"Double Irish" means Google pays 0.14% in tax.

A series of articles that have been carried in the mainstream media recently have exposed the human face of the growing housing crisis in Dublin and other urban centres across the state.

The serious strategists of capitalism vaguely recognise that the future of capitalism is threatened by growing inequality. When the head of the IMF and the governor of the Bank of England join in the chorus demanding 'something should be done' or 'stability' will be threatened, it is clear that fear of strikes, revolt and revolution is growing among society's elite.

Technical Paper Author, Seamus Coffey has previously estimated ‘implicit corporate tax rate’ as 8%. Paper itself admits ‘implicit tax rate’ of 5.9% in 2012

New figures released for 2013 highlight how Ireland is a country of widening inequality, with a massive divide growing between the super-rich elite and big business on the one hand and the majority of the population subjected to brutal austerity on the other.

The Youth Guarantee was the crowning achievement of the Irish Presidency of the EU in 2013. The Labour Party have hailed it from the rooftops, Emer Costello MEP, has even gone to the bother of holding meetings around the city to promote it. But what does it really guarantee?

We are living in a world where there is massive social and economic inequality. This situation is outlined in the Oxfam briefing paper “Working for the Few” which shows that the top one percent of the population have increased their income since 2008 and seven out of ten people live in countries where economic inequality has increased in the last 30 years. While multinationals get away with paying a minimal tax rate we are bombarded by such unfair taxes as the property tax and the up-coming water charge.

As if JobBridge wasn’t bad enough, the government will this year start to roll out their Gateway scheme and hope to have it fully operational by next year.

The government’s real response to unemployment is two-pronged: forced emigration and using mass unemployment to try to drive down wages and conditions.

The latest Live Register figures from the CSO for December showed a fall of 3,300 signing on, making it the 18th consecutive month where a fall has been recorded. The unemployment rate currently stands at 12.4%.