Keith,
Forgotten (it always is) is Ireland’s land reform.
They carried out a land redistribution and I believe they imposed a
restriction of 5,000 acres on land ownership. (You’ll recall that during
the Famine individual absentee landlords would own entire counties.)
They still have the problem of high city land-values which could be
cured by land-value taxation, but this mild land reform has led to heavy
construction. (It will later run into more trouble as land values increase.)
New Irish housing is larger and better than the UK and the
Emerald Isle has a higher percentage of home ownership than the Brits. Brits
are apparently selling their bubble priced homes before buying a better house
in Ireland
and using the difference to live on. (Total immigration to Ireland is
about 30,000 a year from all countries. Quite a lot for a population of 3.2
million!)
If the UK built
housing at the same rate as Ireland
they would be building more than 900,000 a year. As it is they may make
170,000.
Not only does it show what a little land reform will do – it offers
an opportunity for the Brits to grab – quickly.
Harry
*******************************
Henry
George School
of Social Science
of Los Angeles
Box 655
Tujunga CA
91042
818 352-4141
*******************************
From:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Keith Hudson
Sent: Friday, May 27, 2005 4:12 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [email protected]
Subject: [Futurework] More on Ireland
In a posting of yours which I didn't reply to you
raised the subject of Ireland*
and its jobs. You might be interested in the following which is by way of an
insert in a larger article about the European Union and the increasingly parlous
state that three of its major countries -- Germany, France and Italy (the last
particularly) -- are now in. Ireland
is the only exception to an overall state of quiet desperation in Europe as to when its economies are going to pick up.
(And England
is an exception, of course, at present. Although we're technically in the EU,
we don't have the euro and, psychologically, we don't really think we're an EU
country anyway.)
(*We're talking of the independent Irish Republic here, not the six counties of
Northern Ireland which is a UK province without a government for the last few
years, occupied by British troops and even without a practising police force
for half its [Catholic] population -- where the IRA and Sinn Fein keep the
peace and where the crime rate is almost nil compared with the drug-gang ridden
policed parts of Protestant Belfast.)
If (and when) the EU explodes politically (I would give it no more than 5 years
now) then I reckon that Ireland
will perhaps join us and the Scandinavian countries in a new North European
Free Trade Area. There are already great political tensions. The older EU
countries don't want to give up their farming subsidies to the 10 new countries
that have just joined. Germany
is tieing itself significantly to Russia in trade deals for
preferential energy supplies. Illegal immigration is increasing mainly through Italy and Spain which seem incapable of
stopping it. And France,
from all accounts will be voting No on Sunday to the new proposed European
Union Constitution (283 pages of it, so help us -- even one French politician
who is urging voters to vote Yes confessed the other day that he hadn't read it
yet!). Talk about the Bush administration being confused, it's just as bad over
here!
Keith
<<<<
HOW IRELAND
FREED ITS ECONOMY
John Murray Brown
When Digital closed its mainframe computer factory in Galway in April 1994, it
seemed like the end of the world for this city in the west of Ireland.
Today, Galway is again a buzzing commercial
and industrial centre. It contains one of the world's largest clusters of
medical device manufacturers, and many of its companies are headed by former
Digital employees.
Galway's ability to reinvent itself illustrates the way Ireland has
been able to weather economic storms, moving steadily up the value chain as
low-cost manufacturers move to cheaper locations overseas. According to the
Industrial Development Agency, the government body that promotes foreign
investment in Ireland, there are now 28 medical device companies in the Galway
area, 15 of them locally owned, employing a total of 5,000 people.
What happened in Galway has been replicated
across the economy, as other foreign companies have set up, attracted in large
part by a young, well-educated workforce, many with experience of working abroad.
In the last decade, it has been the Irish working overseas in the world's big
high-technology companies who have been persuaded to return home. More
recently, Ireland
has seen an influx of foreign nationals taking up jobs that the Irish will no
longer do.
John Fitzgerald, professor at the
Economic and Social Research Institute, says: "Ireland has not avoided the
phenomenon of companies closing but all the time the people have been able to
find other jobs." Unemployment is at 4.4 per cent, half the European Union
average. Net immigration is about 30,000 a year. Growth has resumed its strong
upward momentum, with gross national product projected at around 5 per cent for
this year and close to 4 per cent for 2006 and 2007, still well ahead of its
European partners.
A key ingredient in Ireland's
success has been the low corporate tax rates, which have been attractive to
foreign companies. Keeping corporate taxes low has had cross-party support. And
you will rarely hear an Irish politician, left or right, question the value of
capitalism, as recently happened in Germany.
The hands-on approach of the government has also been vital. "There is
none of the policy inertia that you might find in larger economies," says
Eamon Cahill, an analyst with Forfas, the government's industrial policy body.
Some experts trace Ireland's
economic success back to the introduction of free secondary education in the
1960s. The fiscal reforms of the late 1980s provided the platform for the
recent growth surge.
The labour force increased in line with the 1980s baby boom, along with net
immigration. With the arrival of multinational companies, and as agriculture
has declined, there have been huge productivity gains. High productivity has
meant that, although wages have risen, unit labour costs have been restrained.
A series of centralised wage agreements has allowed the government to introduce
flexible working practices. In exchange for wage moderation, income tax was
cut.
Moore McDowell, professor of economics at University College Dublin, says the
Irish labour market is probably not as liberal as that of the UK. But he says
Ireland's
real advantage is the "absence of restrictions on doing business".
Employers are relatively free to hire and fire. Social security payments - a burden
for employers - are much lower than in other EU countries. Mr McDowell also
cites the relative powerlessness of the trades union movement. "In
reality, the union movement is almost a public sector phenomenon. Companies
like Ryanair and Intel will have nothing to do with unions."
Financial Times -- 26 May 2005
>>>>
