Now no one wants to live in the world’s richest country. Ireland, which was a very poor country in Europe a few years ago, is today richer than America, UK, Kuwait and even Qatar, but 70% of Ireland’s population no longer wants to live in Ireland. To know the answer to why the citizens of the richest country do not want to live in it, we first need to know how Ireland became so rich.
Just 150 years ago, the conditions in Ireland were such that mothers hugged their hungry children. People were begging in the streets for a few pieces of bread. Poverty, hunger, despair and death were everywhere. The Irish Potato Famine or also known as the Great Hunger took the lives of one million Irish people between 1845 and 1852.
11% of the population of the entire Ireland had died as a result of this famine. It was such a big disaster that the population of Ireland could not be recovered till date. That is why Ireland is the only country in Europe and the world today whose current population is 1840. Ireland became independent from the control of the British Empire in 1922, but its circumstances did not change much for the next 50 years.
Then in 1973, Ireland became a member of the European Economic Community and here Ireland got an opportunity to change its circumstances. It appeared that basically being a member of this community meant that you could sell your goods to all the member countries and you would have to pay tax in only one country.
The leadership of Ireland thought why not take advantage of this law. Ireland announced that Companies coming to Europe for business, people spent their [Music] [ Music] money in Ireland, demand was created and economic activity increased. Ireland’s economy was now growing faster than Singapore and South Korea and was called the
Cult Tiger. It is said that the financial crisis of 2008 also affected Ireland, but in response, Ireland reduced the tax rate to zero and then as if Ireland’s lottery was out, highly qualified people were coming to Ireland for jobs and Ireland became the Silicon Valley of Europe. It was made but then what happened that today 70 young people aged between 18 to 24 years want to leave Ireland permanently.
There are three reasons for this. The first reason is that Ireland is not as rich in reality as it seems after looking at its GDP. But capita is actually an indicator to measure the economic success of any country. If we look at Ireland’s GDP per capita, it is indeed at the forefront in the world, but if we look at some other statistics of Ireland, a different picture is seen.
For example, if we look at the annual average salary of Ireland, it is less than all the Scandinavian countries. Salaries in Ireland are equal to countries like Netherlands, Belgium and Austria, although the GDP of these countries is not even half of Ireland. Similarly, if we look at the data of household disposable income.
See, this shows how much income is left with the common man on an average, here also Ireland is at 177th position in the world, meaning the statistics of Ireland do not match with each other. According to GDP, Ireland is very rich but when it comes to people. In terms of standard of living, Ireland is very low.
This is because the GDP of Ireland is artificially inflated because all the economic activity generated here is due to foreign companies which in the end take all their profits out of Ireland. Similarly, this company mostly employs foreign workers. In all the big tech companies, there is a very small percentage of Irish workers.
Most of the people of Ireland work in the agricultural industry or as a cashier sales or retail assistant or in the mining industry. And obviously the salaries in all these fields are much less than the salaries of tech companies. The current average annual salary of Ireland is also inflated due to the workers of tech industries coming to Ireland from outside, otherwise if only the average of rich people is If annual salaries are taken, this total figure will become even less, meaning there is a huge difference between statistics and ground
reality and this is something which many countries are victims of, like India is the fifth largest economy in the world today according to GDP, but if we If we look at the GDP per capita, it is at 140th number, which means that the Indian economy is growing at a very fast pace but the income and standard of living of the people are not growing at that speed, where the Government of Ireland is showing off this to the whole world.
It is said that it is the richest country in the world, whereas the income and standard of living of the people of Ireland is below that of many European countries and that is why young Irish want to go to other countries. Similarly, the second biggest issue in Ireland is housing, Canada and Like Australia, Ireland is also going through a huge housing crisis.
Ireland’s housing policies are very bad, due to which it is not at all profitable for real estate developers to build there and the result is that the supply of houses in Ireland. There is much less than the demand which has made the prices of houses skyrocket. Due to the shortage of houses, the situation is so bad that in Dublin there are long lines of people to see just one rented house.
Similarly, in Ireland The health care system is also overcrowded because many Irish doctors go to other European countries for better salaries and the doctors who remain are so overburdened that patients have to remain on waiting lists for months, so all in all Ireland’s The entire success story is dependent on an artificially inflated GDP figure and this GDP may also take a huge hit in the future when Ireland will revert to zero taxation policy because no country can survive on low taxes for long, even Gulf countries too. They are introducing taxes
because they see that oil is going to be replaced by Lithium and Sodium Ion very soon. If Irish taxes increase, this unique advantage of Ireland will be lost and then many foreign companies will go back to their home countries. Ireland’s economic progress will be badly exposed. Strengthening our domestic industries is vital for long term success.
Relying only on foreign investment may improve economic figures but will not lead to progress at the ground level.
