bostonbubble.com

[floatingingalway]

Hi all in Boston. Here's a little video I made about Galway in the West of Ireland. You are not alone. http://ie.youtube.com/watch?v=6sEzeW7TU5g

[john p]

I just walked back in the door from having la corned beef sandwich and Harpoon Brown Ale at the Black Rose. That's the closest to Ireland I get, other than Easter dinner with relatives....

Anyway, she said it was way, way worse in Ireland than over here. I'm confused because I thought the lower corporate tax rate would have buoyed the economy. Perhaps the bubble just got too big despite that benefit?

[Guest]

Unfortunately corruption at the core of Ireland has ruined this place. Everything was geared to the property boom - tax breaks, land re-zoning, dodgy deals in backs of pubs and lots and lots of brown envelopes. The carnage is only beginning here.

[john p]

I met two older women from Ireland who were political representatives in town for a conference to gather information. They asked me if because I was from Boston, was I a Democrat. I told them that I was an old school Democrat and that the Party has shifted from the hard nosed, hard working types that worked hard to build themselves and this country to those that want handouts. The days of Rosie the Riveter are gone, we now have too many potbellied union workers that stand around and gossip like old ladies while they wait for the lunch truck to come. Now, not all of them are like that, but most know that gossiping is how you get connections and connections are how you get called back on the next job. One of the Irish politicans told me that she was writing a book about how the "Entitlement" mentality was killing her country.

[Boston ITer]

The whole Celtic Tiger (not the Dance show) phenomena made little sense to me.

It was an implicit offshoring strategy to use Europe's cheapest English speaking area for American businesses to do their work before east coast office hours.

Then, along with the offshoring, came a housing bubble? What gives? At some point, the labor costs would not be different than any other ordinary US or Canadian city, if people are spending the same (if not more in housing), so where's the benefit?

At least the China/Taiwan -> to -> Vietnam offshoring strategy makes sense. There's little chance of a Vietnamese QA personnel costing more than an experienced QA person in either Taipei or Hong Kong. Likewise, it also releases mainland special economic zones for new manufacturing than maintenance work.