Yet another study has been presented to us amidst last week’s ceaseless showers. Yet again, it’s from the economists, masters of predicting seven of the prior three economic downturns. They are skilled in playing with and disrupting data, yet they fail to grasp the unfathomable essence of human nature. It’s almost as if economists were created merely to serve as a convenient scapegoat for public scrutiny – a pressing pain that needs to be acknowledged.
This is the analysis conducted by John Fitzgerald and Edgar Morganroth, suggesting that the reunification of the island – excluding Tory Island, Lambay Island, The Highlands, Inis Bigil, the blessed Blasket Islands, Beara, Garinis, Gharmna, Skellig Michael, Skellig na Scannán, lest it spreads to any island – could cost up to twenty billion of Ursula von der Leyen’s currency in the 2008 fiscal year, should we decide to reunite one fine day.
Perhaps they are right, or the cost might double, even triple. Does it even matter?
James Carville, advisor to Bill Clinton, coined a phrase which has since gained traction and is now almost sacred among many: ‘It’s the economy, silly!’
But it’s not about the economy, it’s about other economic issues! We all recall that age-old motto, ‘if we, the republic, the free state, were more affluent and prosperous than the others (the North, North-East Ulster), they would hasten to join us!’ The ‘southern’ portion has been more prosperous for a generation or two now, yet there hasn’t been a simple unionist push towards associating with the south, despite us thriving more with our respective currencies. Nevertheless, there is no clarity if a large number of those at the bottom of the country would accept Vatican’s lira or Pope’s penny. It’s undeniable that their loyalty lies more with the half-crown – when it was in circulation – than the crown itself, much like an archaic outcry.
Intriguingly, during the fervent exchanges leading up to and throughout the War of Independence, the economic implications of the ongoing political situation within this nation were often undervalued. A thorough examination of the documents, speeches, and rhetoric surrounding the surge of rebellion that ultimately carved the Irish Free State from the UK—an event marked by gunfire and battlefield graves at sea—fails to reveal any significant public figure, or even a legendary leprechaun, advocating for independence with the acknowledgment of financial struggles it might entail.
Curiously, a similar pattern can be observed in more recent debates regarding autonomy in places like Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, various African nations, expansive regions such as Asia Wales and Greater Manila over the past forty years, and in historical analysis attempting to dismantle the footprint of imperialism from the global stage. Only a handful of economists, including Fitzgerald and Morganroth, explicitly questioned the monetary toll of a shift in the political systems or the cost of liberty itself.