Quote Originally Posted by Feedback View Post
if you're going to quote Ireland and its GDP, then be honest about it and explain that a significant portion of it is a result of the double Irish, meaning whilst the economic activity of the likes of Facebook, Google etc is nominally part of the Irish GDP, its hardly taxed in Ireland and it doesn't transpose to wealth for Ireland.

If you strip out the GDP included as a result of the double Irish, then Ireland is nowhere near as prosperous as the UK.

A few points about Wales:

we have a fiscal deficit of £15bn per annum;

our GDP is about £70bn;

if we taxed at 40%, we'd need to generate £37.5bn more economic activity to increase our tax base by £15bn. That means we would need to increase the size of our economy by more than 50%;

In Wales, 1 in 4 work in the public sector. That's 375,000 workers. In the UK it is 1 in 5. To match the UK in terms of cost and efficiency, we would need to lose 75,000 public sector jobs;

We can't generate a 50% uplift in our economy from selling water and wind to England;

we are not going to replace 75,000 public sector workers with private sector employment;

Wales will be an economic basket case, 3rd world within a generation.

the economic numbers just do not stack up. Quoting Ireland is folly because its GDP is vastly inflated due to the likes of Facebook et al.
of course we wouldn't be a 3rd world nation within a generation.

if we stay in the UK, we will always be the poorest part of the UK.
when northern Ireland and Scotland leave, which is only a matter of time, we will be a forgotten part of England.
Ireland has prospered far more outside of the Union than it would have inside the union - yes it took a long time.

an independent report i just read suggested that the defect could start at around 15% and be closed in 10 years, debt peaking at 73% of GDP.