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The Luck of the Irish Runs Out
theodp writes "Looks like threatening to take their ball and leave paid off for US tech firms. The Irish government announced plans this week to tap the welfare state and working class for much of the $20B in savings they've pledged to find over the next four years, but the austerity measures will not touch large businesses like Microsoft, Intel, Google, HP, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Pfizer, which created jobs and fueled exports in Ireland after being lured by low corporate tax rates. More than 100,000 Dubliners took to the streets to protest the bailout plan, calling for the Irish government to default on the country's debts, and demanding an immediate election. 'We should default,' said a retired union worker, 'the idea that the workers of this country should pay for the gambling of the billionaires is disgusting.'"
Nothing bad will happen if corporate tax rates are raised in Ireland! That's just fear-mongering by the poor-hating conservatives!
The US has been doing that, *and* heaping on all kinds of other taxes, *plus* tons of regulation on manufacturing and business, along with increasingly-heavy emphasis on unionization with incredible pension and healthcare costs for ages now, and our economy, trade balances, and employment levels are just...oh, wait.
Never mind. Carry on.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
As usual, many people are quick to defend these pricks, saying that if it weren't for them, everyone would be out of a job. Yes, the economy is in their power. Calling that a mutually beneficial relationship sounds like Stockholm syndrome.
It's also a correct observation. We do have a mutually beneficial relationship with businesses, including corporations.
If your very survival depends on receiving a living wage from a corporation that can simply choose to go away if it is asked to pay for the infrastructure it also uses
This bugs me a lot. There's a zillion people talking about "infrastructure" in the comments, but I doubt most such government activity benefits rather than hinders business.
For example, every developed world country has a big public pension problem. Public pensions don't provide a whit of benefit for business. Instead they merely drive up the cost of labor and/or increase government spending. Yet corporations "use" this "infrastructure". Regulation is another net negative for business (especially the rules on how to conduct business such as hiring and firing workers), yet they pay for (that is, "use") it, both in taxes and compliance. Then there's a considerable amount of rent-seeking (mostly in the form of subsidies). Sure some businesses benefit from that, but it's collective harm for most business. Google doesn't take advantage of agriculture or aerospace subsidies.
Finally, I gather from comments that a big portion of the current Irish budget problem is debt for bailing out banks. Yet another activity that didn't benefit Google, but Google is expected to pay for.
Welcome to our new capitalist overlords!
Yes, make the underclass work harder and pay more taxes, Yahoo!
(I am aware that the type of mod points given for this comment depends mostly on the nationality of the mods. Let's see ... .)
say "citation needed" to your entire post, but you'd probably just provide some Fox News links and leave it at that.
- first of all I don't care about the ad-hominem implication there.
Secondly, you may want to look at the banks in countries that do not have an FDIC equivalent - New Zealand and Germany as simple examples. Yes, Germany controls the banks behavior somewhat, but it does not have FDIC equivalent, neither does N.Z.
Both of those countries bank systems dealt with the crisis much better because they had very little gambling with deposits, if they had it at all.
Regarding Mr Krugman, he is absolutely correct that hiring people to dig and fill ditches would do wonders for the economy
- wow.
Insane in the brain much?
What, does digging ditches make you happy? Why just not give out free money WITHOUT forcing people to do useless labor, that even ends up being a net negative on the economy even from simple view of traffic jam creation. That's just so stupid, I can't help you. For somebody who implies I am a 'fox viewing Republican/Creationist', you are displaying the intelligence of one.
It's how we got out of our last Depression.
- the one that gov't created.
But you are so wrong on this. The way USA got out of the Great Depression (G.D. from now on) is by STOPPING the government spending!
That's right. Gov't stopped spending on the war effort, and the capital that was diverted to that was then reapplied to the private sector and the cheap labor in form of the soldier, who returned from the war was then hired to produce the goods that the entire world needed.
US was in a unique position of having the infrastructure intact after the WWII, unlike most other countries and there was a huge demand by all those countries for all the consumer goods US could produce with its intact infrastructure and cheap post-war labor, all while having the USD being reserve currency, which allowed US to print and spend so much money by exporting the inflation to all other nations.
How wonderful to know, that that very system provided you with all this valuable education you are displaying here.
I always get a kick out of it when some computer support specialist first class in a comments section thinks a Nobel Prize winner has it all wrong.
- I get a kick out of the fact that Krugman still didn't give the Nobel Prize back even though he doesn't even understand what inflation is.
Cheers.
You can't handle the truth.
You may very well be correct, but your argument would be just as convincing to me if
and who are you, anonymous coward, and why should I care to reply to somebody who says "ME, I", while not even having a user account?
You can't handle the truth.
Free market is a fair judge, treats all the same and the winners and losers are decided only by their merits, not by who they know.
Distributing wealth according to "merit", which you probably define as intelligence, talent, education, luck and hard-working-ness, is only marginally preferrable to distributing according to nepotism and personal connections; there's little someone can do to influence either set of criteria.
An equal distribution of wealth is far fairer; at the very least, no one should be abandoned in poverty while his fellow citizens spend extravagantly, even if this requires a state-defined limit to the wealth any one individual can amass.
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