Spending on frivolous things too instead of proper infrastructure projects. No long term benefits to it
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Id not be quite so confident in that tbh. If it starts to drift it may just keep drifting. Youād never know what may come of it really. One thing is for sure, we are out of the long grass well and truly.
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Thereās an argument that they shouldnāt be spending on infrastructure projects and feeding into a frothy economy.
However the argument would make more sense if they spent on infrastructure projects when things went bad.
Basically we are cyclically spending on the wrong cycle.
I donāt think we are near a housing crash. Thereās no houses. But we are definitely near a general economic slow down. Costs have gone out of control.
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We played the simple auld paddy for as long as we could.
Infairness whoever came up with the intellectual property tax break was a genius. Weāve been milking the shit out of it.
Thereās a once off exit tax to take it away too so itās a bit sticker than it would seem.
I think the whole thing is a badly needed toe up the hole for Europe.
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That was the big argument at the last crash. Keynesian approach says that is exactly the time you should be spending on long term infrastructureā¦stimulate economic activity
We did none of that really until the vulture funds came in and ploughed billions into unfinished propertyā¦massive missed opportunity
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To be fair we hadnāt a pot to piss in when we needed it. But that was down to terrible economic management when the going was good.
Again though the issue in the good times was our infrastructure was shit and had to be spent on. We are just shit at long term infrastructure planning. And when we do it we get a childrenās hospital scenario
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And bought the childrenās hospital at the most expensive point in the countryās history.
If we really wanted to we could have borrowed money to do what the vulture funds did. It might have cost a bit and been massively politically unpopularā¦but we could have done it.
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Sure fucking nama should have held all the assets and built them out and would have been spewing money into state coffers forever.
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Good in hindsight but nama was taking any money it could get to pay back anything to the IMF
The IP tax and knowledge box was channelled partly through Fergal OāRourke and PwC with the US MNCs leading him by the nose knocking on mammys door in government to get the right bills signed. Iām sure he made out like a bandit too. He gave a very entertaining address to the Tax Institute grads last year circled around some of this now he has semi retired.
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That sounds like quite a bit alright. Say that was ripped out of the economy tomorrow, apart from the tax take, what would be the hit? A few thousand jobs and the associated economic output?
Potentially make the plants non viable commercially with half their sales gone so a slow drip feed of closures. 80k jobs in the industry hereā¦v well paid jobs too
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Not really genius level. Gombeen man level 1. Just a label. If it wasnāt that itād be something else.
I donāt know the numbers but if the pharma thing goes tits up Iād imagine thereāll be a lot of lattes and almond frappucinos not consumed in around the place.
The indirect impact would be seismic Iād say.
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Fergal is of an age where he should be semi retired.
He did 8 years as MP of pwc. What more does he need to do.
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Itās ok for some lads to have money but not others.
A few thousand well paid jobs would affect many thousands more. Thereās a big knock on effect. Nothing will happen overnight, but like del amitri say cc @TheUlteriorMotive , we may just become not where itās at. And that would be really bad.
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For one person to be rich, a few hundred have to be poorer.
I thot u wuz rich blud 
If it was that simple why has Ireland done so well.
A great little country.
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Serendipity and Charlie Haughey kicking on the duty free zones.
We paid for it in the famine, and the poverty, the clergy the misery and the emigration giving the country both clout in America and the beal bocht in Europe. Weāve always been shrude at running with the hare and the hounds.
The education system and lack of societal breakdown helped hugely, as did our natural emotional intelligence, but the āknowledge boxā itself was hardly a work of genius, just another wheeze.
Other countries either played more rigidly by the spirit of the law, or just thought 25% was a reasonable tax rate on the MNCs (which it is, it should be higher). Weāve been happy to beggar thy neighbour.
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