Strandedbar

Eye-opening chart. Poland‘s GDP growth in the last decade has been simply amazing and is expected to grow another 30% in the next few years. Poland did everything right: 1. It has strong rule of law without overregulating businesses or throttling innovation and investment. 2. It maintains reasonable tax rates that keep people motivated to work hard and start businesses. 3. With EU funds, Poland massively upgraded its infrastructure, attracting foreign investment. 4. It digitalised most government services, making interaction with them easy and efficient. 5. Compared to some other countries in the region, the Polish economy is not based on cronyism and corruption. 6. Poland lacks long-term welfare nets, which motivates people to seek new jobs when unemployed. 7. Poland protects its borders effectively, preventing illegal immigration while welcoming immigrants who want to work, start businesses, and contribute to society. 8. Last but not least, Poles still remember the misery of socialism and understand they must work hard or start a business to live well. The entrepreneurial mindset in Poland is simply amazing. Be like Poland. It’s really worth it, and so refreshing compared to the steady decline of the left policies dominated Western European economies and societies.

Even outside of highly academic settings, it seems like the top 25% of younger zoomers and gen A learn very fast at stuff like welding, woodworking, etc. That top group seems more intelligent than similar kids in 1995 or whatnot.

@thomasforth All sounds good from a London perspective but fundamentally ignores the Irish desire for self-determination. Russia relationship with Ukraine has that same dynamic in terms of denial of sovereignty. They simply cannot see us as our own thing, and it has proved problematic!

1/ Yes. 30M easily. 2/ In a world where Britain had properly joined Ireland as equals in 1800 and built a country together, Ireland and we would share that country which would have avoided famine, and we'd be 120 million today. Decent chance. . My favourite what if in history.

Fun fact: Sweden’s amphibious forces don’t just use fast boats like the CB90. They also operate RBS-17 — a Hellfire missile adapted for coastal warfare. Small teams hidden in the archipelago can launch precision strikes against ships from the shoreline.

Hot take, but 2010-2012 was basically a 2000's hangover. The 2010's culturally and technologically didn't kick off until about 2013. It was commonplace to see people still using flip phones and watching on CRT's in 2012. Landlines just started being phased out and frutiger aero was still everywhere. Not to mention the dark, gritty urban nature of the 2000's was still lingering.

@JoeSmyth10 Domestic industrial development is essential. Business parks are great for multinational businesses but there is nowhere near enough infrastructure, e.g. warehouses, workshops, fabrication spaces for domestic start-ups. Needs far more capital support and capacity building.

This should not be a surprise. Our government, healthcare, education and domestic business are at the low end of digitalisation. They live mostly in 2006, not 2026.

@Independent_ie Domestic industrial development is essential. Business parks are great for multinational businesses but there is nowhere near enough infrastructure, e.g. warehouses, workshops, fabrication spaces for domestic start-ups. Needs far more capital support and capacity building.

Tax breaks for ‘tech talent’ may be needed to secure Ireland’s future growth, says new report buff.ly/GawUx4f

@AhernHerbe8277 Domestic industrial development is essential. Business parks are great for multinational businesses but there is nowhere near enough infrastructure, e.g. warehouses, workshops, fabrication spaces for domestic start-ups. Needs far more capital support and capacity building.

The tech job market is appalling right now and has been for a few years. Hardly a job to be had, nearly all entry positions have vanished due to AI and outsourcing to India.

@P_Soisialach @AhernHerbe8277 Knockmenagh sounds like a nice commuter town. Craigavon not so much.

Reminder: Knockmenagh✅️ Craigavon❌️ Mostrim✅️ Edgeworthstown❌️ Kilnamullagh✅️ Buttevant❌️ Rathlurk✅️ Charleville❌️ Aghalun✅️ Brookeborough❌️ Aghanure✅️ Virginia❌️ Crumglynn✅ Hillsborough❌ Coolmallish✅ Markethill❌ Abbeycurran ✅ Midleton❌

People of Ireland, a friend is organising an Irish language & culture hackathon in Dublin this week! Check it out: craicathon.ie

🍀 Happy St. Patrick’s Day ☘️ As millions toast with a Guinness in hand, @Diageo_NA keeps the tradition going strong by celebrating its 19th year ringing in the holiday at NYSE. Sláinte! $DEO

@eagleseyeinc That 11% for funeral services must be a tricky one.

12 businesses with the highest success rates : 1. laundromat / laundry services (92%) 2. self-storage business (90%) 3. funeral services (89%) 4. essential home services (88%) 5. real estate rentals (85%) 6... show more

Amazon just cut 16,000 people in January. They're now reportedly planning another 14,000 for Q2. Thirty thousand jobs in six months from a single company. And they're not struggling. Revenue is up. AWS is printing money. Bezos is worth $200 billion. This isn't survival mode. This is the new operating model. The targets this time are AWS, Alexa, and what Amazon internally calls "department consolidation." Which is corporate speak for "AI can handle this now, you can go." Meta is doing the same thing. 20% of the company. 16,000 people. Doubling AI spend to $135 billion while cutting the humans who built the platform. JPMorgan estimates $6 billion in annual savings. Bank of America says $8 billion. Wall Street is literally putting a dollar figure on how much your absence is worth. Oracle. 30,000. Same playbook. Raising $50 billion for data centers while gutting 10% of headcount. They don't expect the AI investment to even break even until 2030. But the layoffs start now. Three companies. Roughly 60,000 jobs between them. All announced within weeks of each other. All citing AI. All seeing their stock go up. This is not a coincidence. This is coordination by incentive. Every CEO is watching the others get rewarded for cutting headcount and thinking "why wouldn't I do the same thing." 60 companies. 269,000 people. Updated daily, with trackable sources for every single post.

Heard $Druckenmiller on a podcast: "Anybody who believes that(i.e. AI will be very deflationary and it will lead to massive job losses) with conviction suffers from arrogance and not an open mind…every technological revolution since was known to man, it’s been declared, for jobs it’s the end of the world…So let’s say the pessimists are right on AI, it’s possible you get a government response with printing and universal income." That got me intrigued, so I asked $Claude and $GPT to go back through history and review a few cases where societies feared that new technologies or structural shifts would trigger permanent mass unemployment: The Luddites (1811-1850s); American farmers (1800s-1970s); Telephone operators (1920s-1960s); ATMs and bank tellers (1970s-2010s); The Rust Belt (1980s-present); Radiologists and AI (2016-present). Full case study: open.substack.com/pub/robonomics… In none of these cases did we get sustained, economy-wide deflation or permanent mass unemployment. --- What actually feels different this time? Speed. The shift from 41% to 2% of the labor force in agriculture took roughly a century. Telephone operators faded over about 60 years. ATMs played out over roughly 40 years. Even Rust Belt deindustrialization - often seen as shockingly fast - unfolded over 20-30 years. AI could move much faster. --- What happens if AI really does cause deflation or unemployment? The Fed has four main anti-deflation tools: - Cut interest rates - QE - Forward guidance - Coordinate with fiscal stimulus - the 2020 playbook These tools can support aggregate demand. What they cannot do well is determine who benefits. The most likely macro outcome may look something like a Rust Belt at scale: nationally, GDP still grows, unemployment stays moderate, and headline deflation never really shows up. But underneath those aggregates, inequality widens and pain gets concentrated. --- If $Dario is directionally right - say 50% of entry-level white-collar jobs disappear within 1-5 years - the math gets meaningful quickly: - Current unemployed = 168M x 4% = 6.7M - 50% of entry-level white-collar jobs displaced = 5M-7.5M - Unemployment could rise toward roughly 7-9% - Historically, U.S. unemployment has usually ranged between roughly 4% and 10% outside extreme crises. A move from 4% to 7-9% would not be unprecedented - but it would be large enough to reshape politics, wages, and social expectations. --- Long way of saying: I’m trying not to be “arrogant without an open mind.” As $Druckenmiller said: "you just have to always be looking at what other people might not be, and then if you’re prepared for it mentally, you can adjust quickly enough, um, in your portfolio to it as it unrolls." +++ Full analysis: open.substack.com/pub/robonomics…

@SeanUlidia Ah it's just a bit of planter banter.

I used to deliver to the Tayto factory canteen and the sectarian chatter and comments from the staff was wild, that's one of the reasons, Drumcree being the other one, that I haven't bought a Tayto product since. I buy the original Tayto #FreeStayto.

@GanleyMicheal Those types don't want to engage intellectually. They're threatened and refuse giving any form of recognition to diaspora members across the pond. It's a sort of cognitive dissonance. They are very online and yet take very little time to do any reading on the topic.

I hate the lack of intellectual curiosity some Irish people display on this topic. Our diaspora is fascinating and I’m glad they take pride in their identity.

@AhernHerbe8277 Chuck Feeney paid for most of the college campuses here, (particularly UL & DCU). Transatlantic generosity continues to this day, e.g. Collison brothers funding entire software programmes at postgrad level. Philanthropy could probably play a bigger role if better promoted.

Ireland owes is most of its wealth, its international profile and its peace, ( No group contributed more to peace in NI), to the generosity and patriotism of the diaspora in America. Indeed, they are likely the best of us. Divided by famine and genocide, United by Blood. Ireland was like Albania for most of its history. TK Whittaker and Sean Lemass made close contacts with the diaspora in the 1960s and brought in investment from them. Eg. EMC now Dell employs 6000 plus in Cork. Egan the E from EMC, chose the site as his mother was from the townland. Same with Ford in Cork, one of Ireland's first big factories. His mother was also from Cork. Merit has little to do with success in this world.

@chaoticera88 Totally different lived experiences. St Patricks day parades every year in Boston and New York. London has only had St Patrick's day parades since 2002. Impact of the Troubles were a massive part of this. Basically like trying to have a Ukraine day in Moscow.

I do feel more of a connection to Ireland than England in many ways, but I think that because I have grown up with Irish people and have Irish friends it feels incredibly disrespectful to appropriate that identity when you haven’t experienced any of the marginalisation (2/2)

It’s crazy…my mum’s American cousin’s who have the exact same amount of Irish heritage as us (my grandma/their grandfather were half Irish, them and their children born in the UK) consider themselves Irish but I don’t. And not because I don’t love Ireland (1/2)

@SCFCJosh96 For better or worse, the Americans take a far more active and enthusiastic interest in their roots, and act like an interested party. Plastic Paddys might have a granny from Tipperary but in many cases they're even more annoying.

funny to me that a huge % of British people have closer Irish ancestry than many 'Irish Americans'