Scotland and Ireland are countries with similar populations, land areas and Celtic peoples. Here below is what Ireland has done with its independence from England.
This is an excerpt from a New York Times article of November 2024 regarding an upcoming Irish election.
EXCERPT:
‘Ireland’s current condition might best be described as an embarrassment of riches. A country that was long one of the poorest in Western Europe now has an abundance of public and private wealth and an economy that is open to the world.
The great driver of its transformation is external. For U.S. multinationals looking for a base in the European Union, Ireland’s low corporate tax rate, highly educated work force and stable politics, combined with the familiarity of the English language, a common law system and close historical and cultural ties, have exerted a magnetic attraction.
Think of an American multinational — Amazon, Apple, Pfizer, Meta, Microsoft, Intel, Boston Scientific — and the chances are that it is one of the thousand or so U.S. companies with an Irish operation.
These companies spend more than $40 billion a year in a country with a population of just over five million.
To put that in context, the stock of U.S. foreign direct investment in Ireland in 2022 stood at $574 billion, roughly triple the total in China and India put together.
As well as paying a lot of wages, these companies give the Irish treasury a windfall of corporate taxes — the full-year total could reach a new high of about 30 billion euros this year.
With this much money coming in, the government has been able to live every politician’s dream: cutting income taxes while increasing public spending and reducing debt. Instead of the hard choices that the leaders of most democracies feel obliged to offer their electorates, Ireland is coasting.’
New York Times article excerpt ends.
The view of Prof Robert Burns is that highly educated world cultural centres like Edinburgh and Glasgow can quite easily compete with Dublin for these American corporate financial bonanzas. And Aberdeen, Dundee and Inverness can back them up too.
