One of the Pin's regular posters has pointed out a few times over the last few days that Ireland's GNP is the same as Germany's. Turns out it's pretty much true:

http://www.google.com/publicdata/explor ... ta+ireland
http://www.google.com/publicdata/explor ... ta+germany

It has also been pointed out that average house prices in Ireland and Germany are about the same. Again, from Googling a bit it seems that's also correct, broadly speaking.

Now, to me, this is absolutely ridiculous. But I can't quite work out an explanation nor properly rebut these statistics, beyond saying that it is prima facie absurd.

Can anyone explain how a bankrupt country being run by the IMF has the same GNP per capita and average house prices as one of the richest countries in the world and the economic powerhouse of Europe?

How does national debt per capita look?

Software, coded elsewhere, is sold out of Ireland at full price for tax purposes; is that not a large part of it?

Demographics

and an entrenched renting culture keeping the purchase price down?

No

GDP includes all income whereas GNP excludes transfer pricing etc.

Ireland has a large well educate work force working in high paid jobs (pharma IT and finance).

The reason the IMF is running the show is that as a country we are unwilling to live within our income.

Try this interactive link:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-15748696

83% vs 108%

Germany has a bit of work to do on the growth and stability pact itself?

Also pension time bomb will hit Germany sooner given its relatively older population.

In the short term the German economy is growing but its finance system is highly exposed to IPIGS debt.

I know many people (not only in Ireland) who moved their deposits to Germany for safety.
I always wondered what will happen when one day all these people will take the money back to their original country.
Will Germany go the Iceland way ?

That would depend if they leveraged up on those deposits.

A countries GNP per head gives no clue to its governments finances. Because Irelands government is running a large deficit (tax expenditure much higher than tax revenue) has no direct effect on business's like Ryanair, CRH, and the multinational companies that employ thousands of Irish people who's wages all add to Irelands GNP. Ireland government is ''bankrupt'' because bond markets are not willing to lend us money due to uncertainty of our banks and the deficit being so high.

You refer to Germany being a powerhouse, this term is used because of the size of their economy, they have 80 million people, we have 4.5 million, so even if GNP per capita is the same their economy is still going to be about 18 times are size and the biggest in Europe. Germanys debt to GDP ratio is 83% which is still very high by international standard but the major difference is their not running a huge defcit (less than 3%) at the moment so their debt ratio is not rising unlike Irelands. Irelands budgets of 2009/10 each took 4.5 billion out of the economy but GDP remained the same since then. Ireland can close its deficit by 2015 (terms of the bailout) by more budget cuts without GDP falling. were a small open economy where the government does not make up a huge amount of our economy, so government cuts can be offset by growth else where in the economy.

Also the stats on GNP you gave link to are measured in PPP (takes into account cost of living in different countries) which is the reason for Irelands and Germany having a considerable difference, if they were measured in nominal terms they would be far closer.

Er, no, Ireland would be further ahead... the PPP adjustment for Ireland deflates apparent wages.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Eu ... per_capita

On Larrys link, Irelands came in at €33,000 and germanys came in at €38,000 in PPP, so I thought if in nominal, his stats the gap would have closed.

strange the 2 sets of data differ so much

Ireland is so very higher cost...

Yep it's the demands on that take home pay which are higher through a combination of governmental imposed costs vis a vis decades of stupidity as policy, planning corruption, VAT, corruption, cartels and all the other factors much debated here and else where.

Look how Lidl and Aldi blossomed and that was during the boom too. It's not like "Fresh" of "Superquinn" were in the running to take over Europe with their "value proposition". Context context context!

Thing is too, those taking home pay any pay at all has diminished so much and continues too.