Quote:
Originally Posted by Itse
That is at best a gross oversimplification. Irelands economy had a steady rise for over about a quarter of a century, starting way back before the EU days. This was before the finance crisis struck in the late 2000's. They had one of the worst housing bubbles in the world I believe, which has created most of their troubles right now.
This is actually stuff that Finns keep bringing up in EU. Just because you're a small economy on the borders of Europe without that much in the way of natural resources is no excuse to not have a AAA credit rating, thank you very much. The problems in Greece and Ireland were created by bad politics, not bad economies. (The reason we're talking about this is of course the fact that we've been ending up paying up for the stupidity of our neighbors.)
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If you mean going from subsistence level farming to selling a few bags of potatoes I will give you that Ireland's economy increased but as a country Ireland has been a disaster, through most of the last century it had 13% emigration rates there was so little work!
It had no manufacturing to speak off, it has been perennially theorist least developed country in Northern Europe, it's only salvation was joining the EU.