We’ve come to that time of year when we reflect on the year that has just passed and look forward to what 2019 might bring. For most, I suspect, 2018 has not been a very positive year, with Trump, Brexit, Syria, Yemen, the Ukraine, the refugee crisis, terrorist attacks and natural disasters putting a damper on feelings.
The global economy has continued to grow, but most of the benefits still go to the already rich. Employment and wages growth has been anemic and the gilet jaune protests have highlighted the difficulties which people in even relatively rich countries like France are having in maintaining a reasonable standard of living.
Brexit has highlighted the effectiveness of divide and conquer political tactics in scapegoating immigrants, refugees, and the already marginalised for the problems which ordinary people are experiencing. Hungary and Poland have managed to compromise a free media and judicial independence and Greece is left to suffer enormous deprivation with little EU solidarity and support.
Great uncertainty leading to market volatility and political instability has been reducing investment, growth, consumer confidence, and political ambition. Most people seem to be expecting things to get worse before they can get better, and some doubt whether they will get better at all, with climate warming worsening and threatening to accelerate out of control.
So I would ask readers here take some time out from the end of year festivities to share their experiences of 2018 and hopes for 2019. Is it as bad as I have painted above, or am I missing some green shoots of a more healthy model of politics and economics taking hold? Will DiEM25 usher in a new era of transnational politics in 2019 or will hard right nationalist parties continue to make gains? Will governments start addressing economic, regional, and inter-generational inequality more effectively or are our children destined to be much worse off than we were?
Your thoughts, please.
Ireland has been a bright spot in a sea of gloom with a series of social reforms culminating in the legalisation of abortion being approved by a two thirds majority of the Irish people in a referendum in May and subsequently enacted in legislation just before the end of the year. Other recent referenda have provided for marriage equality and the de-criminalisation of blasphemy by similar margins.
The economy has been approaching Celtic Tiger boom time growth rates again with 10%+ expected for 2018 and a projected 4% in 2019 (assuming a soft Brexit). Once again these figures are distorted by the activities of global companies basing their HQs in Ireland and state finances are currently experiencing a non-sustainable boom in corporate tax receipts as companies seek the maximise the benefits of Trump’s corporate tax “reforms”. Fears that the economy will over-heat in 2019 will probably lesson if there is a hard Brexit, as I expect.
For all the artificiality and non-sustainability of some of this “growth” there have been real benefits in terms of unemployment (down from 6.2 to 5.2% over the past 12 months), employment (plus c. 50K on a base of 2,221K in past 12 Months) and rising wages. However the inability of the government to effectively tackle rising healthcare waiting lists (despite massively increased expenditure), homelessness, availability of affordable housing, and availability of broadband in rural Ireland is creating major inequality and resentment.
Varadker’s government could be the first to be turfed out of office despite delivering rapid economic growth if it does not tackle these growing problems more effectively, and his adherence to neo-liberal market based “solutions” is not helping matters in this regard. His perceived success in the Brexit negotiations will also count for little if a hard Brexit ensues causing further difficulty for more rurally based agriculture and food producing industries.
The Urban rural divide may become the defining feature of Irish politics in the next few years unless tackled more effectively.
Rural/urban divide seems to be a common theme in so many places. That definitely stood out in the US during the midterms. Urban and suburban areas (and perhaps to a lesser degree exurban areas) trended Democratic whereas rural areas generally trended GOP (or Party of Individual 1, as I prefer to call it). I notice it a good deal just where I live and whenever I visit either side of the family.
Here in the US, one can throw out a number of notable events that likely will mark the history of 2018.
First, I’d note that the electorate did indeed evade our 1933 Moment and deliver a partial rebuke to Der Trumper and his National Trumpalism by decimating Ryan’s horrendous Repub House of Corruption. National Trumpalist gains in the senate allowed the Trumpalists to bleat out tepid claims of victory, but it’s doubtful that’s what historians will conclude. What Pelosi’s incoming House can actually accomplish in the face of the braindead Trumpalism of 45% of the citizenry, a thoroughly useless corporate media and a “conservatized” judiciary is another matter, but at least water can be tread until 2020. The federal courts will, of course, be destroyed as a responsible national institution, but given our extremely anti-democratic and antiquated constitutional system, stopping this was a bridge too far.
Rising in importance, the next critical event for us would have to be the installation of the 5th “conservative” vote on our now completely democratically-illegitimate Supreme Court. The confirmation of the almost-comically partisan Justice Boofer gives Roberts a five man extremist majority to rule however he would like on any given case/issue, with himself as the new “swing” vote, should he feel a need to present some phony cover for his actions and throw an occasional bone to the supposed principle of neutral judging. The absurd Boofer gives “conservatives” a working and committed rightwing majority to do whatever “conservative” activists and their law brigades might wish for over the next few decades, making any future hopes of progressive legislation stillborn. The loss of the Supreme Court in our system is decisive and few Americans understand how critical was this defeat. This “conservative” victory is either overturned in some way or liberal politics are doomed.
Finally, and greatest in order of importance, 2018 marks perhaps the first year where the world can see the clear outline of the man-made climate and the loss of the natural climate, with the serial out-of-control fires in CA and the ever increasing hurricanes of the Atlantic as Exhibit A. The national forests are dying at alarming rates, and the extreme precip events are occurring across all temperate zones. Winters across the northern climes bear no resemblance to those of 50 years ago, it’s simply and undeniably a totally different climate at this point. If Putin’s Russia had any any interest in documenting the destruction, the melting of the permafrost would be jaw dropping. The pathetic too-little, too-late global scramble (which TrumpAmerica is sitting out) will be seen as the hapless charade that it is by historians, and I am confident that the entire global calamity will ultimately be laid at the feet of the American “conservative” movement and its plutocrats–who did absolutely everything they could to be a fatal millstone around the neck of world leaders attempting to save the planet in the small window of time that we had.
I’ll leave others more competent to comment on the events of note in Russia, China and the EU, the Great Powers of the early 21st Century.
A diary recommendation by ask!
Posted @EuroTrib:
Visiting Lyon by ask and curly in 2010
Ask just visited @BooMan, glad he came around! It’s been a long, long time ago.
[…]
From an earlier comment here @BooMan … threatened to be hidden by the official blog police. 🙁
Sad people.