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State should study Ireland for economic pot of gold
Quick Notes: Trends & Talk About Town
By Dennis Quick
At the University of South Carolina’s 25th Annual Economic Outlook conference held Nov. 21 in Columbia, keynote speaker William Harris, Science Foundation Ireland’s director general, urged state business leaders and economists to look to Ireland as an example of how to rise economically from the bottom to the top.
Science Foundation Ireland promotes biotechnology and engineering research. Harris emphasized that science and engineering make the world go round. An economy without science and engineering at its base is a non-economy.
During the past 15 years, Ireland, which has a population of around 4 million, has gotten deep into the science and engineering groove.
The country’s per capita income—total personal income divided by the population—soared from about $12,430 (in U.S. dollars) in 1990 to about $42,236 in 2003, Harris noted.
In 1990, Ireland’s gross domestic product—the total value of a nation’s goods and services—was about $43.6 billion. In 2003, Ireland’s GDP reached roughly $165.4 billion, according to Harris.
And while the United States enjoys an annual economic growth rate of about 3%, Ireland is smoking with an 8% growth rate.
Ireland pulled itself out of an economic bog by getting serious.
Instead of yakking endlessly about why the country was not economically competitive, Ireland started doing.
One of the first things Ireland did was to lower its tax rate on businesses from 56% to 10%. This attracted industry to Ireland’s shores.
More important, Ireland drummed up an interest in science and engineering within its population and its schools. A country that 15 years ago showed almost zero interest in science has undergone a fire-in-the-belly conversion to the point where Ireland produces as many, if not more, science and engineering graduates as any country in Europe.
The Irish understood that science and engineering will save Ireland economically.
Mastering those two disciplines enables a country to create things and export them. Creating and exporting is what builds economies.
Ireland is now the world’s largest software exporter.
Nine of the world’s 10 largest pharmaceutical companies are based there.
Fifteen of the world’s 20 largest medical device manufacturers have headquarters in Ireland.
Harris pointed out that if Ireland can undergo such a transformation, so can South Carolina. But to do it, we South Carolinians must feel a sense of urgency. We’ve got to be impatient. We’ve got to want it now.
And don’t worry about our history, Harris advised.
“History doesn’t account for anything. Natural resources and geography don’t account for much. But policy does make a difference,” he said.
By policy, Harris referred to making science and engineering prominent in our schools.
That is what Ireland did. And that is what China and India are doing. In 2004, China graduated 600,000 students with engineering degrees; India 350,000.
Meanwhile, the United States graduated 70,000 students with engineering and science degrees. Many of those students were Asian nationals.
Harris is right: South Carolina can have an Ireland-type economic transformation, if we want it badly enough.
Imagine what we could accomplish economically if we approached science and engineering with one-tenth the enthusiasm we have for a Clemson-Carolina football game.
Of course, selling boring subjects like science and engineering to a state hooked on football (and a nation addicted to celebrity worship and high-tech toys) is tricky.
But from the Lowcountry to the Upstate, from the East Coast to the West Coast, we have advertising whizzes so talented they could probably sell heaters to people burning in hell. After all, they sold us the Cabbage Patch doll, the Beanie Baby and the Pet Rock.
Surely those same ad geniuses can put science and engineering in a sexy package and sell it to us—particularly to our school kids.
Apparently, however, Ireland is a bit more sober than we are.
The Irish didn’t need snazzy advertising campaigns to get them to embrace science and engineering.
Organizations like Harris’ held up a stark economic mirror; Ireland grimaced at its reflection and decided to do something about it.
Dennis Quick is the senior staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail him at dquick@charlestonbusiness.com.
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