russo2116.bsky.social

Neither time’s old Romans nor Times New Roman.

Yeah - CU’s substance was a bad but straightforward extension of bad precedent; its *procedural* radicalism, where the majority decided to make up new claims for the plaintiffs in order to get to the decision they wanted, was certainly a harbinger of new awful things to come, though.

It’s been a decade or so since I was doing much work on this issue so the details might have changed after the first Trump tax bill made international tax avoidance even easier, but IIRC the rule of thumb was that the actual Irish GDP was probably around 2/3 of the nominal figure.

Ireland’s GDP is heavily distorted by the fact that it’s a tax haven where lots of multinationals - largely pharmaceuticals and tech - park their intellectual property, meaning economic activity from that IP can show up on the books in Ireland despite the buyers and sellers all being international.