temporary wage subsidy scheme. The state paid out €2.9 billion of public money to mostly private companies to pay the wages of 664,000 employees; and that extraordinary news made the headlines for about eighteen hours. After that you had to search it out and would mostly find it in the finance sections of the media.
The fact that capitalism had collapsed, and had to rely on state handouts of public money, barely caused a ripple on the “news” front. There were no long opinion or analysis pieces, not even an acknowledgement of the role the state played not only in the support of wages for workers but for the enormous pay-out and bail-out enjoyed by the mostly private sector.
Such deserving causes as Irish Cement, Goodbody Stockbrokers, Anglo Beef Processors, Aer Lingus, Cityjet and the Irish Times stretched out their greedy claws to compete with essential services such as Bus Éireann, Iarnród Éireann, RTE and thousands of smaller companies to pocket public funds at a time when that money could and should have been used for public health and the provision of other essential services.
Not only did they take the money but then they hid the fact – aided and abetted by our mass media and their compliant “journalists” – that capitalism could not last a day without state support.
Nobody understands socialism more than these vultures, and the phrase “socialism for the rich” has never had a better chance of being exposed. Of course it was not exposed, but just round the corner there will be plenty of news about social welfare “fraud.” Fraud? €2.9 billion is simply an extraordinary continuation of “supports” and “incentives” poured out every day to subsidise capitalism. €2,900,000,000 is a lot of money; but our media and their “journalists” could not find a cent gone astray.
When they go looking they will look in all the wrong places. And “socialism for the rich” will keep giving and giving as the vultures keep taking and taking.
