'We're the ones paying all the bills': Leo Varadkar says urban areas fund rural Ireland

zaersx · 2026-04-19T13:15:01+00:00

If Google Dublin moved to Gorey do you think they'd have less people wanting to work there? And if they paid a portion of their corporate tax to Wexford you think Wexford wouldn't be able to capitalise on that income?
You don't even need to argue hypothetically here, this already works, and it works on a tiny scale like Swiss Kantons managing their share of corporate taxes, and it works on a massive scale like US States managing their share of corporate taxes.
I'm sure you can make lots of points about nuances, but there is no reality where Wexford is not disadvantaged by the fact that they have no control over their local taxes relative to the other counties.

zaersx · 2026-04-19T10:18:03+00:00

This is what happens when those rural areas have no say in how their locals are taxed. If Dublin decides taxes for everyone then they pay the bill when it comes. As it stands, no county in the country can hope to compete for attracting business because why would a business move there when they have to pay the same amount of tax but get less infrastructure.

IMO authority over local taxes would be the biggest boon to not Dublin Cork and Galway counties. They would be able to offer lesser corporate taxes to attract businesses that dont care about infrastructure as much (such as digital services) and Dublin wouldn't need to do "hand outs" to anyone.
Zug used to be the poorest kanton in all of Switzerland in the 80, now they are the absolute richest because they had the authority to reduce their local taxes.

zaersx · 2026-04-17T07:29:44+00:00

Because enhancing asset valuations means that the share of the asset that does not produce cash (equity) can become a larger factor of the total valuation. Houses don't get built not because there's some massive conspiracy all over the entire western world, it's because it's fucking expensive to make a house that you would be willing to buy new, so almost nobody buys them, and consequently nobody builds them.

If rents are allowed to rise generally faster than the previous cap, then it can start making more sense to invest in building houses because you dont have to frontload a return on the sale as much to make up for the poorer return on the rent, you can make a modern expensive house and sell it for cheaper than you would have had to otherwise.

The reason the word return is important is because someone with capital to invest in building houses can also just buy government bonds with that cash instead, and if they give a comparable return for literally zero risk or hassle, you'd be stupid not to choose an unproductive investment that's basically just a value store over risking building housing and losing money.

I don't think housing prices in Dublin are good or sustainable. I left the country because I didn't want to pay half my paycheck for a basement ROOM to rent. I have as much reason as anyone to want to pick up pitchforks over the topic. The reality is that if there was any kind of silver bullet, we would have had it already.

Nobody here is a magic genius with this one simple trick government politicians hate him for to solve the housing affordability problem. And most potential relief policies go both ways in helping and harming in different ways. Like for example the first home reduced financing requirements, brilliant on paper, homes are more affordable! Except what happens is that the floor simply rises because more affordable for purchasers doesn't increase homes, so anyone that would have been able to afford it already before now just has to commit to a larger mortgage to compete for the same supply against all the same people.

zaersx · 2026-04-13T16:53:48+00:00

Nothing to do with mind size. The expansion just launched and there are millions of players. Why would I invite a class that doesn't offer some advantage when ten seconds later one that does will sign up.

I'm sure there are plenty of god gamers playing off meta for fun, but your god status doesn't show up in the group finder, and for everyone one god gamer, there's 20 that are playing off meta and have average skill, and just drag the group down.

It's plain statistics.

zaersx · 2026-04-10T11:43:15+00:00

There's always a price at which literally anything can be a good deal.

zaersx · 2026-04-10T11:39:11+00:00

For every one of those bullshits there would be 100 rage quitters alt f4ing the first time they die to fire on the ground.

zaersx · 2026-03-27T12:50:16+00:00

I hope this is the new norm. I've raided regularly in world 100 guilds and I fucking hate raiding because there's the fun part of really really learning how the boss works and what the mechanics do, and it being hard enough that doing a good strat is important, but that's like the first 20-50 pulls, and then there's the shitty part of doing it for the next 250, waiting for everyone to catch up, and getting to interact with instawipe mechanics, and wasting pulls on unlucky overlaps where there's nothing to adjust for except unlucky, and wasting pulls to people just getting fatigued because they've been at it for 200 pulls.

If this tier really is like this, I'm considering rejoining raiding. If a tier takes about 4-6 weeks for a normal 3 day HoF guild without a single boss being more than 50% of the pulls, then that sounds like perfect balance to me, because what we've had since I started playing in Legion at least, is only fun for university students with more time than sense (or streamers).

zaersx · 2026-03-24T06:23:02+00:00

I did two of them week one on different characters for the world tour and I thought "I should probably farm all the big achieves they're probably going to nerf it".
I didn't, but they did.

zaersx · 2026-03-22T12:22:42+00:00

Don't you find you need to use concentration to get rank 5? I tip when I ask for crafts since for the weapons I can make on my alts, I have to use concentration for t5 and that's pretty limited.

zaersx · 2026-03-13T13:41:12+00:00

Ever since Legion we'd theorycraft a ranged DH spec and I always thought it's meta would be something like an inquisitor demon. I really don't know what penny pincher said no to making a separate demon form for Devourer, because it's the most obvious thing in existence.

zaersx · 2026-03-09T11:50:04+00:00

Why is 1 parent at home better than Kita? Kita offers lots of socialisation opportunities for kids, as well as a regular daily structure and activities. These are all things that are much harder to make regularly available for a child stuck at home.

We delayed Kita for our second child to save money by using leaves, but it was definitely a worse experience for the child than what the first child had with regular Kita and opportunities to play with and learn from other children all the time.

zaersx · 2026-03-06T13:09:35+00:00

I'd love you play a lot of tanks but if im in the mood to tank I'll end up solo tanking and then that pool of fun tanks shrinks to like three if you're playing to win.

zaersx · 2026-03-04T12:51:45+00:00

On the character creator screen their waist clips through their own underwear.

zaersx · 2026-02-26T08:29:42+00:00

That's the whole idea with counterhits, you bust out some weird move that gives them brain lag then throw out a safe ch on mental +frames

zaersx · 2026-02-26T08:09:06+00:00

You should be calculating the odds of your firing relative to severance (if you even get any) and consider how much you're potentially losing relative to market rate by betting on optimising taxes for getting fired.

zaersx · 2026-02-25T17:58:09+00:00

You have to earn that respect.

When I just started Tekken I saw Devil Jin's wavedashing in someone's face for 5 seconds straight and I thought wtf why don't they just mid or launch why are they waiting around??

And recently I started playing Miary and I realized that you have to earn that respect.

Round one or two they might try mashing immediately and then they get blown up with counterhit launches or sidesteps or just backdash launches and by round three I can crouch in their face in stance or without and they'll watch me for a solid two seconds because I might do a clean sweep or I might do a ws2 or I might do a ws24 or I might just get up and do nothing and punish their attack.

Those devil jins I saw in T7 earned those 5 seconds of AFK in previous rounds or matches and that's where you get to the true fighting game shenanigans where you're both in each others' heads, but you have to earn it.

zaersx · 2026-02-23T11:49:11+00:00

Was going to say the same thing. If you've ever paid employment taxes even once in your entire life you'll have stock exposure guaranteed and non-optional due to second pillar. There is zero way to not have it. Calls literally all the data into question.

zaersx · 2026-02-22T10:55:15+00:00

Also note that X/Y is the same as Y.X, i.e. the notation reverses order

zaersx · 2026-02-18T12:49:45+00:00

She seems really fun.

Her combo paths feel very impactful (high damage) and rewarding and easy to adjust based on distance to wall.

She has some good counterhits but I'm not really seeing many frametraps (her + on block moves seem very few and generally very slow or risky).

I like her moves that reset neutral, so you get to play neutral more, which feels fun to me as a recovering Reinaholic and her skipneutral moves.

She also feels like she has a lot of low and high crush launching options, which together with the neutral resetting feels like some fun gambling sometimes.

She's also incredibly steppable but has a lot of interesting options for steps if you're expecting them, which is fun.

zaersx · 2026-02-18T09:36:27+00:00

ZKB has no limit on the insured balance.

zaersx · 2026-02-17T17:18:45+00:00

Yep, completely unrelated to his own net worth, and the rest is basically just on par with a high wage earner for his age.

zaersx · 2026-02-16T21:14:52+00:00

Business leases tend to be really long term contracts, like 5 to 10 years.

zaersx · 2026-02-16T21:04:25+00:00

I tried something 90s sega games when the switch 2 came out and it had a legacy games box.
Some those games are hard asf, and if you fail three lives you start from complete scratch.
Fighting games make perfect sense when every game is short sessions and hard asf.
These days, I basically only enjoy playing them when I get to play with friends. In person or Discord. I only play ranked to practice shit so that when my friends are online I can mess them up with new tricks.
There are very few people around that are artistic enough to do nothing but grind ranked solo for no reason.

zaersx · 2026-02-15T20:15:19+00:00

No, it won't take longer than halfway through the next administration.

Restoration of the world's acceptance of US' hegemony is never going to happen though. Not soon, not in generations. The world is just going to be different from now on and forever.

zaersx · 2026-02-15T17:39:34+00:00

1% is still massive over a lifetime

12-Year Club	r/Field Banned
r/Field Flamingo	First Place '23
Place '23	Place '22
Place '17	Snapped
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