CameronPoe wrote:
kr@cker wrote:
Your GNP is so high cuz you spend all your time making liquor, the universal resource, maybe if you'd have sobered up you would have remembered to feed your potatoes. All those poor starving potatoes dying in that famine, really, what got into you.
Actually our GNP is so high because we have one of the most highly educated work forces in the world. Our primary source of income is in IT. Companies like Intel and Google have based their international headquarters here in Dublin. We don't need potatoes anymore - we can import truffles and caviar now. Yum.
Economists remind us, however, that much industry in the country is foreign owned. So to judge by living standards, income earned by foreign assets should be added to GDP, and income paid to foreign creditors deducted in order to arrive at gross national product (GNP). By this standard, Ireland's GNP is about 12 percent lower than its GDP.
Foreign investment and ownership are the keys to Ireland's success, observers say. The country really has two economies. Ireland's own economic policies are still backward, unproductive and labor-intensive. Foreigners, however, have introduced a modern, exceptionally productive and capital intensive economy.
In two policy areas has Ireland come to its own rescue: attracting foreign investment and fiscal reform.
Government borrowing was so badly out of control in the 10 years leading to 1987 that public debt soared from 65 percent of national income to nearly 120 percent.
Today, public debt is less than 80 percent of GDP and dropping fast -- while new borrowing has fallen to almost nothing.
The stock of direct investment in Ireland from America alone stood at $10 billion in 1994 -- equal to $3,000 per capita.
Foreign-owned firms are now said to account for 30 percent of the economy and 40 percent of exports.
Here is a statistic that dramatically demonstrates the two economies of Ireland: Output by worker in foreign manufacturing firms is estimated to be nearly three time higher than in their domestically owned counterparts.
Source: "Europe's Tiger Economy,"Economist, May 17, 1997.
In summation, this article is stating that many foreign investors saw a cheap labor force and an undeveloped industrial potential and sent some capital to Ireland. You're economy has been "colonized" by foreigners.
Really I have nothing against Ireland, it's just the way you keep presenting your arguments. I believe that the fact that any society believes that it is "the best" is the single best reason why it isn't. Yes, I have posted many pro-american tags but these have generally been defenses against myopic anti-american rhetoric advanced by the likes of, say, Michael Moore.
And after some thought Ronny and horseman, perhaps considering the vast variations in the American demographic perhaps comparing the US to the EU as a whole is the only fair way to do it.
Caviar sucks
Last edited by kr@cker (2006-05-27 07:40:52)