The Irish "Celtic Tiger" economy of the 1990s-2000s
is one of the greatest capitalism success stories
in the history of the world.
This has driven the Irish left completely mad.
They hated the Celtic Tiger from the start,
and longed for it to end.
Needless to say,
they are delighted by the
2008 recession
and they hope it destroys all the gains of the Celtic Tiger.
I suspect they will be disappointed.
The Irish left and the Dublin 4 media
love intellectuals whose policies have never helped the poor,
but they
hate
anyone who actually did anything for the poorer people of Ireland,
such as Ryanair,
which allowed the poorer people of Ireland to travel.
Image from here.
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The Republic of Ireland is ranked by
the Heritage Foundation
as the 4th most economically free country
in the world.
It is freer than the US, the UK,
and all of Europe.
Why Ireland Boomed,
James B. Burnham,
The Independent Review, Spring 2003.
He argues that EU money was a minor factor in Ireland's boom,
and that it was caused by an embrace of the market
- almost by chance rather than by ideology
- plus a number of lucky external factors.
He discusses in particular
the state monopolies in
telecoms
and
air flight
and how they crippled the Irish economy
until they were (thankfully) broken.
"For a generation after achieving independence from the United Kingdom in 1922,
Ireland sought to be economically self-sufficient. It relied on small-scale agriculture,
exporting primary produce to the U.K. market and manufacturing mainly for the home market
of less than 3 million people. Trade barriers such as high tariffs
and a policy of import substitution sought to make this reliance on economic nationalism successful.
Inevitably, it failed."
He considers the origin of Irish prosperity to be
T.K. Whitaker
and his landmark paper, Economic Development,
in 1958.
David McWilliams
has an interesting idea for Ireland's future
- open up the right to live and work here to the world-wide Irish diaspora.
Indeed, why not open up Ireland to all
of the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand,
and maybe also places like Hong Kong, South Korea and Israel.
Let the best, brightest, most energetic and best-integrating
immigrants of the world come here.
GDP per capita of Ireland
since 1922.
GDP per capita was
(1990 $) 2,736 in 1913,
and
(1990 $) 3,092 in 1947.
That is,
Ireland was hardly any richer in 1947 than it was in 1913.
But things got a lot better after that.
Stats from Angus Maddison.
Close-up of recent years.
Average wealth doubled from 1994 to 2006.
Average wealth tripled from 1986 to 2006.
World GDP per capita actually grew
quite well during this period,
as you can see if you
change the scale.
It's just that Irish growth was so amazing it makes world growth look almost flat.
The Irish left hated the Celtic Tiger
After the Ball,
by Fintan O'Toole, 2003,
exemplifies the yearning desire of the Irish left
to see the boom come to an end.
Here is a man - like many others - who did nothing but complain
as Ireland transformed from a land of emigration and unemployment in the 1980s
to one of the richest countries on earth.
By his ideas, he did everything he could to stop this happening.
He has been heaping abuse on the "Celtic Tiger"
for years.
And now, one brief economic slowdown
and he produces this book
with its sneering title,
delighted that the "Ball" is over,
gloating that at last, he may be proved right.
But of course, the good times aren't over.
The Celtic Tiger isn't ending.
Prosperity isn't ending.
And it's Fintan O'Toole who will look bitter and foolish.
Thank heavens Ireland isn't run by narrow men like him.
It used to be, in the days of de Valera.
But not any more.
Just some of hundreds of articles I could have chosen to illustrate that
you should not rely on people like Fintan O'Toole for your prediction
of what will happen next.
He once angrily replied to criticism that
his ludicrous anti-capitalist economic policies
would lead to a lower standard of living.
Like Arafat,
or Castro, or any other economy-wrecker,
De Valera blithely said:
"You say "lower" when you ought to say a less costly standard of living. I think
it quite possible that a less costly standard of living is desirable and that
it would prove, in fact, to be a higher standard of living. I am not satisfied
that the standard of living and the mode of living in Western Europe is a right
or proper one."
And de Valera delivered the poverty that he praised.
Irish GDP stagnated under de Valera,
who was head of government from 1932 to 1948,
then 1951 to 1954,
then 1957 to 1959.
It only started to really grow after he left office in 1959.
His long period in office in particular was a disaster.
GDP per capita (in 1990 dollars) was $2,972 in 1931.
It was $3,092 in 1947.
While praising the poverty the Irish lived in,
De Valera himself of course lived in a succession of two beautiful
houses (Bellevue and Herberton)
on Cross Avenue
in Blackrock.
I would love to be able to live on Cross Avenue!
Damien Dempsey
produced a hilarious song called
"Celtic Tiger"
in 2003,
with Sinead O'Connor.
I can sum it up as follows:
Free-market capitalism ends
unemployment and emigration.
Artist is not happy but rather whines about it.
Sinead O'Connor is of course very wealthy:
In 2007,
Sinead O'Connor paid
almost €2m
for a 6-bedroom, 3,200 square foot
Victorian house
overlooking the sea at Bray.
I love her music:
but I am afraid
she is part of an age-old tradition of rich people telling the rest of us
not to be rich.
A similar example:
Wealthy Hollywood actress
Natalie Portman, Aug 2009, says the recession, and people losing their jobs, is
"kind of an exciting time.
I mean, everyone is cutting back. It's happening in every industry - including our own. All of a sudden, people are doing jobs that they hate and they're not making as much money as they thought they would or they've lost their jobs entirely. I've started to see people looking more toward their own passions and what really excites them."
One day later,
she buys a $3 m mansion
in a gated community in LA.
(She just sold her Manhattan home for nearly $7 m.)
"Please God let it be true", you can hear the left praying,
that the Celtic Tiger ends.
"Please let this appalling, distasteful wealth end!"
The Irish left, which always hated Irish prosperity,
has been hopefully
predicting the end of the Celtic Tiger since the very start in the 1990s.
Search for the phrase
"end of the celtic tiger"
in the news.
After hopefully predicting its demise for years,
the left finally got their apparent victory in 2008.
Browne admits that Ireland implemented free-market economic policies during the boom:
"We also got a country that seemed willing to be governed by the ideology of the Progressive Democrats, albeit without ever voting for that party in large numbers."
He admits that Ireland got much richer. He's not crazy enough to deny that!
He claims this was a coincidence.
"As the proud boasts from media and business leaders about how neoliberal policies created the boom fade away, we are forced to admit that "success" was probably due to highly contingent circumstances, none of which were within our control, making them unlikely to be repeated. So there's literally no way back to prosperity, or not any way that we can map."
Some coincidence!
Harry Browne sums up the Irish left's approach to empirical questions.
He sneers at 20 years of the greatest prosperity in Irish history:
"But instead of a radical upheaval, we got Fianna Fail kicking off more than two decades of semi-permanent government with savage cuts in healthcare."
And despite the empirical track record of free-market economics in generating wealth
- which extends far beyond just Ireland
- he calls for a - yes - socialist revolution.
Yes, that will make us all richer.
Let's look again at GDP per capita of Ireland
since 1922.
In 2003, Fintan O'Toole
sneered that the "ball" was over for Ireland.
In 2009, Eddie Holt
sneered that capitalism was finished:
"consumerism has consumed itself. For about 20 years - since the collapse of socialism - it was inevitable anyway. It was just a matter of time."
Yeah, right.
What a dream world these left-wing intellectuals live in.
What lack of gratitude
for the incredible prosperity that Fianna Fail and the PDs have delivered.
If they just openly said:
"I hate Ireland being rich and I want it to be poor",
then at least I could respect them for being honest.
But they never say anything so direct.
They just sneer at the people who made Ireland rich.
Irish prosperity is not over
I bet that in 5 years' time, Ireland will still be rich and still be capitalist.
The Celtic Tiger was not just all about property.
It was also based on a low tax, high tech, smart economy.
Right now, even after the 2008 crash,
there are thousands of job vacancies in my sector
- computing in Ireland.
RTE report on job vacancies in computing in Ireland, Apr 2009.
Contrary to all the leftie sneering that the boom is over,
there is (and has been for years)
a huge shortage of people for the thousands of open jobs in computing in Ireland.
but I am afraid
she is part of an age-old tradition of rich people telling the rest of us
not to be rich.
Since 1995.
