On the origin of humans and evolution

Humans, chimpanzees and bonobos were descended from a single ancestor species that lived 6 to 7m years ago. Humans and their closest cousins share 98.8% of their DNA, according to the American Museum of Natural History. The same DNA can behave differently — we share about 96% of our DNA with gorillas.

Charles Darwin (1809-1882) in his 1871 book 'The Descent of Man,' speculated that it was “probable” that humans originated in Africa because our two closest living relatives — chimpanzees and gorillas — live there. However, he also acknowledged that a large extinct ape once lived in Europe millions of years ago, leaving time for our earliest ancestors to move to Africa. Darwin concluded, “it’s useless to speculate on the subject.”

We now know the location of the cradle of humanity and at least 21 human groups can be identified from 6 to 7m years ago to modern humans that have developed from about 300,000 years ago.

What we also know is that Homo sapiens (Latin: “wise man”) is the species to which all modern human beings belong and that is among the genus Homo (man or human).

Homo sapiens is the only group that is not extinct.

The Irish as Young Europeans: "Hire them before they hire you"

IDA Ireland 1984: Engineering graduates of University College Dublin (UCD). "It's a fact that Ireland produces more computer science graduates per capita than the US; spends more (as a percentage of GDP) on education than Britain or Japan. So it's no surprise to find Irish managers among senior executives in top international companies. However, the best way to get your share of Irish talent is to locate in Ireland. You'll be in good company. Over 300 US manufacturing and service industry companies already have done so. Ireland, home of the Irish and the young Europeans. "

In 2020 Luxembourg and Ireland had the highest percentage of university graduates in the 25-34-year-old group. The EU27 was at 40.5%, Luxembourg 60.6%; Ireland 58.4%; Germany 35.1% and Austria 41.4%.

In the OECD's Education at a Glance 2020, Korea and Ireland are at 70% in 2019; followed by Canada 63%; Russia 62%; US is at 50% and Germany 33%.

While IDA Ireland, the Irish inward direct investment agency, bragged in 1984 that "Ireland produces more computer science graduates per capita than the US," this year the Irish Higher Education Authority (HEA) reported on its tracking of the progress of thousands of students who started third-level courses over a 10-year period (see image below).

The HEA reported that computing had the highest drop-out rate overall, with completion rates nationally at about 55%.

Danes' net financial wealth is highest in the EU but...

At the end of June 2021, Denmark's National Bank (central bank) reported that Danish households' net financial wealth was kr (krone) 6,453bn in December 2020. In the EU, the average Dane's financial net wealth is in first place, followed by the Netherlands, Sweden, Luxembourg and Belgium. Ireland has the 8th ranking.

However, average (mean) and median provide very different results — the median is the middle value with 50% of values above it, and 50% below. It's a useful metric when there is significant inequality.

Irish standard of living at 13th in EU27 and 19th among rich OECD countries

In 2020 Ireland's standard of living per capita was 13th in the EU27 ranking. Among the 31 advanced (defined by the International Monetary Fund: IMF¹) / rich countries of the 38 member Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Ireland had the 19th ranking for Household net adjusted disposable income per capita. The poor occupational pension coverage in the Irish private-sector workforce is also relevant to the standard of living.

According to the Central Statistics Office in 2020, 6 in 10 Irish workers have "some form of pension coverage" — the number of years coverage varies among private-sector workers as employers have no obligation to provide occupational pensions. The 2017 Public Service Pay Commission report noted that the Irish Pensions Authority indicated "that pension coverage in the public sector remains at 100%, with the equivalent coverage figure for the private sector at 40%."

State pensions accounted for almost a third of average wages in 2020 (€12,900 vs €40,300).

While the Irish public sector including politicians (18% of the workforce) has guaranteed pension payouts (defined benefit), up to 60% of Irish private pension funds are eaten up by charges and fees from finance firms.

In contrast to the shambolic Irish system, the OECD says that in Denmark occupational pension schemes are fully funded defined-contribution schemes agreed between the social partners through collective agreements. Some 85% of the employed workforce is covered by such schemes." Danish self-employed have separate schemes and total coverage encompasses "almost the entire population and comes close to absolute universality."

Danish households differ from households in most other countries in that they have very large pension wealth, according to the Danish National Bank. "This means that many Danes can look forward to relatively high income after retirement, which reduces their need to be debt-free when they retire."

Communist Party of China @ 100 - High inequality and high poverty

China has moved from being a moderately unequal country in 1990 to being one of the most unequal countries according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). At the same time, while great strides have been made in eliminating extreme poverty, claims that it has been vanquished have been disputed. Chinese premier Li Keqiang at the end of the National People’s Congress in May 2020 released data on household incomes. It showed that the bottom 40% of households ranked by annual income and accounting for about 600m people from a population of 1.4bn, had an average annual per capita disposable income of CN¥11,485 yuan (US$1,621) — an average of CN¥957 yuan (US$135) per month — according to an annual household survey produced by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).

Deaths of 60 million people in Americas in 1500s and global climate change

Aztec emperor Moctezuma II on the balcony of his palace before his murder by Spanish captors in June 1520. Library of US Congress

A Hendrick Avercamp's (1585–1634) painting of a Dutch waterway frozen in the extreme cold of winter: 'A Winter Scene,' c. 1610–1620, oil on panel, National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin

Scientists report that in the century following the four voyages (1492–93, 1493–96, 1498–1500, and 1502–04) to the Caribbean and the Americas by Christopher Columbus (1451-1506), Italian Cristoforo Colombo, Spanish Cristóbal Colón (he was apparently a native of Genoa), European colonialism resulted in the deaths of 60m people. The European diseases and genocide that killed about 10% of the world's population triggered a climate crisis in Europe in particular, that brought famine and political upheaval. However, claims that revolts from Ireland to China and Japan in the 17th century all related to climate change are not valid.

It is estimated that the population of the Americas fell to just 5 or 6m within a hundred years. For comparison, Europe’s population in 1600 was 78m spread over less than half the area.

The Spanish campaign finally vanquished the Aztec Empire on 13 August 1521, when a coalition army of Spanish forces and native Tlaxcalan warriors led by Hernán Cortés (1485-1547) and Xicotencatl the Younger (1484-1521), the leader of the indigenous Tlaxcalans, captured Tenochtitlan, the capital of the Aztec Empire, which became Mexico City that was built on the ruins of Tenochtitlán.

“It wasn’t 600 to 800 Spaniards who conquered [Tenochtitlán]. It was thousands and thousands of Tlaxcalans, Huejotzingas or other peoples, who were under the Mexica yoke and wanted to liberate themselves,” archaeologist Eduardo Matos Moctezuma told Radio Formula.

“Cortés had 30,000 to 40,000 Mesoamericans fighting with him,” said Aurelio López Corral, an archaeologist in Tlaxcala. “He couldn’t have done it on his own.”

Useful idiots from Bernard Shaw to President Michael D Higgins

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), Irish playwright, at home on his deathbed. A picture of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin is on the mantelpiece. Associated Press

Below, John McDonnell MP, then a senior British Labour Party politician in the House of Commons in 2015, reading quotes from Chinese dictator Mao Zedong's Little Red Book

The Nobel Prize in Literature 2007 was awarded to Doris Lessing (1919-2013), "that epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny."

In 1952 the British writer was part of a delegation visiting the Soviet Union. Her memories of the trip were clear and unforgiving according to a BBC documentary in 2010: “I was taken around and shown things as a ‘useful idiot’... that’s what my role was. I can’t understand why I was so gullible.”

Lessing was a member of the Communist Party in British-ruled Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in 1942-1944, and a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1952-1956.

Vaccine heroes and Empress Catherine the Great of Russia

On desktops click to enlarge

Margaret Heckler (née O'Shaughnessy was US Ambassador to Ireland 1986-1989; Heckler played a crucial role in obtaining a $120m grant for the International Fund for Ireland, an economic development organisation: 1931-2018) was President Reagan's secretary of health and human services in 1984 when she predicted that there would be a vaccine for HIV/AIDS within 2 years, and 37 years later there still isn't one. In an interview in 2006 Heckler said that Dr Anthony Fauci (1940-) "was so dedicated that he never took time out for lunch. He simply came to my meeting in his white coat and went right back to the Clinical Center. That was the spirit. Now, he was extraordinarily devoted and conscientious about it."

I end this piece with a comment from Dr Fauci on Covid-19.  

Vaccines are rare and in 2016 the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) listed 26 diseases that can be countered with a vaccine. Nine are for particular groups or travel, including smallpox which was eradicated by 1979. 

Only 43 significant first vaccines to counter a disease have been produced in the Western World in 1796-2020 (see below).  

A dream of a United Ireland with a population of over 7m people

Ireland and UK from the International Space Station

The centenaries of the momentous political events that occurred in Ireland in the early years after the end of the First World war have raised the issue of the likelihood of a United Ireland. Does it make sense in a political, social and economic framework or are a few decades more required for reconciliation between the two communities in Northern Ireland?

Ireland's FDI over-dependence and surging population

In the first two decades of the current century, the populations of the Netherlands and Denmark grew by 8 and 9% respectively; Sweden's population grew 14% and Switzerland's expanded 23%. The Irish population grew by 29%.

The peak year in modern times for immigration to Sweden was 2015 (Swedish migration laws changed in 2016) and the peak in Switzerland was 2008.

In the last decade, the Irish population grew by about 450,000 but in 6 of the 10 years, housing completions were in single-digit thousands following the collapse of the Irish construction industry from 2009.

Irish house size, climate change and living space per person - Part 2

John Hinde (1916-1997), an Englishman who developed a postcard business in Ireland from 1956, published the 1960s image of children collecting turf (peat) from a bog in Connemara, Co Galway. This image of Rural Ireland has been replaced in the past 50 years by the so-called one-off large detached houses owned by urbanites. There are over 460,000 of these houses in 2021 contributing to air and groundwater pollution while getting public subsidies.

This one-off house near Kinsale. County Cork, is available for Airbnb bookings.

This year Eurostat, the EU's statistics office, reported that 69.6% of Irish residents were living in dwellings categorised as too big for their needs in 2019 based on excess rooms and more specifically bedrooms. This was more than twice the EU average of 32.7%. On average there were 2.1 rooms per person in Irish households compared with the EU average of 1.6 rooms.

Large detached houses in particular in rural areas are a factor, as is under-occupation resulting from the rise of single adult households without children and older individuals or couples remaining after their children have grown up and left the home.

However, Eurostat also noted in respect of 2018 that "space constraints on tenants were particularly apparent in Ireland and Luxembourg, where tenants had 0.8 and 0.7 fewer rooms per person than people in owner-occupied dwellings; in France, Austria, Slovenia and Sweden the corresponding gap was also high (0.5 rooms)."

Ireland among 7 big tax havens as US seeks global minimum corporate tax of 21%

Share of US Multinational Corporation Income in Seven Big Havens, 2000-2019

In a stunning challenge to Ireland's low corporate tax regime which began in 1956, President Joe Biden and the United States Treasury on Wednesday announced that the US would seek a global minimum corporate tax rate of 21% in respect of the foreign profits of large American companies.

Ireland's current headline corporation tax rate is 12.5%. — the average rate in Europe (39 countries) was 19.99% in 2020 and 24.61% when weighted by GDP. The World rate was 23.85% and 25.85% (177 countries) according to the Tax Foundation. Check the trends since 1980.

European Housing Crisis: Ireland is not alone - Part 1

Every day, about 250 football fields of land in Europe are converted to urban use according to the European Spatial Planning Observation Network (ESPON) which advises the European Commission and one of its possible solutions is that by 2050, all new urbanisation will be in the form of redevelopment, regeneration or infill.

FT 1000: 3 Irish on 2021 list of Europe’s fastest-growing companies

The Financial Times has published the annual list of Europe’s fastest-growing independent companies and Ireland has improved compared with 2020 when it had no company on the list.

Social protection + health spending in Europe and Asia

Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, during the early years of the financial crisis in the last decade used to often say that Europe has 7% of the world’s population, 25% of its GDP and 50% of its social spending.

Social spending is a sum of education, health, and social protection expenditures, while social protection relates to sickness and disability; old age; survivors; family and children; unemployment; housing; social exclusion n.e.c. (not elsewhere classified); R&D social protection; social protection n.e.c.

House size of Ireland's urban-generated rural dwellers jumps 29%

In 2019 Ireland had one of the lowest urbanisation rates among the 36 mainly rich countries of the OECD think-tank for governments. The Irish rate was 63% of the population compared with the OECD rate of 81; Belgium 98; The Netherlands 92; Denmark and Sweden 88; New Zealand 87 and Finland at 85.

The biggest houses in Ireland are being built on standalone sites in the countryside while nearby villages are dying. According to Census 2016 so-called one-off houses in rural areas accounted for 26% of total national occupied dwellings of 1,698,000.

Meanwhile, Dublin land for house building is both über expensive and artificially scarce.

In the period 2005-2016, all member states of the European Union "with the notable exception of Ireland, recorded falls in farm numbers" (Eurostat) — selling sites to urban dwellers is a useful bonus for the Irish farmer.

Key Irish housing statistics 1971-2020

After the British Brexit vote in 2016 Irish government ministers, politicians, big professional firms (law and accountancy) and property journalists salivated on the opportunity of attracting thousands of bankers from London. Ministers wanted Ireland to be given the UK-based EU agencies (neither came to pass).

Robber Barons & Silicon Sultans: Rockefeller vs Bezos

John D Rockefeller (1839-1937) was America's first billionaire and there are about 2,350 dollar billionaires in the United States in early 2021 — Forbes Real-Time Billionaires — there are many more on this list than annual listings as it reflects the latest value of shareholdings.

Global business R&D: US has 800 firms; EU27 400 and East Asia 1,000 — Part 2

The European Union lacks a powerful technology sector at a time when the United States and China are forging ahead in areas such as artificial intelligence (AI), robotics and facial recognition. The ICT industry, which is the EU's Achilles heel, has a rising share of the value-added in the development of green technologies while biotechnology is expanding its role in the development of new drugs, e.g., via genetic engineering used in a large number of drugs, including vaccines.

Chips down for EU as Asia seizes microchip advantage — Part 1

Microchip manufacturing via Wall Street Journal

Microchips/ semiconductors are ubiquitous in the modern world and an electric car can have more than 3,000 of them. Thousands of people in Sweden have got chip implants but there are downsides. About a trillion chips are made a year, or 128 for every person on the planet. The annual sales value in 2021 is projected at $450bn according to the World Semiconductor Trade Statistics (WSTS) — down from $469bn in 2018.

Populist elite resentment and contempt in age of instability

An occupational therapist (right) became a US Capitol insurrectionist, Jan 6, 2021

In April 1932, Franklin D Roosevelt, governor of New York and presidential election candidate, in a radio address said: “These unhappy times call for the building of plans that rest upon the forgotten, that build from the bottom up and not from the top down, that put their faith once more in the forgotten man at the bottom of the economic pyramid.”

Optimism vs. Pessimism: "You've never had it so good"

The first chart here is from JP Morgan, the American bank, and the second is from Bank of America. The spacing of increments on the x-axis varies because of missing data. Asia accounted for about three-fourths of global output (measured in gross domestic product) from the start of the common era. By 1860 it had been overtaken by the industrial revolution in Europe and America. The western economies peaked at about 1950 when they accounted for four-fifths of global output.

Our African ancestors had to be pessimists to survive and in modern times people tend to be more optimistic about their own lives than that of their society or country. However, pessimism is widespread in particular in Europe and the United States despite the stunning advances in the material standard of living and well-being in rich countries, and in recent decades many regions of the world.

Key indicators and Ireland's non-Covid economic challenges into 2021

Ruchir Sharma, the chief global strategist at Morgan Stanley Investment Management and the author of “The Ten Rules of Successful Nations,” wrote in The New York Times this December, "After World War II, only two major emerging economies managed to grow faster than 5% for five decades in a row and to rise from poverty into the ranks of developed economies. One was Taiwan, the other South Korea. They kept advancing up the industrial ladder by investing more heavily in research and development than did any of their rivals among emerging economies. Now they are among the research leaders of the developed economic world as well."

Ireland is most profitable foreign country for US multinationals

Ireland with a population of 5m was the most profitable foreign country for US multinationals in 2018 as measured by net income of majority-owned affiliates (MOFAs), followed by the Netherlands and Luxembourg.

The US Bureau of Economic Analysis' (BEA) final net income data for 2018 issued this year, show top rankings for countries that engage in tax haven activities and pure tax-havens. The top 7 — which are called the Big Seven Corporate Tax Havens— are Ireland $217bn; The Netherlands $211bn; Luxembourg $147bn; Singapore $96bn; Bermuda $85bn; Switzerland $83bn and The Cayman Islands about $65bn ( it's in a BEA category 'United Kingdom Islands, Caribbean' comprising the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Montserrat, and the Turks and Caicos Islands).

Ireland's Éamon de Valera and the taboo of illegitimacy

De Valera with his mother in USA 1919/20

Éamon de Valera (1882-1975) was Ireland's leading politician of the 20th century and he was in office as head of government and president for 35 years in the period 1932-1973. The politician who was instrumental in triggering a shameful civil war in 1922 had a miserable childhood, and according to some experts, exhibited Asperger Syndrome traits, where genius is coupled with poor social skills.

De Valera had many people helping him over the decades to find documentation to prove that his mother had been married when he was born in New York City in October 1882. None were found.

It was ironic that in the year of his retirement in 1973, de Valera's political party, Fianna Fáil, which he had founded in 1926, was replaced by a Fine Gael-Labour coalition and Richie Ryan, the minister of finance, gave the first official recognition to "illegitimate" children and their mothers by introducing an Unmarried Mothers' Allowance.

In 1972/1973 Mary McGee, a brave women from Cork, challenged the ban on the importation of contraceptives at the High Court and she won in the Supreme Court in 1973. It would take about 20 years of political tomfoolery to finally get to a sane system for access to contraception.