Cosa ha fatto la tecnologia statunitense all’Irlanda | Il paese dipende in modo allarmante da Meta, Google e Apple.

My fear here is how much power this gives said companies over our governments: If a sizeable chunk of your tax revenue derives from one source, that company has a serious hold over you 

“Nice tax revenue ya got there… shame if something were to happen to it”

Edited to add: whatever your political leanings, a company essentially being such a massive part of the public finances that it essentially becomes its own constituency that any government must satisfy should be deeply concerning

>Tech companies have become such a central part of the Irish economy that we’re now alarmingly reliant on the income they bring, **even if the benefits are rarely felt by the average citizen**.

I’m sorry, but what? The concentration risk is real, but this idea that the average citizen rarely feels the benefits of a booming economy, full employment, and a state with money coming out its ears, is hyperbolic BS that undermines very valid points you can make about all the things we’re failing to accomplish (on housing, childrens health, etc).

What’s the counter factual world where we simultaniously have the same amount of money just coming from different sources? Or would we just be happier as a poorer nation? Sure cans were cheap during the recession. And sure wasn’t the sense of community better in the 80’s when we all had to march in protests together because income taxes were so bloody high.

There are some good points made in the article, but it does read like “poet goes off on one because they feel grubby about the money from American corporations”.

Worth remembering that not only are we incredibly reliant on an unsustainable source of revenue from handful of companies but we were essentially forced by the European Commission to take over €14 billion from Apple that our government didn’t want to take. We were owed that money, and our public representitives were scared to take it – this is where we are right now.

The opposite is consistently argued on reddit – that we’re not over reliant on tech, not especially exposed to an AI crash, that tech workers have a negligible affect on housing. A country that has “boomed” for so long should not be struggling with outdated incapable infrastructure,  have homelessness figures creeping steadily to 20k and an emigration crisis of critical workers like nurses and teachers. Can’t help feeling a competent government over the last 15 years could have this country in a much different position. 

Who do you think pays for one of the most redistributive tax systems in the OECD?

A handful of MNC’s account for most of the corporation tax and their employees account for most of the income tax. And 2/3rds of all income tax comes from the top 10% of earners.

There were 3.4 million employees in Ireland in 2024 https://www.revenue.ie/en/corporate/documents/research/income-tax-overview-2024.pdf

That means 2/3rds of all income tax came around 340,000 people, those earning >€102,000.

The top 1%, approximately **34,000 people**, earning >€290,000, account for almost a **quarter of all income tax**. That is incredibly risky when you have 1/3 not paying any tax at all.

Who do you think is going to fund social housing, HAP, healthcare, pensions, infrastructure projects, social welfare, children’s allowance etc if those high paying jobs go?

Most countries have a much wider tax base. In Ireland, it is concentrated on a very small number of people. If these small numbers of companies move the jobs elsewhere, you won’t then be able to suddenly start taxing everyone proportionally. We would be back to how it was in the 80s.

If we want to reduce reliance on these companies and top earners, income taxes would need to widened so that the lower and middle end pay more. Would people be happy with this outcome?

It was way better when we didn’t have the tech and pharma industries and were dirt poor with single carriage way roads between our largest cities.