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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.'"
Going default will be a short-lived remedy. The country will go back to 1990 in terms of market appeal and productivity. And yes, if the big tech companies leave, the hope of reacquiring a high-tech knowledge industry will go away as well.
"Sum Ergo Cogito"
the mobility of capital is a good thing.
I am curious how important foreign companies really are for Ireland. Are there any figures to support their government's decision ?
'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.
Yes, the "billionaires" lead the whole pack, and all that. However - not many of the proles stop to look around and wonder what brings the semi-dream around them while it lasts - but they do enjoy it. And cherish promises.
That doesn't go only for the Irish of course.
One that hath name thou can not otter
calling for the Irish government to default on the country's debts
Who would ever lend Ireland money ever again?
I dream of a nation where a man is not judged by his skin color but by an number assigned by a credit rating agency.
Look, left-wing parties are likely to do well in our next election, but no-one sensible here, left or right, wants to raise the corporation tax rate. These companies provide our jobs.
If a raise would be announced, ordinary people here would really start to protest.
-- *~()____) This message will self-destruct in 5 seconds...
It's the private bank's debts.
For some unknown reason the Irish government decided to guarantee all debts by banks in Ireland including banks that are owned and run by people who are not Irish or based in Ireland. These debts were not sovereign debts until the Irish government decided to unilaterally back them without any good cause. They did this back in 2008 and it's only now that they massive amount that they've basically handed over to private investors is becoming apparent.
It's pretty nuts that private investors had hoped to make money by investing in Irish banks - but now that they're actually facing losses the people of Ireland are going to step up and cover all these debts. So for the private investors it's a case of head I win, tails you lose - where there is no risk of the private investors losing any money - and no chance for the public to get a share of the profits that banks were making in the good times.
"Free software as in beer, copy protection as in racket" - Telsa Gwynne
I'm a little sick of all those who live in a democracy, who hailed capitalism as the new world order and only now, that they find themselves at the short end of it, find others (government, banks, world bank, Europe, China) to blame. You voted for this! This does not mean that you can be dissatisfied with your government but please don't forget your own role in this. What did you do from 2000 to 2010 if it was all so wrong?
Ireland is being criticized by the EU for unfair tax exemptions for certain businesses, they say other EU countries can't compete. But 20% of Ireland's GDP comes from foreign companies so there's no shaking them.
Tech jobs are the only jobs that are still available in Ireland. We went from 4% unemployment to 12% in 2 years. [rant]There's a levy on the wages already, they argued that we had one of hte highest minimum wages in Europe.. but we also have one of the highest costs of living.. they're raising taxes on the poor, the rich already have to pay 40% tax so it would have been insane to touch that... but people are still complaining about it (go figure). the HSC has already done everything possible to destroy free medicine (and blamed it on the chemists by trying to force them to sell things at a loss and then saying with the support of the press they are evil capitalists for refusing) health care is damaged, free education is gone, language support for immigrant children gone, class sizes bigger..... Oh I could go on and on but I'm ranting.. all the perks are gone. The country is fecked, but no one is going to starve. And a poor person in ireland is still financially 150 times better off than a poor person in America, our social welfare never runs out, and everyone is always entitled to whatever health care they need. [/rant]
it's under construction
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_38-q8warc
Should be the more appropriate headline here.
Posts, MyBio or Sig, may contain satire, sarcasm, bolded nouns be sardonic or even witty & be Church of SD
It surely serves the people well when corporations look out only for their own interests, and selfishly ignore the consequences of their own actions.
Ireland decided to get in bed with a bunch of tramps, and now they're paying the price.
Hopefully even if they don't learn a lesson from this, somebody else will take their mistake for what it is, a clear sign that these folks don't have any interests in mind but their own.
If Ireland has any sense, they'll realize they'll be forced to go along, but they'll get every single concession they can out of the business.
The Irish Times and The Irish Independent both claim 50,000.
There was never any serious proposal to raise the corporation tax rate in Ireland, it's the one non-negotiable position of the Irish government and always has been. Having a low rate is also popular generally, though many would feel the rate could go up a few percent (though still well below other many other European countries) so that corporations do contribute more, but no-one seriously proposes raising it dramatically. What should perhaps be changed are the rules about moving profits around so that multinationals actually pay the 12.5%. I read this week Google only paid a few million in tax last year. It's not the rate, it's the application of the rate. Germany may have a nominal rate much higher than Ireland but the effective rate is often much lower due to special tax breaks in certain sectors.
Ireland had an economic crisis before with the potato famine and the constant terrorism with the IRAs as well means that Ireland is more trouble than its worth. Let Ireland sink due to global warming already.
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.
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, then you are not living a "dream" generously provided by altruistic corporations, but in slavery to organizations who can let you starve if they wanted to. Not only workers, even governments are forced to debase themselves before these corporations, lowering their living standard, their wage expectations, cutting their social system and their taxes bit by bit to compete with other countries that are forced to do the same.
Ireland, and the entire European Union at that, should make a stand against this and play hardball. The fact is that while corporations can move their production elsewhere, they do have to sell something eventually. A high-tech market requires a high-tech industry to flourish: If corporations leave the country, the economy goes to shit and nobody can afford the flashy gizmos these corporations are selling. Standardize the tax hike over all EU states, accompany it with an import tariff on technology not produced inside the country, and suddenly paying a little more corporate tax will seem like a much better alternative. The workers are not only their slaves, but also their customers.
... $SUBJECT is a sincere question!
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.
The only people who wanted the Irish to raise their corporate tax levels were other countries who had, themselves, got higher rates of these taxes. It's a given that no country has the right to determine the tax rates in another country - short of invading them. The Irish know that as did these french^H^H^H^Horeign governments. What they were saying was purely for domestic consumption - since they would not have gained anything by an increase. The companies affected would NOT have moved their operations to (say) france or germany, as those places still have higher CT rates than an increased irish rate would have been. Plus, they make it harder to employ people "flexibly", have higher costs of doing business and don't speak english.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
http://www.economist.com/node/17577107
I watched a German documentary this morning about how the Euro was bad (German is not my mother tongue, but I am fluent and could understand everything). Some of the stuff in that was political dynamite: I don't think that politicians in Europe understand the powder keg that they are sitting on.
From the The Economist article,
The most concerned onlooker is Germany, which sees its credit lying behind the entire euro area. As ever, Europe’s biggest tabloid, Bild, captured the mood this week, asking “First the Greeks, then the Irish, thenwill we end up having to pay for everyone in Europe?
Oh, let's piss off the Germans . . .grand idea . . . in Europe, that always ends in tears.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
For a company that is all about being good, Google strong arms its tax sheltered position quite liberally across the globe. It's really sad to see that they cannot afford to pay taxes equally for the infrastructure from which they suck. Fucking pricks.
Why are they broke in the first place? Isn't it the welfare state's massive spending? Doesn't sound like billionaires gambling to me.
Going default will be a short-lived remedy. The country will go back to 1990 in terms of market appeal and productivity. And yes, if the big tech companies leave, the hope of reacquiring a high-tech knowledge industry will go away as well.
The main problem is the fact that big companies now are so powerful that they can hold entire tax systems hostage... they can play countries out against each other.
But instead of having a single EU corporate tax system (which imho would make sense), we have all kinds of other silly EU rules... and corporate taxes keep dropping in a futile attempt to lure more big business.
Governments should realize that big companies won't leave overnight. It'll take a little while to move people and offices.
At the same time, a lot of countries are suffering from the crisis - so if the Irish increase their tax together with a number of other countries, to give a clear signal, then they might get away with it... Shareholders and investors in stock markets should pay a part of the crisis too - they are at the root of its cause.
If a country defaults on its bonds, it will face difficulty in borrowing in the future. Consequently a country would need to have a balanced budget which leads to _more_ spending cuts or/and tax increases.
Why cant they simply impound the corporate assets, imprison/publicly execute the execs under some made up law and sell off all the impounded corporate property incl. IP and know-how to the highest bidder? Methinks that would be profitable for the state AND show multinationals who _really_ has the power. Or is the irish government afraid to exercise their sovereign rights?
A parable on taxing the rich: http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2007/03/barstool-tax-policy.html
The UK should buy Ireland, It'd look much neater on a map.
The EU will pump € 85 billion into Ireland.
Equity tied to property is how real value has been disconnected from financial worth. To our parents the roof over your head was never considered an investment or a source of income. It was deemed a necessity that had to be payed for and really had little to do with an individuals financial future other than as an expense. Here we are creating an economy around an investment that has no real substance. It produces nothing.
So essentially the banks have financed huge amounts debt to be repaid by individuals that might not have work next month. So as these individuals lose their employment they count on being able to flip their mortgage in a hurry and perhaps cash in some of the imaginary wealth that the property has gained over a short term. Then a bank finances someone else at a greater principle amount and the individual that flipped the property has some small income to get by till they find another job.
This is the financial equivalent of a snake eating it's tail and will be the downfall of financial systems in the British Isles, Canada and Australia. It already hit the US and has created huge public debt for our children to pay off. The chickens are starting to come home to roost and the concept of real estate and all the hype that we have created around it will cause financial instability and bank failure on a massive scale within the next 3 years. So hold on to your hats the shit is about to hit the fan in more than just Ireland. Every time some real estate agent leaves advertising in my mail box asking me to flip with their firm I feel just about them same way as being solicited by a funeral director.
= 1440 NetBSD The Cathedral needs OS. Now BSDI states that there TO HAVE TO DECIDE turd-suckingly = 1400 NetBSD plainly states that had at lunchtime what we've known
This is Krugman we are talking about here, right? Krugman, the guy who believes that the gov't should hire people to dig ditches and then fill them back up just to 'create jobs' during recessions, just another Keynesian shaman, who believes that printing and borrowing money is the answer to everything, even to the problems that were caused by the printing and borrowing and low interest rates in the first place.
However he IS right for the wrong reasons, I think this is normal for him - to be right for the wrong reasons, though he is mostly wrong.
In this case it is true, there should be no moral hazard introduced into economy by any government. But that's the problem - moral hazard that gov't introduces for example by insuring bank deposits. FDIC is such a moral hazard, which was created to fight an imaginary problem (actual percentage of lost deposits during the gov't created Great Depression did not exceed 3%).
FDIC though is a terrible moral hazard (and countries with no gov't deposit insurance do much better during the recessions, because their banks are less likely to gamble with deposits by defaults, since their customers, who are lending the banks their deposit money, do not automatically assume that the banks are always solvent, that their deposits are gov't ensured, so banks have to earn trust of their customers by not fooling around with the money.)
The correct thing to do is to have gov't stay out of economic decisions, to never have gov't interfere with economy and price discovery and interest rates and money creation and not to let gov't to modify economic outcomes for anybody in the market, be it a corporation or a union or any particular individual.
Gov'ts should not be in business, especially not in insurance, they are terrible, they think they are always solvent, they don't understand risks, they limit damage to some artificial numbers (like the BP liability cap). The FDIC, the Freddie/Fannie, the health insurance, the student loans, the minimum wage, the price controls, the subsidies and bail outs, the stimulus packages, the money printing and borrowing, etc.etc.etc. All of this is gov't interfering with economy.
I am not even suggesting that gov't is evil (well, we shouldn't 'question their motives', right?)
But imagine a small planet orbiting its Sun, and then imagine a gigantic asteroid that is about to hit that planet and push it off the normal orbit.
Is the asteroid evil? Is the planet good?
But what about the ecosystem on the planet, that supports some form of life, that evolved to live there based on the planet's orbit, the climate, the specific amounts/limits of energy that the Sun is providing? Various factors we can't even think of yet. All of that is disturbed and even destroyed once the asteroid hits that planet and it goes off its normal orbit.
Same with economy. The rules of economy are quite simple - market trading based price discovery sets everything, from interest rates to the price of your doughnut, to the labor cost, to the amount of real money and wealth, to the competition between all market players, everything.
Then the gov't decides it's going to force interest rates to 0%, it will print money to cover all borrowing and private bets of preferred players, it will create various moral hazards and it will negate the rules of market price discovery, etc.etc.
The orbit is no longer what it should be, the ecosystem is screwed. All of this is because the gov't has the power to compel you to do what you do not want to do by the threat of violence.
It's similar violence that the asteroid exerts upon an unsuspecting planet, the results is similar.
You can't handle the truth.
They should just ask for help from the same people who helped fund the IRA' murderous bombing campaign, i.e. the yanks. Bet funding terrorism seemed a jolly good "craic" back then, still karma can be a bit of a bitch as the found out on 11/9.
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 ... .)
I don't think that "threatening to take their ball and leave" by the big USA companies has been a very big factor in this Irish government plan. Looking at it that way is very chauvinistic and in my opinion shows a very limited and one-sided view of the world economy. They were facing being cast out of the EU and are in a lot more trouble financially, than just with a few USA companies that already have left Ireland for a good part anyhow.
The Irish government probably figured that any production or tech support job, no matter who owned the company, was making the Irish economy money. The only reason production companies are producing in Ireland and not in China is because of EU tax regulations. Anything not manufactured in the EU is heavily taxed. A lot of manufacturing (Dell is a good example) has already moved out of Ireland to new EU countries like Poland in the last years. You won't believe how many unemployed computer assembly workers there are in Ireland at the moment. Raising taxes may be of some influence to production, but it's very limited since the bulk has moved away to cheaper countries already.
As to the tech/help desk centers they have there. Real estate and wages are comparatively cheap in Ireland, especially compared to the level of schooling. Any other country in the western EU would still be more expensive to go to. You can't outsource everything to India (believe me, they keep trying) so "leaving Ireland if taxes rise" is not a serious threat at all for the bulk of those industries. Try finding people speaking at least 3 European languages (there are over 20) and with enough education to do advanced tech support. You won't find enough of them outside of Europe on one location. Maybe in the future, Africa (with a lot of people speaking French and English) will be providing here, but that will take another 10 years at least. Catering Eastern Europe will be done from the east, where labor is even cheaper and people speak those languages. Catering western Europe will continue from Ireland, even with raised taxes. Maybe, that will move to Eastern Europe in the future, but I doubt taxes will remain low there, they have to adhere to the same standards Ireland is now forced to uphold.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
I see, you hate the billionaires because they do not wish to pay you for your non-work when you retire. The answer for you is simple. Why do you accept the money they pay you for your legitimate hard work that provides you and your family your life? The power is in your hands!! If these greedy businessmen are so evil then simply stop taking their money in exchange for your work. If you're so fucking smart and can do it so much better then do so! Start your own businesses and employ others. Make value (i.e. products and services) and exchange value for value in the open market place and soon, guess what? You'll end up understanding them and acting exactly as they do. Or, if your method is so righteous and correct, you'll conquer the world with your superior form of business. But to sit around and bitch smacks to me as being just a pathetic loser. These people give you life by exchanging value for value (wages for work) and you're complaining. If you think you're not getting paid enough (or not getting enough benefits - read: money for nothing) then by all means put your damn money where you mouth is and go out and do better than those who you complain about or STFU!
Tell that to the people who will have to emigrate from Ireland in search of work. A bit of a sore point I believe because of history.
100 years ago, they travelled to the USA. Now they'd probably not be allowed entry because the USA frowns upon economic migrants.
"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.'"
Irish demand government to welsh on a bet.
What I found quite interesting is that they're planning to save something like 15bn a year in austerity measures, but something like 10-12bn of that will go on interest! So they'll only be managing to pay back 3bn each year at best! Crazy.
This is over-simplified. Germany might appear to be paying for Europe's bills, but how much of this "bailout" is going right back to German/US/etc. banks which would go bankrupt if the IMF / EU wasn't "bailing out" Ireland?
Follow the money, don't think just one move ahead. These bailouts are nothing more but the partial enslavement of Irish taxpayers in order to rescue foreign banks and governments.
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
I disagree with the tone of this article. When picking an article, I'm sure you get multiple submissions on the same topic; try to refrain from picking articles worded as "the government horsewhipped the destitute and needy for the enrichment and amusement of the rich and evil" and instead just report the facts.
In my opinion, if these tax exemptions cause a few of the working Irish to keep their jobs instead of losing them, they're better off as a whole.
Defaulting on debts would be an extremely bad position. It's an argument put forward by people who have absolutely no idea about finance.
Even just a default of not paying interest turn bonds into junk and utterly destroys your credit rating. Putting aside potential court battles from investors, the credit rating determines the yield (effectively the interest rate) you have to offer on your future issues. Any more money raised (crucially, this includes refreshing existing debt) suddenly becomes more expensive. Much more expensive - Germany's triple-A puts their bond yields at 3% while Greece is 11%. Ireland hit 9%, though this partially reflects the - hopefully temporary - uncertainty. Britain, which was never quite as bad as Ireland but I'll grudgingly accept reacted on the whole swiftly and decisively is around 4.5%. These rates reflect the market's perceived risk of default.
The effect of actually defaulting can last a very long time, investors will factor in your history of default probably for a generation or more.
Regardless, there seems to be this underlying relief that bond holders are responsible. Bond holders merely loan the government money, in normal times it's considered the risk-free rate, basically the equivalent of a bank account for large institutions. They didn't put Ireland in this mess, their government did, and the people didn't stop them. Maybe the unions should consider that the vast majority of the bond holders are their own pension schemes.
The argument about corporate taxes is a separate one. It's a complex situation because on the one hand, corporations do use resources and need to pay their way. On the other, they pay taxes, create tax-paying jobs, pay taxable dividends and inject capital into the economy which turns around a few times (similar to multiplier effect). Last I checked, Ireland doesn't really have much to attract corporations - minimal natural resources, geographically disadvantaged in moving goods into continental Europe, and a labour force that is reasonably skilled but a bit expensive (i.e. not particularly competitive). That leaves the almost sole competitive advantage being... Taxes.
For an analogy, say you rent a room in someone else's home. The property isn't especially fantastic and is not in a great area (actually it's a bit of a nuisance getting to work and friends), you would only describe your relationship to the homeowner as one of a landlord & tenant and there are lots of other people offering rooms to let - you only chose this place because it was cheapest. The landlord notifies you that the mortgage rate has increased so he wants to put the rent up. Wouldn't you be house-hunting tomorrow?
Corporations are not our friends. We use corporations and they use us.
There are already reasons why the whole practice of collecting taxes from companies should be stopped. For one thing, a company isn't a person, it's just a legal relationship between people who work together. Taxing the company is like taxing married individuals and then separately taxing the marriage itself. For another, business taxes aren't paid by the business, they're paid by the customers. Any tax levied on a company is just another expense that gets built into the price of the final product. We pay this at the cash register even though we don't know how much it is. The impossibility of figuring out how much of the price of any given product is tax makes business tax essentially a secret tax, which is not cool at all.
How many people does Facebook employ in Ireland (or anywhere outside the US for that matter)? I have a hard time imagining that a large part of the Irish economy is hinged on facebook; or at least enough to justify presenting this article first with the facebook logo...
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Are you kidding? Please come displace the mexicans who don't speak our language and won't integrate into our culture.
Dude, There aren't any jobs here either. Most of us will have to live in the nest our rich shit into.
Would these be the same Mexicans in the US of whom the majority can be found in the 1/3 or so of their country that the US robbed them of at gunpoint?
Or was it a universal feeling of entitlement while living in a welfare state?
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Tell that to the Irish who will have to emigrate.
You are aware of the fact that a lot of European IT people moved (mostly temporary) to Ireland to work there as they had trouble to fill in all the positions ? Who do you think will first be shafted ?
Ireland was/is used by US companies as a tax dodge mechanisme using intellectual properties shenanigans, the number of jobs created is negligible compared to the quantity of tax money lost by all European Union countries.
The reason the EUcrats backed off is that basically they understand zilch about economy and are listening to the lobbyist of the same companies who have actually created the problem.
It is a potato famine setup...
Disagreeing with something doesn't make it a troll.
Do not meddle in the affairs of geeks for they are subtle and quick to anger
This is not to say that I agree completely with the proposed changes - but when fiscal policy is discussed, the absence of tax increases are always treated (fiscally) as equal to a government benefit. It's not. Not confiscating lawfully-gained earnings is not the same thing as handing them out to someone else.
The USA only frowns upon brown economic migrants. The Irish are white and speak English, they'll be more welcome today than they were 100 years ago.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
In retrospect it is obvious that the state should not be insuring bank deposits when the amounts become so large relative to GDP, and maybe the Irish state should not have honored that pledge, but it's not stupid or corrupt of them to do so.
Also you can't blame this on free markets, insured deposits are extremely mainstream but have nothing to do with free markets. The problem with the regulators was that they were asleep or caught up in the exhilaration of the housing bubble.
In group behavior: 'because they're evil/morons/sheep/crazy' is not 'insightful' it's 'oversimplified'
Tell that to the people who will have to emigrate from Ireland in search of work. Now they'd probably not be allowed entry because the USA frowns upon economic migrants.
Then how do you explain the flood into the USofA of hordes of parasitic Indians. If Indians are not economic migrants the defintion must have been changed. Between the investment banks, corrupt CEOs and politicans, and India/China there is no hope for the middle class in any of the First World countries. Only a global war will resolve the situation.
Would these be the same Mexicans in the US of whom the majority can be found in the 1/3 or so of their country that the US robbed them of at gunpoint?
You mean, robbed at gunpoint from... the Spanish?
Did you miss the part of history class where they teach about the huge amounts of anti-Irish sentiment during their last mass migration to the US?
The capital deployed into a productive venture is a good thing. Speculative hot money pushed around various parts of the world does not accomplish anything except causing mayhem everywhere and enriching hot money pushers. And this is THE problem we suffer today. Too much hot money bumping around and too little capital willing to go into productive businesses (maybe except China).
Back to Ireland. They are now forced to do draconian austerity measures on everyone except the banksters and to accept "bailout" loan that will propably have ~7% interest attached to it (and it doesn't matter that they don't need any money until mid-2011 - "bailout" has been pushed down their throat anyway).
Over the course of this financial meltdown that has started in 2008 I see the same people that caused massive suffering of so many now 3-rd world countries (G. Soros, etc.) and it scares a hell of me. It seems that they are doing to as the same they did to so many other countries over the decades - just in a more outrageous way. In the past it was bankers pushing a country into massive debt by corrupting politicians into doing some, say, infrastructure projects that are far too expensive for such country (see most of South America, Indonesia etc.). Now I see some strange kind of "suicide bankers" bullying politicians using "whole economy will collapse if you won't bail us out" bullshit. So we end up giving outrageous sums of taxpayer money to those banks and then paying interest on it to the same bankers who got that money !! And then IMF comes in and forces crushing austerity measures on everyone except the bankers. This is the same kind of financial warfare they used in so many countries - just more sophiscated and effective.
In short: Bankers are doing the same thing to us they did to 3-rd world countries in prior decades. Expect life conditions worsening soon as we'll get "demodernized" by those corporate scumbags.
Are you kidding? Please come displace the mexicans who don't speak our language and won't integrate into our culture.
Would that be the so called "Native American" culture or the hodgepodge of cultureS brought in by immigrants from all around the world who then created the immigrant country known as United States of America?
Or are you talking about "Anglo-Saxon" culture, which would mean that the USA is still nothing more than a British colony? At least regarding its "culture".
Tell that to the Irish who will have to emigrate.
You are aware of the fact that a lot of European IT people moved (mostly temporary) to Ireland to work there as they had trouble to fill in all the positions ? Who do you think will first be shafted ?
The poor. Same as always.
Wealth has no nation or political affiliation. Nor does it smell.
Just like Nazi gold didn't smell for the Swiss or the Vatican.*
*Just in case this topic wasn't Godwined by now.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
their tax income is some of highest in Europe, the problem is their spending out stripped their taxes. Raising taxes on the businesses will most likely hurt them long term.
Typical of many governments, they started spending more and more instead of evaluating services and such for need. The EU wants Ireland to raise business taxes to put them at a disadvantage. Nothing other than pure greed amongst the rest of the EU.
Ireland like California rolled in the big bucks and instead of constraining government spending they opened the checkbook for every thing under the sun, well you can't spend yourself out of a depression and you cannot tax out of it either.
Cut the government.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
The ex-footballer / actor / painter / philosopher has got the solution: http://www.bankrun2010.com/
Only 20 billion over 4 years? The TSA costs more than that.
That's why I said they'd be more welcome today than 100 years ago.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
What about UK and polish migrants (ok, they're not native English speakers, but still not brown)?
"Simon Darby, spokesperson for the British National Party, said that the plane was a symbol of the Battle of Britain and represented the economic struggle the country is facing at the moment.
He said: "It's not like the BNP are against Polish people as a nation. We are against Polish people coming over here and undercutting British workers. "
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/4935429/BNP-uses-Polish-Spitfire-in-anti-immigration-poster.html
If you want to see what happens if you stand up to large multinational corporations and ask them to pay more tax then look at Australia and what happened this year. A very popular Prime Minister was removed then a few months later his party came very close to losing power to an opposition that couldn't even put a decent election campaign together.
A lot of it was fear of lost jobs but it must owe something to the PR money that was splashed around.
Welcome to the United Snakes of America.
The PIGS teeter on the edge of bankruptcy as do several US states. Someone is going to have to fail. The EU has never spent stupider money by bailing out these countries using general funds. It is better to screw bond holders who buy the risk than taxpayers. It will be kinda fun watching California or New York become the new Mississippi.
an ill wind that blows no good
The final comment which I want to write which Richard Stallman said was that he was appalled at states going around trying to under cut each other by offering tax breaks to large corporations to induce them to leave one state and settle in another. A comment from an "establishment" guy in the audience was, "What's wrong with that? Its a free market." Richard exclaims, "A free market in tax breaks? Oh GOD!" He then says that states should form a union, go to the federal government and get it to pass some laws forbidding this activity. He concludes this chain of thought by saying, "The name of this union is called, the United States of America." That to me, Stallman is true patriot.
from http://linuxgazette.net/issue37/adler.html
The thing I don't get is how the government can claim that everyone must do their part, while not touching the business tax rate at all. I mean, sheesh, put it up a symbolic 1% and call the company's' bluff. At least it would look like everyone was carrying some of the load. But this? It's shameful.
ARR! Yer not gettin' me gold!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
This is what happens when you're a small country against big companies. For all the Anti-EU talk that has been going on the past couple of weeks, this just shows why it's necessary to unify even further. Big companies will be using this strategy again and again, and who can blame them? They have nothing to lose from threatening to leave. They could just stay anyway if it didn't go their way.
Imagine if corporate tax was coordinated on an EU scale. Then Microsoft, Intel, Google and all the others could either pay up, or not sell in the EU. I think I know what their choice would be.
My UID is prime. Hah!
In the 1930s, when FDR redefined what a dollar means. It used to be about 1/20th oz. gold. After FDR's redefinition, it became 1/35th oz. gold, and only for foreign governments. Then, Nixon closed the gold window and made the dollar completely free-floating. It might not have been legally a default, but that's like Clinton saying that certain orgasm inducing acts weren't "having sex".
-- Support a free market in the field of government
Dude, tell the prof and all the other TAs we're throwing away the econometric models we've been working on. We're going with Transport Tycoon. Hellllo, Nobel Prize!
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
You clearly know nothing about the situation, or our country, and just have a free-market axe to grind. Well buddy, I'm a believer in free enterprise, and I'm Irish, so let me give you a summary of what's going on. The billionaires referred to are the large investment institutions and the high net worth individuals that took bonds in the Irish banks. The argument is that they were paid interest for the bonds, in return for risk (thats how investment usually works, the reward is in return for the risk). The banks became insolvent (partly due to the global banking crisis, partly due to irresponsible behaviour, partly due to the low EU rate of interest (which suited the larger economies) providing cheap credit). The comment in the summary is referring to the fact that the bonds of the investors, who took the risk, are being guaranteed by the Irish state. Supposedly to avert a banking crisis, due to the systemic importance of the banks. Only we seem to have gotten a banking crisis anyway; which has made the billions poured into the banks seem like a bad use of money... As such, the losses of the bondholders (the 'billionaires' of the summary) are being socialised. This is what pisses people off. Irish people are very pro enterprise, pro business, and pro building shit. That's why so many companies invest here. We have a low rate of corporation tax, true, which is a big part of things; but we've also got a creative culture, and its a good business environment here. People like to have the craic; but they also like to work hard, and have a healthy disrespect for authority that helps them innovate. Now, sure, there is social welfare for the poor, and free health care, which maybe you are referring to. And its probably a little on the high side, these days. But Ireland doesn't have a culture of entitlement. The history of the people of Ireland is not one of entitlement, and its not in our psyche. Sure, some of the kids in the boom recently may be a little entitled - but thats because of the free money they had, not because of the welfare state. If anything, there isn't enough entitlement in Ireland. We didn't really know what to do with the money because it was the first time we ever had it; people couldn't believe how good it was, couldn't believe it could last, and that economic prosperity could come to us... ...and so didn't ask enough questions about whether it was being managed right, whether the politicians were properly serving us etc.
And as regards the parts of a welfare state we have being so bad...
Well, I remember spending a summer in Boston. Lived in cambridge, beside Harvard, MIT.
I'll never forget walking past a really awful looking woman, sitting on harvard square. She was clearly pregnant and had a sign saying 'please help, pregnant with AIDS'. And she looked it.
I've worked in the valley too - great tech culture, great enterprise culture. But walking around palo alto, past the homeless crazy guys on the street, asking for money, with nowhere to go...
Well, no, Irelands not perfect; but there's aspects of a welfare state I'll take over the 'fsck the poor' attitude any day.
Don't believe the false dichotomy - you can have a great culture of enterprise, without stepping over broken people on the way to work.
If we can figure some way out of the bank bailout here, maybe we'll get there yet.
They're more welcome now because they're not viewed as the fast-breeding Catholic bums that they were 100 years ago. It's the perception of Irishmen that's changed, not the general anti-immigrant sentiment. The fear of Irishmen, Eastern Europeans and Italians has been transferred to other groups; in particular Mexicans, who seem to fill the same bill; fast-breeding Catholic bums.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
LinkedIn has around 1000 and Facebook around 2000 employees worldwide. Significantly less than the other companies mentioned. (Source: LinkedIn, of course) Someone was shooting for pageviews with these articles...
Zionist banks with fake paper money (in the EU and US), yet another violation of our rights. Add it to the list of gov’t violations of our right:
They violate the 1st Amendment by placing protesters in cages, banning books like “America Deceived II” and censoring the internet.
They violate the 2nd Amendment by confiscating guns.
They violate the 4th and 5th Amendment by molesting airline passengers.
They violate the entire Constitution by starting undeclared wars for foreign countries.
Impeach Obama and sweep out the Congress, except Ron Paul.
(Last link of Banned Book):
http://www.iuniverse.com/Bookstore/BookDetail.aspx?BookId=SKU-000190526
The left has yet to figure out the difference between making money and printing it. Of course, they've been so divorced from reality so long that this is only a symptom of a much larger problem. It comes as relief to me though that they no longer have the luxury of being able to rely on so much of traditional print media to automatically confirm their delusions for them. The western world's club of "experts" are repeatedly being humiliated by more responsible people who see things for what they are. Leftist bloggers are and always have been obsessive, selfish whiners.
The Irish aren't special in this regard. Immigrants are viewed with fear and suspicion by portions of the populous!? It's not a thing of the past either see the Turks of Germany, Mexicans (mainly in the US south west), or someone from the middle east. You make it sound like only the Irish have had problems. The new guy "always" gets it. Yay for humanity!
Man blir trött av att gå och göra ingenting.
but if you take that course, then corporations can have Zero lobbyest, and zero contributions to ANY political organization. They should be treated like the hostile para-governmental agencies they really are. Corporate taxes would not be needed if they weren't allowed to retain earnings. You have companies like Apple and Microsoft piling up BILLIONS in untaxed profits. They become their own little "warlords" while their "stockholders" the real owners, get almost nothing. This is the entire problem of "capitalism" that these companies have enough money to BUY small countries, corporate tax is supposed to drain that money if they DON'T give it out to stock holders, because when they pay it to stockholders, the stockholders pay taxes on it.
Go the free market! The answer to all our problems! Just like extreme programming, if its not working you're just not doing it hard enough! Not enough extreme, that's so often the problem.
"but if you take that course, then corporations can have Zero lobbyest, and zero contributions to ANY political organization. They should be treated like the hostile para-governmental agencies they really are. Corporate taxes would not be needed if they weren't allowed to retain earnings."
While I totally agree with the first part of that statement (why should any entity that doesn't pay taxes have lobbying/political influence?) -- if corporations aren't allowed to retain earnings, what's their motivation for staying in business?
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
"The luck of the Irish ran out, but now it's back"
This is at the heart of the blackmail system. Either at the state level or the international level, the threat only works if there is unfettered, 'exit fee'-less access to a more corrupt/desperate 'somewhere else', causing excactly what they want: a race to the bottom where the cost of labor is roughly equivalent to that of air.
The US doesn't mind economic migrants. The Irish have white skin, right? Yeah, they won't be an issue at all.
We don't care what color you are, but do follow the laws, and try to learn the language, and when you protest, for God's sake, quit sporting the flag of the fscking country you came from. If it is so great there..STAY or GO BACK there. If you're in the US and want to be..wave our flag, and protest all you like.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Facebook opened a Dublin office about a year ago with 50 employees and they have been recruiting constantly since. Google employ 1,700 people and Microsoft employ over 1,200, Accenture and IBM Ireland also contract a lot of employees to them. Throw in Sun, Oracle, Ebay and the others and US IT companies count for quite a lot in a total workforce of about 1.8 million people.
The great thing about the US is that you can wave the flag of any country you want, and it's protected by the first amendment of the constitution. If you have a problem with that, maybe you'd feel more comfortable in a country that doesn't guarantee that right?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
If fascism is what we call the government taking over the corporations, what do we call the corporations taking over the government? Msicsaf ? (Technically, it's an extreme form of regulatory capture, but that phrase lacks a certain zing...)
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."