High Irish GDP is an illusion, Ireland is not that rich

A national debt of - say - 200 billion - would not be much to a country of say 100 million people.

A national debt of - say 200 billion is 20 times more per person if the population of a country is say 5 million. Much more serious.

Nobody said debt per capita was the only indicator of economic performance, but it is one of the important indicators of economic performance. Especially when our GDP is so skewed by foreign companies laundering their worldwide profits through Ireland.

If we consider disposable household income per capita mentioned in the OP, I thought it might be interesting to look at growth in that figure in Ireland compared to other EU countries. If we put all countries at 100 in 2008 then Ireland (the thick dark green line) is about 10% higher in 2021 which is not bad except that it is about the same as the EU average for that period. Other countries have grown far faster.

This might be a bit surprising to many people living here who might have thought that our disposable incomes would have risen at a higher rate. Another aspect to consider is that we're experiencing an extreme accommodation crisis here in Ireland and that is going to disproportionately negatively impact those on lower incomes. There's likely to be a quite large cohort of people in the country who, despite working hard, are finding each year a little harder financially.

This, I think, is why we're seeing greater amounts of discontent as the years go by and why the traditional political parties, who don't really understand or care about what is happening, take a battering in the next election.

Having said that, Ireland is still a very rich country by world standards as anyone who's been to a developing country will tell you. But by the standards by which we view ourselves, we're not doing as well as we think we are, and the situation might be getting worse and more precarious for large groups within the country.

No, we're not, because although it's a large amount of money it forms a very small part of our tax base because, famously, we tax it very lightly. We get a useful amount of revenue out of it, but not the kind of chunk that, if it were to reduce significantly, would leave us in "deep trouble".

The world knows about our tax arrangementg and our tax base, and that's already priced into our credit ratings, which are strong.

You can't simultaneously criticise Ireland for boosting its GDP by not taxing the revenue of multinationals, and then claim that Ireland is dependent on the tax it gets from the revenues of multinationals. Pick one of these positions and stick to it.

No. Unlike multinational turnover booked in Ireland which is not a real addition to the country's economic activity, immigrants are a real addition to the country's workforce.

In general, the single biggest factor in growing a country's (genuine) GDP is growing its workforce (and vice versa — I'm looking at you, Italy).

CT is not insignificant, sure, but not all CT revenues come from the multinational profits routed through Ireland. They are routed through Ireland precisely because they are lightly taxed — indeed, our capacity to tax them is limited by the fact that, if we do, the profits will no longer be booked here. So we get a limited amount of CT revenue from those profits.

The bottom line here is that it's impossible to argue that a large chunk of our GDP is illusory, and also that its a significant tax base for us. If the latter is true, the former cannot be.

Read your first sentence and what rubbish. The economy of China has grown massively since the 1980s when it introduced their one-child Per couple policy. It has had something like 8% per year growth on average since 1980 !

Some African countries have had huge population growth in the past 40 years, their economies have not grown.

The UK economy grew not from stealing from other countries but because of the Industrial revolution, inventions, hard work and innovation. Even in recent years, even though the UK has declined in many ways from what it was, the first country in the world to deploy an approved COVID-19 vaccine was the UK. Over the past 50 years, according to Japanese research, more than 40 per cent of discoveries taken up on a worldwide basis originated in the U.K.

https://www.historic-uk.com/CultureUK/Great-British-Inventions/#:~:text=Over%20the%20past%2050%20years,enormous%20impact%20on%20the%20world.

Your (aggitated) arguement is flawed... Who worked in these factories that provided for Britains growth? Imigrants? How did they achieve so much productuction? More Imigrants... Where did they get the cotton and other materials? From the colonies... did they offer a fair price and effect their own wealth? no they didn't... they stole goods and food from other nations. Sure during the potato blight of the 1840's they exported 3m worth of beef and grain from Ireland to support their economic and population growth at the expense of disposable Irish lives... You seem to have a reasonable grasp of their history, but maybe theres some rose tinted glasses on your part... Also, China's 10% year on year is significant, and based on their population growth... Now that their population has been in decline their economic growth is following... I will agree that the two may not match year on year, but population is a factor in economic growth, whether you like to agree with it or not. Try to manage the language you use in these conversations, it's a bit sensationalist and really doesn't reflect well on you...

That's just tangents and not related to my original point. I was making the point that huge economic growth was often accompanied by population growth... not thet population growth meant economic development... but it's okay that you didn't understand that

Eurostat metrics there are about persons per room in a house - seeing as ireland has more many more houses than apartments, and all our houses have separate kitchens and living rooms, we score quite well on the persons:rooms ratio.

On the mainland apartment living and kitchen diners are more popular, so the overcrowding metric is based on that assumption.

As an example, an apartment with 3 bedrooms and 1 kitchen diner is not overcrowded with 4 people, scores the same as a house with kitchen, living room and just 2 bedrooms, with 4 people living in it.

In practice the latter scenario is much more crowded than the former, Eurostat formula is limited in this regard.

I wonder does the taxpayer in other countries pay for / give up half their tourism accommodation in many areas to refugees?

This is a good metric intuitively.

I always see us as a bit wealthier than the Mediterranean countries like Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece. Also wealthier than the Eastern Block countries.

But at the lower end of the northern European and Scandinavian countries. So maybe just inside the top 10 in Europe.

We're "Nouveau Riche" so our institutions and infrastructure is gradually catching up. Demographically we're much better off than most European countries also. Spain, Italy, Portugal are approaching a timebomb.

So this metric seems to capture this. Our GDP is obviously bullshit.

Actual Individual Consumption AIC doesn't seem accurate either.

I think if our economy remains somewhat stable and we go hard on offshore wind, we could be towards the top in Europe regarding quality of living and real wealth.

The housing crisis will hit a turning point next year.

...

This is the last of the charts I will post (promise!).

Real consumption per person adjusted for PPP. EU27 = 100.

Ireland is the thick line descending through the middle of the chart.

In this chart, EU expenditure per capita is fixed at 100 allowing the relative movement of other countries to be seen. As far as I can see, Ireland is the worst performing of the EU 27 over the period with countries like Slovenia, Romania, Lithuania overtaking us since 2010. Currently on a par with Poland and other countries set to overtake us in the next few years like Latvia and Croatia.