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Comment by efsavage | Hacker News Reader

"I wonder why US and UK publications publish this topic over and over."

"Ireland and Greece are tiny countries. Their problems are totally blown out of proportion."

I think you answered your own question, I bet if you asked a number of Americans which had the larger population of Ireland or Germany, a significant number would not know or would even guess Ireland. I also bet if you asked a number of Americans which had the larger population of Ireland or Massachusetts, a large majority would say Ireland, even residents of Massachusetts.

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I bet if you asked a number of Americans which had the larger population of Ireland or Germany, a significant number would not know or would even guess Ireland.

This may be true of the average US citizen. Probably much less true of readers of thestreet.com or any US publication about economics. And certainly not true of folks reading economic publications in the UK, who are well aware of the relative sizes of Ireland and Germany.

Spain, on the other hand, has fifty million people, and is being talked about as possibly the next domino to fall. If that happens, it's much more serious than Greece or Ireland.

PS. Ireland and Massachusetts are roughly the same size; I think anyone can be forgiven for not knowing which is larger.

To save other people Googling, populations and GDP per capita (2009, USD) of the economies under discussion. All from Google apart from GSP (gross state product) per capita of Massachusetts, which is from Wikipedia.

  Ireland:        4,450,446 (51,049)
  Massachusetts:  6,593,587 (49,875)
  Germany:       81,879,976 (40,873)
  UK:            61,838,154 (35,165)
  Greece:        11,283,293 (29,240)

The figure for GDP per capita in Ireland seems pretty high.

Bailout is EUR 85bn which comes out to about 25,233 USD per capita.

That's because Ireland has low corporation tax (12.5%) so multinational companies export their profits there and artificially inflate the GDP.

That may change however:

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/republ...

"Ireland's low corporate tax level of 12.5% should be doubled to 25% as part of a common rate across Europe, a cross-party group of MEPs have said."

Agreed; isn't this why this discussion should use GNP? Or would that miss some other relevant detail?

That high GDP # is the real estate bubble about to burst. Unfortunately most of my erstwhile countrymen (including the bankers) thought it meant spending power. I find it painful to read about, honestly.

The GDP per capita is inflated in both the US and Ireland.

In Germany the GDP is similar in the West and lower in the former East, which will need many more years to reach the level of the former West Germany.

> I also bet if you asked a number of Americans which had the larger population of Ireland or Massachusetts, a large majority would say Ireland

I’ll take that bet.

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