Why is Ireland "meant to be poor"?

filmbuffboy

http://www.globalrichlist.com/

I ranked 523,591,22 richest person in the world based on what I earn (21,700) a year, thats the top 8% of the planets richlist.... I think that puts things into perspective about how poor we are as a nation. Sure theres a lot of corrouption in the gov, sure the celtic tiger wasnt going to last forever, but im still happy to be irish. Im sitting here on my comfy sofa with a belly full of food, and will be going to the dentist in the morning for a free cleaning & check up from my PRSI contributions. A little bit of perspective please, Ireland is not poor. Many may be struggling to make ends meet but in global terms they are still far more comfortable than millions of others.

Tech3

filmbuffboy wrote: »

http://www.globalrichlist.com/

I ranked 58,920,569 not bad!!

Anyway its all down to inefficient services, bad policies enforced by the governments of our time and basically money squandered by our nation as a whole.

We are financially inept when it comes to controlling our assets with the likes of the worlds super rich nations.

Fighting Irish

The Celtic Tiger was just a shame where people spent money on stuff they shouldn't have.

worded wrote: »

A golden age has passed us by and our pride has been dented.

Its difficult to speak so highly of ourselves now as the coffers have been plundered by upperclass criminals. We will be paying for a banking mess for many years.

I believe we were not put here to suffer

ocianain

A countries most important resource is it's people, people create, creation is the heart of economics. Ireland has plenty of creative people, it therefore has a wonderful future.

Regarding regionalism being problematical, the opposite is a bigger problem, central control does not work (the Russians couldn't make it work, they're pretty smart). Also, absent regionalism populous areas exploit the less populous. For example, when Reagan was running for president one point of his campaign was Federal Revenue Sharing, the Fed giving money back to the states. Reagan pointed out for every dollar California contributed in FRS funds they got 1.25 back. Pennsylvania got .75 for every dollar contributed. Rich populous state sucking money from struggling declining state. This would happen in Ireland too, populous East Coast counties would suck money out of lower population West Coast counties, money would flow from Mayo to Wexford, good for Wexford, bad for Mayo.

Tech3

Fighting Irish wrote: »

The Celtic Tiger was just a shame where people spent money on stuff they shouldn't have.

Its a simply fact; the Irish cant handle money. Most of us are better off in the doldrums.

Red Sleeping Beauty

tech2 wrote: »

Its a simply fact; the Irish cant handle money. Most of us are better off in the doldrums.

How could there be any truth to this statement ? Is it in an "Irish" person's genes to be wasteful with money ? How could it be fact that "Irish can't handle money" ?

ocianain

tech2 wrote: »

Its a simply fact; the Irish cant handle money. Most of us are better off in the doldrums.

Lots of people messed up, America blew it, England, France, Germany and Spain too. The Irish are no worse than anyone else with money. What happened in the most recent crisis is, constraints which limited poor behavior/choices were removed. Laws that protected Joe and Jane sixpack from exploitation were removed. People were scammed.

Fighting Irish

Alan Rouge wrote: »

How could there be any truth to this statement ? Is it in an "Irish" person's genes to be wasteful with money ? How could it be fact that "Irish can't handle money" ?

He's right but it also applies to every other country in the world, there are more stupid people than smart people in this world

freedom of info

ocianain wrote: »

Lots of people messed up, America blew it, England, France, Germany and Spain too. The Irish are no worse than anyone else with money. What happened in the most recent crisis is, constraints which limited poor behavior/choices were removed. Laws that protected Joe and Jane sixpack from exploitation were removed. People were scammed.

agreed. and still are

Kama

There's a lot of this going around, there's more than a passing trend in our culture of melancholic fatalism and masochistic fantasy; so post-bubble, like a bad short story, 'and I woke up and it was all a dream', with the bubble as a financial wet-dream, and us waking up feeling sticky and unpleasant, back in the dreary pre-Tiger Ireland some of us remember.

Thing is, as noted, we aren't in any broad sense 'poor'. In absolute poverty terms, we're grand, and even being on the dole would be relative heaven for much of the world population.

But psychology tends not to work that way; we feel rich or poor, pretty or ugly, happy or sad, in a comparative calculus with a: other people and b: ourselves at a different time-point. We ate the food, we drank the wine, and the thought of 'going back' kicks us in the status-anxiety goolies. We're not poor, but we keep thinking wistfully of those 'Good Times' of spending money we didn't have, putting payment off to the future. Yes, people were scammed, but to be scammed, you usually need an element of greed on the scam-ee for it to work, which was there in spades.

The worst problem, to me, is that same fatalist attitude: sure we can't do planning, aren't we terrible at it? We can't have honest politicians, aren't we all crooks? And so on for any issue. Like a lot of 'prophecy', its quite self-validating. The only 'solution' is the West Brit Argument or the Eurocrat line: 'sure we can't be trusted to govern ourselves, can't someone else do it?'.

At least then, if it all goes wrong, we have the culturally-appropriate pleasure of someone other than ourselves to blame...

Riskymove

tech2 wrote: »

I ranked 58,920,569 not bad!!

I ranked 1

but it was expected cause I'm in the public sector:pac:

Riskymove

ocianain wrote: »

Lots of people messed up, America blew it, England, France, Germany and Spain too. The Irish are no worse than anyone else with money. What happened in the most recent crisis is, constraints which limited poor behavior/choices were removed. Laws that protected Joe and Jane sixpack from exploitation were removed. People were scammed.

agreed, the real issue was our wealth was based on an artifical idea of a property bubble and managing to get multinationals here so we could assemble their products

niether was going to last

I do think there is a case that we wasted a lot of money, probably down to the experience of growing up in fairly poor times

irishcarbomb2k

Kama wrote: »

There's a lot of this going around, there's more than a passing trend in our culture of melancholic fatalism and masochistic fantasy; so post-bubble, like a bad short story, 'and I woke up and it was all a dream', with the bubble as a financial wet-dream, and us waking up feeling sticky and unpleasant, back in the dreary pre-Tiger Ireland some of us remember.

Thing is, as noted, we aren't in any broad sense 'poor'. In absolute poverty terms, we're grand, and even being on the dole would be relative heaven for much of the world population.

But psychology tends not to work that way; we feel rich or poor, pretty or ugly, happy or sad, in a comparative calculus with a: other people and b: ourselves at a different time-point. We ate the food, we drank the wine, and the thought of 'going back' kicks us in the status-anxiety goolies. We're not poor, but we keep thinking wistfully of those 'Good Times' of spending money we didn't have, putting payment off to the future. Yes, people were scammed, but to be scammed, you usually need an element of greed on the scam-ee for it to work, which was there in spades.

The worst problem, to me, is that same fatalist attitude: sure we can't do planning, aren't we terrible at it? We can't have honest politicians, aren't we all crooks? And so on for any issue. Like a lot of 'prophecy', its quite self-validating. The only 'solution' is the West Brit Argument or the Eurocrat line: 'sure we can't be trusted to govern ourselves, can't someone else do it?'.

At least then, if it all goes wrong, we have the culturally-appropriate pleasure of someone other than ourselves to blame...

Good post!!

I have lived and worked in many countries and realise the Irish are the best at self depricating.. We always take the pessimesstic view and think its our right to complain about everything that goes wrong including the kitchen sink. We blame the government, we blame the transport system, we blame the health minister, we blame the weather. I am not saying any of the above are not to blame for our current situation but they aren't totally to blame. I blame myself for being sucked into a large property bubble at the height of things but I can blame nobody else for forcing me to buy a house.
If Ireland were really poor, then we couldn't afford to go to a doctor, to receive a quite high social welfare, to be able to be seen in a hospital without expecting a 25k hospital bill.

There are many more advantages I can point out. Lets say you live in California, the highest state in debt in the US. You have limited social welfare, if you break your hand and don't pay in some cases in excess of 1000 dollars a month for health insurance, then you could be faced with a bill of 45000 dollars. People are bankrupt in the states because they suffer from cancer.

Now before you jump on every word I say, I am not saying I don't blame the government for putting us in this situation, to a degree, they did fail us as a nation but lounging in self pity is not going to do your health or this country any good. If we had the confidence in our ability and be positive we will pull ourselves out of this. Unfortunately, its easier to be depressed than positive with the media reports, job losses, banking crisis but by world standards we're not doing too bad.

Lets be positive and lets see this country for what it is, a dynamic, young and relatively good country to live in. We have our major problems, but its nothing that can't be overcome by positive thinking and creativity. We need people to think outside the box, starting businesses that are dynamic and new and we need people in all areas of society to be confident we can do it.

Ireland has considerable wealth and one of the highest savings per head of capita in the world. It has been engrained in people to save and to be honest, this recession could actually be the best thing for Ireland. It was time for a wake up call, and now its time to get back to work and make Ireland better for it. We will now have to live within our means instead of creating bubbles of debt and invest in something more useful than property.

We should have easy methods of investment entries for people who have savings and are willing to risk it in new businesses or technology. Imagine if Larry Page came to you offering you a thousand shares in google at the company's inception for say 1dollar, think about the possible return you would receive at the today's share price and sold all, you would make 458 thousand dollars. Much better than property any day.

Lets get positive and see the potential of this country, not be the first with the spade when digging its grave.

freedom of info

irishcarbomb2k wrote: »

Good post!!

I have lived and worked in many countries and realise the Irish are the best at self depricating.. We always take the pessimesstic view and think its our right to complain about everything that goes wrong including the kitchen sink. We blame the government, we blame the transport system, we blame the health minister, we blame the weather. I am not saying any of the above are not to blame for our current situation but they aren't totally to blame. I blame myself for being sucked into a large property bubble at the height of things but I can blame nobody else for forcing me to buy a house.
If Ireland were really poor, then we couldn't afford to go to a doctor, to receive a quite high social welfare, to be able to be seen in a hospital without expecting a 25k hospital bill.

There are many more advantages I can point out. Lets say you live in California, the highest state in debt in the US. You have limited social welfare, if you break your hand and don't pay in some cases in excess of 1000 dollars a month for health insurance, then you could be faced with a bill of 45000 dollars. People are bankrupt in the states because they suffer from cancer.

Now before you jump on every word I say, I am not saying I don't blame the government for putting us in this situation, to a degree, they did fail us as a nation but lounging in self pity is not going to do your health or this country any good. If we had the confidence in our ability and be positive we will pull ourselves out of this. Unfortunately, its easier to be depressed than positive with the media reports, job losses, banking crisis but by world standards we're not doing too bad.

Lets be positive and lets see this country for what it is, a dynamic, young and relatively good country to live in. We have our major problems, but its nothing that can't be overcome by positive thinking and creativity. We need people to think outside the box, starting businesses that are dynamic and new and we need people in all areas of society to be confident we can do it.

Ireland has considerable wealth and one of the highest savings per head of capita in the world. It has been engrained in people to save and to be honest, this recession could actually be the best thing for Ireland. It was time for a wake up call, and now its time to get back to work and make Ireland better for it. We will now have to live within our means instead of creating bubbles of debt and invest in something more useful than property.

We should have easy methods of investment entries for people who have savings and are willing to risk it in new businesses or technology. Imagine if Larry Page came to you offering you a thousand shares in google at the company's inception for say 1dollar, think about the possible return you would receive at the today's share price and sold all, you would make 458 thousand dollars. Much better than property any day.

Lets get positive and see the potential of this country, not be the first with the spade when digging its grave.

come clean, are you a financial advisor for brian cowan?

ei.sdraob

freedom of info wrote: »

come clean, are you a financial advisor for brian cowan?

hes deluding himself if he thinks the next Google will arise in Ireland

as someone with small startup in IT sector I tell you it wont happen because:

* red tape + bureaucracy businesses face here
* high taxation > numerous taxes, stealth taxes, hidden surcharges
* costly energy
* high bandwidth costs / low connectivity (costs 20-25x for bandwidth here compared to US or the continent)


if anything i can see "knowledge" companies leaving en masse as this "knowledge" is often easily transferable to more favorable locations

fuzzy dunlop

irishcarbomb2k wrote: »

Good post!!

I have lived and worked in many countries and realise the Irish are the best at self depricating.. We always take the pessimesstic view and think its our right to complain about everything that goes wrong including the kitchen sink. We blame the government, we blame the transport system, we blame the health minister, we blame the weather. I am not saying any of the above are not to blame for our current situation but they aren't totally to blame. I blame myself for being sucked into a large property bubble at the height of things but I can blame nobody else for forcing me to buy a house.
If Ireland were really poor, then we couldn't afford to go to a doctor, to receive a quite high social welfare, to be able to be seen in a hospital without expecting a 25k hospital bill.

There are many more advantages I can point out. Lets say you live in California, the highest state in debt in the US. You have limited social welfare, if you break your hand and don't pay in some cases in excess of 1000 dollars a month for health insurance, then you could be faced with a bill of 45000 dollars. People are bankrupt in the states because they suffer from cancer.

Now before you jump on every word I say, I am not saying I don't blame the government for putting us in this situation, to a degree, they did fail us as a nation but lounging in self pity is not going to do your health or this country any good. If we had the confidence in our ability and be positive we will pull ourselves out of this. Unfortunately, its easier to be depressed than positive with the media reports, job losses, banking crisis but by world standards we're not doing too bad.

Lets be positive and lets see this country for what it is, a dynamic, young and relatively good country to live in. We have our major problems, but its nothing that can't be overcome by positive thinking and creativity. We need people to think outside the box, starting businesses that are dynamic and new and we need people in all areas of society to be confident we can do it.

Ireland has considerable wealth and one of the highest savings per head of capita in the world. It has been engrained in people to save and to be honest, this recession could actually be the best thing for Ireland. It was time for a wake up call, and now its time to get back to work and make Ireland better for it. We will now have to live within our means instead of creating bubbles of debt and invest in something more useful than property.

We should have easy methods of investment entries for people who have savings and are willing to risk it in new businesses or technology. Imagine if Larry Page came to you offering you a thousand shares in google at the company's inception for say 1dollar, think about the possible return you would receive at the today's share price and sold all, you would make 458 thousand dollars. Much better than property any day.

Lets get positive and see the potential of this country, not be the first with the spade when digging its grave.

It is a good post.Good reply too.

tlev

In fairness Ireland do have quite a lot of educated young graduates but they are all smart and emigrate if they can, creating wealth for other countries not Ireland. A big problem with building a knowledge based economy is that in recent times Irish people have moved away from engineering and mathematics, just look at the recent LC figures. Can't really be productive without these kind of subjects. Sure there are a lot of business people around but someone has to also handle the quantitative side.

Really though like I've said what else can you expect. Irish people were poor before the Celtic tiger and once they weren't a lot of them felt entitled to buy a new car every year, go on holidays every 3 months, pay off last christmas's credit card debt with this years bonus etc. Because people had money they didn't care how expensive things got, it was the short term attitude the Irish have. Just look at the graduates pre-bust, each of them felt entitled to whatever job they damn well pleased, with many of them expecting to rake in 100k+ by age 30. It wasn't a gradual growth that people could get accustomed to. Now it isn't a problem that Ireland is 'poor' no, its just that people have taken on a lot more expenses that weren't there before that still need to be paid off on a lower income/more tax.

I'm sorry if I seem cynical but most practical things in this country i.e. hospitals, transport, city planning and general infrastructure seem beset by a lack of proper and careful planning and execution. Ireland had tonnes of money to develop all of these into a functioning machine but they blew it, and I'm not saying they can't be successful again but growth of this magnitude so quickly was a once in a lifetime thing in a country so small. Money was thrown about the place by the government as though it was contagious but nothing was ever really accomplished, except making the public sector the most attractive place to work on the planet. The M50 is still being built, people are still on trolleys, still behind on broadband etc.


I think a lot of the problem comes from the fact that more effort is put into getting the plan actually going than the amount of time put into the plan. Stupid beaurorcrats.

RiverWilde

This country does not 'need' to be poor.

It's in the state it's in because of the greed and incompetence of the people running the country. We took a shed load of money from the EC coupled with a shed load of cheap money when the cost of money was incredibly low and squandered every last penny.

The galling thing is that this shower in office want the most vulnerable in society to pay the bill through cuts in healthcare/education/public transport/ etc etc etc., god forbid the clique that runs this place actually has to pay the piper. If this were any other country they'd have been tossed from office years ago.

Riv

freedom of info

ei.sdraob wrote: »

hes deluding himself if he thinks the next Google will arise in Ireland

as someone with small startup in IT sector I tell you it wont happen because:

* red tape + bureaucracy businesses face here
* high taxation > numerous taxes, stealth taxes, hidden surcharges
* costly energy
* high bandwidth costs / low connectivity (costs 20-25x for bandwidth here compared to US or the continent)


if anything i can see "knowledge" companies leaving en masse as this "knowledge" is often easily transferable to more favorable locations

it seems to me that yes we have a well educated populace and in theory we should be able to pull ourselves out of this mess, but in reality, as long as we fudge the issue of lowering costs such as our complicated tax regime high cost of insurance, high rates,uncompetitive vat and stop scapegoating the hard pressed lower paid, then forget it.

all companies are only as good as the staff that man it, that is where the small firms association have lost the plot, we manufacture fkuk all of note, this can be addressed by allowing people to show inititive and by using alternative fuel sources, hydrogen being one that springs to mind.

cutting the civil service to rational levels, transparency, honesty,integrity and most importantly, our politicians must accept the blame for the waste that was prevalent during the criminal aherns reign, ( still not tax compliant)

freedom of info

RiverWilde wrote: »

This country does not 'need' to be poor.

It's in the state it's in because of the greed and incompetence of the people running the country. We took a shed load of money from the EC coupled with a shed load of cheap money when the cost of money was incredibly low and squandered every last penny.

The galling thing is that this shower in office want the most vulnerable in society to pay the bill through cuts in healthcare/education/public transport/ etc etc etc., god forbid the clique that runs this place actually has to pay the piper. If this were any other country they'd have been tossed from office years ago.

Riv

totally agree, the celtic tiger ended in 2002, what replaced it was the credit tiger, this was achieved to keep the gangsters who masquerade as a govt in power, unfortunately most people bought into the idea.

expect at least 10 years of this, those who think that if the u.s pull out of recession then they are deluding themselves.

Fat_Fingers

freedom of info wrote: »

come clean, are you a financial advisor for brian cowan?

LOl, classic! Thanks for the laugh!

Red Sleeping Beauty

Riskymove wrote: »

I ranked 1

but it was expected cause I'm in the public sector:pac:

And anyone in reciept of social welfare payments chart off the scale :eek:.

ei.sdraob wrote: »

hes deluding himself if he thinks the next Google will arise in Ireland

as someone with small startup in IT sector I tell you it wont happen because:

* red tape + bureaucracy businesses face here
* high taxation > numerous taxes, stealth taxes, hidden surcharges
* costly energy
* high bandwidth costs / low connectivity (costs 20-25x for bandwidth here compared to US or the continent)


if anything i can see "knowledge" companies leaving en masse as this "knowledge" is often easily transferable to more favorable locations

I don't know how you'll take this point but I was watching RTE's horribly knaff show on "Young and Wealthiest" in Ireland there a few nights ago. There were quite a few IT millionaries, a certain Daft.ie among them.

Kama

If Ireland were really poor, then we couldn't afford to go to a doctor, to receive a quite high social welfare, to be able to be seen in a hospital without expecting a 25k hospital bill.

Agree with this. It's easy to complain about our health system, that its either underfunded and not good enough, or about the (please, kill it) HSE, but my (US) gf is always amazed: 'wtf are you complaining about, it's basically free, do you know how much I'd pay for the same back home?'. This isn't a 'wow isn't everything great?' paean to the wonders of FF management, just an exercise in a bit of context and realism, between the poles of vacuous spin (World-Class Knowledge Economy/Infrastructure/Health Care/whatever) and fatalist despair.

Manic depression doesn't make for very coherent planning, and we've behaved pro-cyclically, inflating the boom, and now slashing the bust. Which may be 'culturally-appropriate', but it's a rotten way to run a country.

Red Sleeping Beauty

Kama wrote: »

but my (US) gf is always amazed: 'wtf are you complaining about, it's basically free, do you know how much I'd pay for the same back home?'.

Michael Moore used a similar argument in his documentary where he compared US healthcare to the NHS and he was heavily criticised for it. I thikn it's a bit of a weak argument in fairness. The USA media will broadcast public "outrages" at their new healthcare reform turning it into a socialist state or some other claptrap. They're just on a completely different plain.

Tech3

ocianain wrote: »

Lots of people messed up, America blew it, England, France, Germany and Spain too. The Irish are no worse than anyone else with money. What happened in the most recent crisis is, constraints which limited poor behavior/choices were removed. Laws that protected Joe and Jane sixpack from exploitation were removed. People were scammed.

France and Germany are now out of their recessions.

People were scammed? Anyone with their head screwed on would know what they can and cannot have.

ocianain

I hear what you're saying, I agree to a large extent, however, there are plenty of people who think, that whatever the way it is, is the way it should be. That traditional lending practices were overturned and devastation resulted should surprise no one, that no one has gone to jail for it should offend everyone, but not surprise either.

freedom of info

tech2 wrote: »

France and Germany are now out of their recessions.

People were scammed? Anyone with their head screwed on would know what they can and cannot have.

0.3% is hardly a boom, dont believe everything you hear or read, besides that does not mean that we will follow suit

wildsaffy

Ireland has a lot going for it.

There seems to be a role for it in the clean energy supply.

But a lot of inertia involved as well - a traditional way to get anything done here is to bribe some politician or other.

I remember an article in the Irish Times about 3 years ago - where the EC govt told Bertie to slow down on the construction insanity.

That was instantly countered by Bertie telling the EU that they had a hat and were talking through it - and several obviously highly paid economists saying how great Ireland was and not to talk down the economy.

Those same economists now that you tend to hear on radio shows - like they are suddenly experts at the recession.

I remember how Eddie Hobbs was ridiculed when he brought up the Rip Off Republic - politicians tried to discredit him and make personal attacks on him.

Its a real pity - supposed we had listened 3 years ago - the economy would not be as bad.

But no one was listening - prolly drowned out by the clatter of developers flying around in helicopters and the pounding of horses at the races.

And now Nama - I do shudder. There is a gagging order on them not to reveal the extent of their activities.

Poor Ireland.

freedom of info

wildsaffy wrote: »

Ireland has a lot going for it.

There seems to be a role for it in the clean energy supply.

But a lot of inertia involved as well - a traditional way to get anything done here is to bribe some politician or other.

I remember an article in the Irish Times about 3 years ago - where the EC govt told Bertie to slow down on the construction insanity.

That was instantly countered by Bertie telling the EU that they had a hat and were talking through it - and several obviously highly paid economists saying how great Ireland was and not to talk down the economy.

Those same economists now that you tend to hear on radio shows - like they are suddenly experts at the recession.
I remember how Eddie Hobbs was ridiculed when he brought up the Rip Off Republic - politicians tried to discredit him and make personal attacks on him.

Its a real pity - supposed we had listened 3 years ago - the economy would not be as bad.

But no one was listening - prolly drowned out by the clatter of developers flying around in helicopters and the pounding of horses at the races.

And now Nama - I do shudder. There is a gagging order on them not to reveal the extent of their activities.

Poor Ireland.

have you noticed how hobbs and mcwilliams were dropped by rte?

Tech3

freedom of info wrote: »

0.3% is hardly a boom, dont believe everything you hear or read, besides that does not mean that we will follow suit

I don't take my view on what the media provide. I know its only 0.3% but its better than a loss. This country is in a big hole, its getting deeper with every passing day. From what I gather it will be a deficit near 30 billion at the end of the year rather than 20 billion which was first predicted.

We wont be so quick to get out of this recession with our big fat public sector straining our now less generating private sector.