> The average salary (not including RSUs/Bonus) in Dublin's Silcon Docklands is north of €130k

That's quite a bit short to buy an EUV machine.

But of course, the parent commenter was not talking about salaries, because ASMLs products are not B2C.

> employee protections which would be an utter fantasy in the US (defined redundancy payments, mandated collective bargaining, governance processes around mass redundancy handling at state level).

This can be compared to protectionist policies such as tariffs.

If employees are hard to fire, then companies hesitate to hire them.

If employees on-shore are protected, then un-protected employees overseas are more competitive, eventually gutting local industries.

Etc.

This came up in Australia recently where a liberal government proposed loosening some employee protection laws with the idea that it would encourage hiring.

It did. It worked.

Then the policy was swiftly reversed by a more left-wing party, and a lot of those newly employed people lost their jobs because they turned from an asset to a liability.

Protectionism is a double-edged sword.

>more USians move to my "poor" country than the other way around.

Retirees and people who already made money to outbid the locals on housing and purchasing power.

Why would they move to a more expensive country where they'd feel poor?

That well-paid Americans like to WFH on Malaga beaches is not a testament to the Spanish economy, but to its weather and (more importantly) low cost of living.

In any case, don't be too sure about your claim. According to <https://ourworldindata.org/where-do-migrants-live-and-where-...>, 170K Spanish-born live in the US. By contrast, 69K US-born live in Spain <https://ourworldindata.org/where-do-migrants-live-and-where-...>. Given that the US (341 million) has 7.25 times Spain's population (47 million), this means that a Spaniard is 17-18 times more likely to move to the US, than an American is to move to Spain.

If we were to take all preceding arguments seriously, couldn't that be explained by americans going to live in a low-cost-of-living country once they've earned their living?

(Don't know your country to know if that's true or not, but it's a possibility)

The demonym is American, not whatever you wrote. Unless your poor country is New Zealand, that's not the case.

I mean this is just such FUD.

In Ireland alone we manufacture:

* Cardiovascular Stents (80% of Global Supply)

* Orthopaedic Knee Implants (75% of Global Supply)

* Acute Hospital Ventilators (50% of Global Supply)

* Contact Lenses (World Leader)

19 of the world's top 20 pharmaceutical companies operate manufacturing, R&D, or biopharma facilities in Ireland; this compromises over 50% of all physical goods exported from Ireland, totaling well over €100 billion annually. Needless to say it's also the pivotal manufacturing hub for high-demand GLP-1 weight-loss and diabetes treatments (like Mounjaro).

Ireland is among the top global exporters of antisera, blood fractions, and complex cell cultures, making it indispensable to global healthcare infrastructure.

Ireland is the absolute world leader in dairy science per capita, and produces roughly 10% to 15% of the entire world's infant milk formula, with estimates indicating that roughly one in ten to one in seven babies globally consume formula manufactured in the country.

That's an Island of less than 5 million people, 1/8th the size of Texas, that was basically bypassed by the Industrial Revolution and had no colonial benefit. Now extrapolate for a second and imagine what Germany is manufacturing.