Sometimes, There Are No Good Decisions

Where Icesave used to be the topic that everyone loves to hate to talk about, it's now the economy. I can honestly say I am glad - no, delighted that I am not in parliament anymore, because whenever the subject of the economy comes up, you'll hear plenty of opinions about what this government is doing, and none of these opinions are good.

Forget the fact that Moody's raised Iceland's rank from Negative to Stable, or that unemployment is decreasing, or that inflation is dropping. It's been a little over a year since the Social Dems and Leftist-Greens took over, and these changes for the better are not enough to satiate most people. In fairness, most people aren't really feeling these changes in their daily lives, and there's still some complicated stuff going on with how to deal with personal loans. But worst of all, the government needs to make more cuts still.

Cue the latest decision from upstairs: Minister of Social Affairs Árni Páll Árnason announced yesterday a salary cap on public employees until the year 2013. His reasoning is it's either salary caps, or people getting fired.

I'm a public employee. My day job is working at an occupational center for disabled people. We're under the Ministry of Social Affairs. Come 2011, we're going to be under the command of the municipal government, and who knows how that's going to go. We've been told it won't be any worse than working for the state. Wow, awesome. That's reassuring.

Anyway, people at work today were pretty upset about the salary cap, and they wouldn't be alone - the Union of Public Servants is frankly furious about this right now.

And that's just the thing. Whenever the government needs to save money, there are two choices: make cuts or raise taxes. Everyone knows this. Yet neither decision is going to make anyone happy. Wherever you cut, or whoever has to pay more taxes, the government is going to get flack for it.

The worst part of all is that the Independence Party - the same guys who trashed our economy - are actually growing in popularity, while support for the ruling coalition is decreasing. The conservatives are still not as popular as the ruling coalition, but come on. It's been a year, people. We're not living the high life by any stretch and we still gotta long way to go, but why would you hand this country back to the people who bankrupted us?

It's like an abusive relationship or something. "He said he was sorry. Maybe this time, he means it." Snap out of it already!