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Yeah I suppose that is the "best case" scenario, although I doubt your average Azov battalion is thrilled to die for that.
But there are some big deviations.
Ireland's former/current overlords are Anglo countries mired in versions of anti-colonial ideologies. So it is easy to make demands from them when you know how to push certain emotional narratives. Russia is unlikely to ever play along in that.
Also the world bank data shows that before the whole tax haven thing, Ireland was trailing the UK with around 65% of its GDP per capita. That is not a terribly poor country. The main period of their transition from nationalist/parochial to atomised West Europeans also lies during a period of still pretty high birthrates and global rapid economic development. Compare that with Ukraine.
In short I doubt that economically they could hope for anything better than what Bulgaria (or Romania tops) have achieved, even if they entered the EU in 2021, Europe had decades of strong economic growth and the war never happened.
Should also take into account that the next generation of Ukrainian nationalists are going to be very well armed, have enormous combat experience and corps d'esprit, and have massive expectations for the nationalist future in their mind after sacrificing so tremendously. I doubt that they will be so docile if they start smelling betrayal in the air. This video comes to mind: https://youtube.com/watch?v=rgkPpsyUFcM
Small note here since I both work in finance and am Irish; this exagerrates the UK advantage since a large proportion British GDP also comes from financial/tex efficiency stuff. If you're going to strip out the Irish tech sector (which is both the largest employer and largest GDP contributing sector of the economy) on the basis that firms are only sited there for tax efficiency, then to do a fair comparison you'd need to strip out the UK financial sector too.
It's true that GDP isn't a good metric to examine Ireland; our central bank publishes a figure that tries to account for the distortionary effect of profit funnelling, and which puts us about on a par with France on a per capita basis. If we're talking salaries and cost of living, Irish salaries are higher than non-London UK ones, and slightly lower than London ones.
When I quoted 65%, I was looking at the 60s-70s parts of those charts. I presume neither country had such a magnitude of “fake” economy back then?
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You're comparing Ireland with London though, instead of Ireland with the UK. For sure Ireland doesn't have a city to rival London; neither does any other EU country. Paris and Berlin are both a grade below it; the only Western city that genuinely rivals London is NYC. Losing the UK from the EU was whatever, but losing London was a real tragedy for us. No disagreement there.
If the comparison is nation to nation instead of nation to city though, our per capita results come out above the UK in a lot of meaningful metrics.
As for the breakdown of roles, yes, no disagreement: the "top of the pyramid" roles tend to be based in London as UK personal tax is lower (Irish tax on equities is fucking abysmal), pay for high-end roles is higher, and there are a lot more of them.
Some quibbles: quite a lot of sales roles are really based here. Speaking of Google for example, more than 50% of staff in Dublin would be in sales roles, albeit junior ones. A junior sales role at Google is still pretty good. Meta is similar, so is Salesforce, Microsoft et al.
And you'll be aware of course that, given the loyalist history of the institution, people who go to Trinity aren't really Irish. The most ambitious Irish grads go to the US, not the UK, because there are more hoops to jump through; just like the Canadians you meet in London being more impressive than those in Boston.
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