Measuring Ireland's Progress - happy days are here again (unless you're one of the growing number of poor people in Ireland) https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/letters/2023/08/15/measuring-progress/
#poverty #Ireland
Saw an interesting thread yesterday that showed the Financial Times quoting Ireland's GDP as a reason for a United Ireland.
At 114 thousand/per capita, Ireland has sth like the second best GDP in the world, which quite surprised me. 
Feels like that sort of money could be investing in joined up public transport, a free at point of use National Health Service, and social housing to ease the market.
I'm not really getting that vibe though from what I see online. 
@Homebrewandhacking People have no idea what could be available to them if they'd just boot the government into funding high-speed rail, high-speed health and high-speed housing
@Homebrewandhacking @sinabhfuil
There's a real money economy, and there's a paper economy where growth can shift by a point or two every quarter depending on the decisions taken by some tax lawyers and accountants in Cupertino or Mountain View CA.
@Homebrewandhacking @sinabhfuil is it skewed because of all the tech companies who are based there for tax reasons?
@Homebrewandhacking Where's *my* €114,000?
GDP to UBI eh?
@sinabhfuil @Homebrewandhacking Ireland’s GDP is exaggerated by about 30% compared to GNP (which measures what stays in the country) because we are a de facto tax haven and multinationals declare income here without necessarily having much economic activity in the state https://www.cso.ie/en/interactivezone/statisticsexplained/nationalaccountsexplained/grossnationalproductgnpandgrossnationalincomegni/#:~:text=While%20Gross%20Domestic%20Product%20measures,value%20stays%20in%20the%20country.
@karlstanley @Homebrewandhacking Irish people are also fairly dim about running cars. There is really no need for anyone in Dublin to own a car (much less two, or three…) and each car is draining €10,000 a year out of the family budget. Thick
@sinabhfuil @Homebrewandhacking I think sometime back in the 90s, probably while the PDs were in govt, the Very Serious People decided that Ireland should become a high wage, high cost, high consumption society. Which sort of works if everyone gets included in the “high wage” part…
@karlstanley @sinabhfuil @Homebrewandhacking people on the left were/are always saying we should be more like the Nordic countries so I suppose we now are in some regards, just not the ones we would most like.