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Competitive edge

  • 19-05-2010 12:38PM
    #1
    Closed Accounts Posts: 9,897 ✭✭✭


    Where is Irelands competitive edge these days? Do we even have one? Our expertise in farming has been rendered obsolete due to imported meats from outside the EU. Our fishing industry has been destroyed by the EU. Our high skilled work force does not seem to be attracting the same investment due to our wage demands. Our communications system is laughable since it was sold along with telecom eireann. The only thing we have is tourism and that has taken a nose dive too. So what have we got left to offer?


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Comments

  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,553 ✭✭✭Banned Account


    k_mac wrote: »
    Where is Irelands competitive edge these days? Do we even have one? Our expertise in farming has been rendered obsolete due to imported meats from outside the EU. Our fishing industry has been destroyed by the EU. Our high skilled work force does not seem to be attracting the same investment due to our wage demands. Our communications system is laughable since it was sold along with telecom eireann. The only thing we have is tourism and that has taken a nose dive too. So what have we got left to offer?

    Bagloads of begrudgery and misery - easily enough to export.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 693 ✭✭✭douglashyde


    k_mac wrote: »
    Where is Irelands competitive edge these days? Do we even have one? Our expertise in farming has been rendered obsolete due to imported meats from outside the EU. Our fishing industry has been destroyed by the EU. Our high skilled work force does not seem to be attracting the same investment due to our wage demands. Our communications system is laughable since it was sold along with telecom eireann. The only thing we have is tourism and that has taken a nose dive too. So what have we got left to offer?

    Ireland as it stands relys on foreign investment.

    So what we NEED to offer is a extremly highly educated workforce. Once we have this - other industries will follow.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,834 ✭✭✭Welease


    Ireland as it stands relys on foreign investment.

    So what we NEED to offer is a extremly highly educated workforce. Once we have this - other industries will follow.

    We have a highly educated workforce..

    Problem is, they are not educated in the types of roles that we should be looking to bring to Ireland (or developing in Ireland), and they want to be paid much more than the highly educated workforce in other countries.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 39,019 ✭✭✭✭Permabear


    This post has been deleted.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,305 ✭✭✭Bits_n_Bobs


    Competitiveness is first and foremost a result of productivity and cost. Productivity does not equate solely with a highly skilled workforce, dozens of other elements come into play, not least management and employee flexibility. Given the current state of play between the countries largest employer and its employees I think its safe to say Ireland Inc is not setting the globe alight on either front.

    Also no amount of highly skilled anyones is going to make a jot of difference if our costs remain way off kilter. So to answer your question, we don't have a competitive edge at the moment. If I was to hazard a guess at how to bring it about I would say:
    - sack all the managers (tricky, and we would have to import foreign fellas like that new regulator who just does not get how us Irish like a nice stroke)
    - ram increased employee flexibility down everyones throat (tricky also given the vast amount of legislation covering this area and the unionised nature of the largest group of employees)
    - decrease the amount people get paid

    Guess which one is happening??


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  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,258 ✭✭✭Tora Bora


    Never mind all that competitiveness bull****! We can be perfectly happy, like our great leader once told us, without wealth and money and all that.

    The ideal Ireland that we would have, the Ireland that we dreamed of, would be the home of a people who valued material wealth only as a basis for right living, of a people who, satisfied with frugal comfort, devoted their leisure to the things of the spirit – a land whose countryside would be bright with cosy homesteads, whose fields and villages would be joyous with the sounds of industry, with the romping of sturdy children, the contest of athletic youths and the laughter of happy maidens, whose firesides would be forums for the wisdom of serene old age. The home, in short, of a people living the life that God desires that men should live. With the tidings that make such an Ireland possible, St. Patrick came to our ancestors fifteen hundred years ago promising happiness here no less than happiness hereafter. It was the pursuit of such an Ireland that later made our country worthy to be called the island of saints and scholars. It was the idea of such an Ireland - happy, vigorous, spiritual - that fired the imagination of our poets; that made successive generations of patriotic men give their lives to win religious and political liberty; and that will urge men in our own and future generations to die, if need be, so that these liberties may be preserved. One hundred years ago, the Young Irelanders, by holding up the vision of such an Ireland before the people, inspired and moved them spiritually as our people had hardly been moved since the Golden Age of Irish civilisation. Fifty years later, the founders of the Gaelic League similarly inspired and moved the people of their day. So, later, did the leaders of the Irish Volunteers. We of this time, if we have the will and active enthusiasm, have the opportunity to inspire and move our generation in like manner. We can do so by keeping this thought of a noble future for our country constantly before our eyes, ever seeking in action to bring that future into being, and ever remembering that it is for our nation as a whole that future must be sought.
    At the time this speech was made, the Second World War was raging and the threat of German invasion (Operation Green


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 9,364 ✭✭✭ei.sdraob


    Welease wrote: »
    We have a highly educated workforce..

    Problem is, they are not educated in the types of roles that we should be looking to bring to Ireland (or developing in Ireland), and they want to be paid much more than the highly educated workforce in other countries.

    Im sorry to burst your bubble but education alone wont create employment

    countries like Russia and Cuba have alot of educated people too


    beside education you need:
    * access to markets
    * no stifling regulations and bureaucracy
    * infrastructure
    * stable political system
    * low corruption


    i can go on...


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 761 ✭✭✭ClayDavis


    That was one of the funniest posts I've ever read. Brilliant satire.
    I'm referring to Tora Bora's post not ei.sdraob btw!


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 39,019 ✭✭✭✭Permabear


    This post has been deleted.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,834 ✭✭✭Welease


    ei.sdraob wrote: »
    Im sorry to burst your bubble but education alone wont create employment

    countries like Russia and Cuba have alot of educated people too


    beside education you need:
    * access to markets
    * no stifling regulations and bureaucracy
    * infrastructure
    * stable political system
    * low corruption


    i can go on...

    I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but i never claimed it would ;) I was responding to the previous poster who said we needed a highly educated workforce, and the industries would locate here :)
    Ireland as it stands relys on foreign investment.

    So what we NEED to offer is a extremly highly educated workforce. Once we have this - other industries will follow.


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  • Closed Accounts Posts: 457 ✭✭hiorta


    Is there a move to make humankind into a homogeneous mass?
    The way things are shaping in Europe, we are becoming interdependent - not a bad thing in many ways


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,015 ✭✭✭Paulzx


    This post has been deleted.


    Is that not what got us into this mess in the first place? Every article i read seems to bemoan the so called "light touch" that was applied to basically allow the whole economic system do what it wanted when it wanted.

    I'm no business expert but you seem to be contradicting everything that has been blamed for the "bubble"


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,258 ✭✭✭Tora Bora


    ClayDavis wrote: »
    That was one of the funniest posts I've ever read. Brilliant satire.
    I'm referring to Tora Bora's post not ei.sdraob btw!

    Can you possibly imagine ei.sdraob doing satire :rolleyes: , be like getting blood from Mary Harney's heel:o


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,462 ✭✭✭Peanut


    k_mac wrote: »
    So what have we got left to offer?

    Cheese, strawberries and whiskey.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 39,019 ✭✭✭✭Permabear


    This post has been deleted.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,258 ✭✭✭Tora Bora


    This post has been deleted.

    Look what awaits the highly educated grads, in the most liberal economy in the world. Is it different in the Republic of Donegal?

    http://preview.bloomberg.com/news/2010-05-19/class-of-2010-set-to-flood-u-s-labor-market-as-09-graduates-wait-tables.html

    College Grads Flood Labor Market With Diminished Prospects

    By Mike Dorning - May 19, 2010
    data?pid=avimage&iid=i9P1hvsNlBhY
    Graduates are heading into a labor market with a 9.9 percent unemployment rate. Photographer: Michael Okoniewski/Bloomberg



    Ten months after graduating from Ohio State University with a civil-engineering degree and three internships, Matt Grant finally has a job -- as a banquet waiter at a Clarion Inn near Akron, Ohio.
    “It’s discouraging right now,” said the 24-year-old, who sent out more than 100 applications for engineering positions. “It’s getting closer to the Class of 2010, their graduation date. I’m starting to worry more.”
    Schools from Grant’s alma mater to Harvard University will soon begin sending a wave of more than 1.6 million men and women with bachelor’s degrees into a labor market with a 9.9 percent jobless rate, according to the Education and Labor departments. While the economy is improving, unemployment is near a 26-year high, rising last month from 9.7 percent in January-March as more Americans entered the workforce.
    The graduates’ plight has been the subject of high-level discussions within President Barack Obama’s administration, which so far has concluded the best response is to focus on reviving overall employment and bolstering assistance for higher education, said Peter Orszag, the White House budget director.
    “What’s clear is that there is harm to those who graduate at the wrong time through no fault of their own, which is one reason why it is so important to improve the jobs market,” Orszag said. “That is the bottom line here.”
    The scramble for jobs may depress earnings of new and recent college graduates for years to come and handicap their future career opportunities, according to Lisa Kahn, an assistant professor of economics at Yale University’s School of Management in New Haven, Connecticut. It also might hurt Democrats in the November Congressional elections, as the young voters who helped propel the party to power in 2008 grow disenchanted with their economic prospects.
    Wage Losses
    Students who graduated in the early 1980s -- when two recessions drove unemployment to a peak of 10.8 percent -- suffered wage losses of more than $100,000 in the next 15 years compared with those who came into the job market during the decade’s boom years, according to Kahn’s research.
    “They get shifted down into a lower level and lower pay scale,” she said. “They are working for worse firms, they’re not learning as many skills and they’re not moving up the career pyramid as quickly.”
    The average salary offered to bachelor’s degree candidates this year is $47,673, 1.7 percent less than 2009, when the economy already was in recession, according to data compiled from campus job-placement offices by the National Association of Colleges and Employers in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
    Increasing Competition
    “More so in the last year to 18 months than at any time, we have seen applicants from prior graduating classes looking for the kind of entry-level jobs we’re recruiting for,” said Dan Black, director of campus recruiting for Ernst & Young LLP, a professional-services firm headquartered in New York. “There are a lot more cohorts competing with each other: ‘09 with ‘10, probably ‘10 with ‘11.”
    Unemployment among people under 25 years old was 19.6 percent in April, the highest level since the Labor Department began tracking the data in 1948. Their economic travails may haunt Democrats in the November midterm elections. The youthful voters who helped propel the party to victory in the 2006 Congressional elections and gave the 2008 Obama campaign much of its vibrancy are showing signs of waning enthusiasm.
    Democrats held a 62 percent to 30 percent advantage over Republicans in 2008 among “millennials,” born after 1980, according to the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press in Washington D.C. Their 32-point margin shrank to 18 points this year, with 55 percent leaning Democratic and 37 percent Republican, based on polls taken from January through April.
    Less Excitement
    “It’s definitely tamped down the energy and the excitement and activism that the Obama campaign had sparked among that entry-level age group,” said Democratic strategist Joe Trippi, who advised Howard Dean’s 2004 campaign and is working with candidates in several midterm races.
    Even graduates of elite and graduate universities feel the impact. A new listserv of “Hot Opportunities” Harvard’s career-services office began compiling in March garnered 1,000 student subscribers in its first two days.
    “This is the first year we have seen such a demand for our services this close to graduation,” said Robin Mount, director of the office in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
    Thirty-three percent of Harvard’s graduating seniors had accepted a job as of commencement last year, down from 51 percent the year before. The survey results for this year’s class haven’t been released.
    On-campus recruiting at schools of business declined 65 percent during the fall job-interview season, according to the MBA Career Services Council in Tampa, Florida. Peter Giulioni, assistant dean and executive director of MBA Career Services at the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business in Los Angeles, said he is encouraging this year’s graduates to be more flexible in the jobs they seek.
    “Whereas in the past maybe 10 percent of my students had to go with their Plan B, about 30 percent are now,” he said.
    To contact the reporter on this story: Mike Dorning in Washington at mdorning@bloomberg.net


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,015 ✭✭✭Paulzx


    This post has been deleted.


    So, are you saying that lowering personal taxes is the solution to our problems. I'm not attcking you i'm just struggling to understand the exact point you are making


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 39,019 ✭✭✭✭Permabear


    This post has been deleted.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,015 ✭✭✭Paulzx


    Fair enough.

    What do you class as low?


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 19,044 ✭✭✭✭murphaph


    This post has been deleted.
    I personally know a very highly skilled pharma consultant that left Denmark to move here to Berlin to avail of lower income taxes and my GF works for a firm that was founded by 2 Danes and moved to Berlin for the same reason. Now Denmark doesn't get a penny of their wages/profit. Ireland needs to seriously avoid getting to that point, but some of the loonies would like to try.


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  • Closed Accounts Posts: 9,364 ✭✭✭ei.sdraob


    Paulzx wrote: »
    Fair enough.

    What do you class as low?

    lower than others

    take software/it startups

    why setup here when you can setup in Cyprus, still remain in EU, and pay less tax (both personal and company) oh and you get a nice weather too :P

    many have done just that already...


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 5,433 ✭✭✭sinnerboy


    We had a competitive edge once - through most if not all of the 90's . That and a low corporation tax rate .

    This pissed Hans and Jacque off a lot . What could they do about it ?

    Answer - flood the place with cheap money. Credit flowed freely for most of the last decade making ALL costs rise . Including wages and salaries . A most vicous circle indeed .

    Like the unwitting soon to be herion addict we consumed the initial first consignment . To find out later that the true cost was not as per the introductory offer

    I am being flippant suggesting that we fell victim to a Franco-German plot . I can't help feeling they must be a little pleased we pissed away our competitive edge using their savings however .

    The BIG question is - hoping over 20 years or so we get out of this - how to stop it happening again .

    A lot done - a lot more to do ?


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 9,364 ✭✭✭ei.sdraob


    sinnerboy wrote: »
    We had a competitive edge once - through most if not all of the 90's . That and a low corporation tax rate .

    This pissed Hans and Jacque off a lot . What could they do about it ?

    Answer - flood the place with cheap money. Credit flowed freely for most of the last decade making ALL costs rise . Including wages and salaries . A most vicous circle indeed .

    Like the unwitting soon to be herion addict we consumed the initial first consignment . To find out later that the true cost was not as per the introductory offer

    I am being flippant suggesting that we fell victim to a Franco-German plot . I can't help feeling they must be a little pleased we pissed away our competitive edge using their savings however .

    The BIG question is - hoping over 20 years or so we get out of this - how to stop it happening again .

    A lot done - a lot more to do ?

    its always someone elses fault aint it?

    the Germans and the French caused us to go mad

    never ourselves


  • Moderators, Entertainment Moderators, Politics Moderators Posts: 14,568 Mod ✭✭✭✭johnnyskeleton


    This post has been deleted.

    So a libertarian free society that doesn't allow people to leave eh?


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 6,718 ✭✭✭SkepticOne


    This post has been deleted.
    Or make sure that the services provided in return for those taxes are satisfactory.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,258 ✭✭✭Tora Bora


    murphaph wrote: »
    I personally know a very highly skilled pharma consultant that left Denmark to move here to Berlin to avail of lower income taxes and my GF works for a firm that was founded by 2 Danes and moved to Berlin for the same reason. Now Denmark doesn't get a penny of their wages/profit. Ireland needs to seriously avoid getting to that point, but some of the loonies would like to try.


    I know a rake of Danes that left Denmark, as far back as 1014, and it wasn't because of the tax regime. Anyway they turned up in Clontarf on good Friday that year, only to be met by Brian Boru and a couple of lads from Clare. The rest is history:eek::eek:

    TB


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 5,433 ✭✭✭sinnerboy


    ei.sdraob wrote: »
    its always someone elses fault aint it?

    the Germans and the French caused us to go mad

    never ourselves

    You missed my point . I contend that access to too much cheap credit was the mechanism by which WE lost our own competitiveness .
    sinnerboy wrote: »
    we pissed away our competitive edge using their savings

    The question is how to maintain competitiveness if we do regain it again - assuming cheap credit returns . If we can't answer this question we may go through a long and difficult economic re adjustment for nothing

    .


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 9,364 ✭✭✭ei.sdraob


    sinnerboy wrote: »
    You missed my point . I contend that access to too much cheap credit was the mechanism by which WE lost our own competitiveness .
    .

    that's like saying access to cheap, fast and processed food has made a person obese

    a person needs to have self-discipline to exercise and eat healthily

    same goes for countries


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,745 ✭✭✭Eliot Rosewater


    So a libertarian free society that doesn't allow people to leave eh?

    That's not what he said (though you probably know that). The point is that entrepreneurs should be given incentives to stay in Ireland. Tax and regulation are direct disincentives to stay here, most especially because the quality of our public services for which we pay tax are so bad. It usually comes down to a "have your cake and eat it too" situation: people, especially Trade Unions, want the wealthy to pay rakes of tax for gigantic services while still managing to provide employment. These are divergent aims, though.


    Back to the OP, my theory regarding Ireland's "competitive edge" is that it is a myth peddled so as to justify economic policies which raise the cost of living. When pushing up social welfare and the like, politicians could always hide behind the "knowledge economy" as a reason why making Ireland such a high price location was okay. Unfortunatly it's has turned out to be the furthest thing from okay.


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  • Closed Accounts Posts: 9,364 ✭✭✭ei.sdraob


    Its interesting that so many MNCs came here (and now leaving of course) after they have fallen for the myths and clever advertising by certain state agencies ;)


    but not many local enterprises have sprung since they can see right thru the bull****, and like me face the reality of doing business within a system that does everything to kick you in the balls for trying


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