By: Paige Rohe

When people think of Ireland, they are prone to conjure up a country with green fields blanketing the island as far as the eye can see. A traveler to this nation would find this conception largely true. Ireland’s first attempts at ‘industrialization by invitation’ did not begin until as late as 1973 when Ireland was admitted into the European Economic Community, but even this was a limited endeavor.

There are several reasons why the nation of the Celts had for so long, lagged behind it’s Continental counter-parts yet, Europe’s late bloomer is now poised to become one of the strongest economic and consequently, political powers in the region.

Ireland’s position of neutrality didn’t especially help it to court the US dollars for post-WWII economic assistance.  As a result, Ireland never received the benefits of the American Marshall Plan, which pulled the rest of war-ravaged Europe up by its bootstraps, and prevented any further Soviet expansion into the area.

But what of Ireland, who seemed to be locked in time somewhere between the 19th century Great Potato Famine and the 20th century happy-go lucky, unindustrialized purgatory of John Wayne’s The Quiet Man?  Ireland, and it’s Troubles, (terrorism that is) were far from American minds until the rise in American popularity of an Irish rock group called U2.  Their stirring, intensely political lyrics and catchy choruses for a time made it likely that more American teenagers knew what “Bloody Sunday” was than adults.

I’d like to think that U2’s success in the US, only a decade before Ireland’s economic boom began, served as a marker that Ireland was prepared economically and socio-culturally to grow. After all, people who have time to listen to rock music have spare time and spare cash. This theory could probably be tested with comparison to the increasing American awareness and appreciation of music and films coming out of Bollywood, India-- But I suppose that’s for another time and another column.

Back to 1993, where following the example of the Asian Tigers (Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Taiwan and South Korea) Ireland began inviting American information technology companies to out-source their software initiatives among a people known for their whisky and great golf courses.  What self-respecting businessman could refuse?

By 1995, the student had surpassed the master. Ireland’s rate of GDP growth had skyrocketed from a paltry 3% to 10% , leaving the Asian Tigers in the dust of Eire’s tracks. The Irish now are the second largest producers of packaged software in the world (second to the US), have a booming tourism industry, burgeoning whisky brewing industry, and a rising standard of living to match their fellow European Union counter-parts. What’s more, Ireland has the most expensive living costs of anywhere, in the whole of Europe.  How long these days of milk and honey will last, no one can be sure. Ireland’s rate of growth has been slowing down and experts expect it to level out with and become tied to that of other EU nations. That is, unless the weakness of the American dollar doesn’t get to Ireland first.

All the work Ireland put in to wooing American business may be for naught if Americans find it too expensive to out-source there and unless tech industries start developing on their own in Ireland, the nation may find itself in pretty much the same condition it was 20 years ago.

Is it fair to indirectly destroy one nation’s economy because ours is so badly off? On the same token, out-sourcing doesn’t help the status of the American unemployed. Maybe the best option is to help each other. Strengthen the American dollar, and work on making competitive IT industries in economically lagging southern and mid-western American states.

Rural and agricultural America is, sadly, a dying breed. Enhanced farming techniques and bigger produce and meat companies are pushing the American farmer out of business and leaving many to rely heavily on low-wage jobs, serving as relatively unskilled workers in a heavily skilled and competitive workforce.

In these situations, it is therefore not unusual that rural poverty can reach the same lows as some urban poverty living standards. The plights of both the urban and rural poor are disturbing yet there is opportunity, to begin to change some of the institutional factors causing these situations.

We must attempt to re-develop the agricultural areas suffering the brunt of competition and big agricultural business interests in the same way that nations like Ireland have industrialized.

American poverty and the suffering American economy cannot be fixed by using outside-in policies. Rather, we must work to strengthen ourselves from the inside-out, and hopefully we'll help strengthen others in the process too.

Paige Rohe is an International Studies student at Emory University and a contributing writer for PurePolitics.com. She can be reached at feedback@purepolitics.com.

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