Comments

• NotZed

  2009-06-30 13:49:17

  To be fair, it is Ireland itself which has created this problem for itself. It attracted lots of business by giving generous tax incentives, which at least for a while created plenty of work for it's citizens and even plenty of immigrants. Yet in the process decimated the public purse, as well as the public purse of other countries from which companies had fled to avoid tax. And now the hard times are here, Ireland is going to be doing it very tough because of these types of decisions.
  
  Of course, much of the way they were doing things was hailed by mainstream economics as a marvellous example of success, so they weren't exactly doing it on their own back/corruption or anything other than the common prevailing ideals of the age.

• Needs Sunlight

  2009-06-30 14:44:07

  "It is clearly fallacious to accept the approval of the majority as evidence for a claim" http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/appeal-to-popularity.html
  
  ... and in this case it may not even be the majority of businesses which are violating tax law. Even if it were in the majority look at the damage.
  
  How many people have to get downsized to pay for new MS licensing and the extra maintenance required by MS products over the primary options? How many people have to get downsized because the money spent on MS disappears out of the country? How many people have to get downsized because money spend by small and medium sized businesses on cleaning up Windows malware didn't get re-invested back into their money-makers?
  
  MS is to gross domestic product what arsenic and dioxin are to drinking water.