Yeah after about €70k there is a higher rate of USC. The 52% includes PAYE, PRSI and USC at the highest bands for a regular employee.

In Ireland it’s about 48% on everything above €40k, then 52% above €70k.

That by itself could be misleading though, the overall effective tax rate for someone on €40k is 18%, around 30% at €70k. The thresholds will rise next year.

Ah the dangers of Google translate and synonyms. You got the wrong definition for right when translating to Irish, the one you have means correct, deis is the word for right (direction). Clé is left, the h appears in certain contexts for grammatical reasons.

Demand does change the price. You can see the price drop during economic downturns. Supply and demand are two sides of a single equation. It simply doesn’t make sense to say that only one impacts prices.

Prices had been dropping recently despite KSA reducing supply, until the attacks in Israel that is.

Is not a monopoly though, yes there are cartels but it’s not a monopoly. The less demand there is for oil the less power OPEC has to manipulate prices. They will be left scrambling to supply the remaining demand. Supply and demand isn’t a myth, OPEC simply manipulate supply to influence the price.

* in the UK and Ireland. For historical reasons every book published in Ireland has to send a copy to the British library.

Similarly, the Trinity College Library in Dublin is entitled to receive a copy of every book published in the UK, on request.

You can do that in Ireland too. For health insurance the insurer handles the tax and takes it off what they charge you. For charities if you donate over a certain threshold the charity gets to claim back the tax you paid for themselves. For ongoing things you inform Revenue and they let your employer know to collect less tax. Then for other things you just tell Revenue and they refund you.

Oh that sounds somehow more annoying than just having to pay it yourself, seeing as you have to do the calculations yourself anyway.

To be fair it possible to be owed a refund or owe extra tax in Ireland too. If you changed jobs and didn’t inform Revenue they won’t apply tax credits until they know the full story for example. You never have to calculate how much you owe or are due though, at least not for an individual. You just tell them what your salary is, or if you’re claiming a credit.

In Ireland and I believe most other European countries the tax is just taken out of your salary/wage by your employer and sent to Revenue. So unless you do something taxable outside of a normal wage you largely don’t need to worry about it.

You only have to pay for this mod once.

An artist isn’t going to continue making modifications to a painting once you’ve bought it, not unless you pay them to do so. Presuming they aren’t feeling generous with their time.

but cops are the same everywhere

You have yet to demonstrate this

I believe you had some riots about that a while back.

No, I didn’t have riots. I don’t live in the UK anyway if that’s what you’re inferring.

there were over three hundred police caused deaths in england and wales between 2021 and 2022

Why lie? The number is 217. A number that includes all sorts of things, including people dying of natural causes in police custody or dying shortly after police contract, for example in a traffic incident of their own causing. What’s the comparable number for the US? We know that US police shot over 1000 people dead last year. That’s just one type of killing and given the population difference between the UK and USA it would put them at an equal rate, but that is ignoring the fact that the UK number is for all deaths, not just direct killings. The number of fatal shootings in the UK in 21/22 was 2.

So don’t call them unless you want someone to be hurt or killed. That’s just basic safety.

Only if you live in a 3rd rate country that doesn’t have a proper police force. I’d have no issue calling the police on someone if they were causing a disturbance and I’d have no fear for their safety. Similarly I’d have no fear for my safety if the police were called on me.

Projecting America’s problems onto other places is absurd and demonstrates a complete lack of awareness of places that aren’t America. You need to look outside your bubble and stop pretending that everywhere else is as shitty as the US. Also stop looking at situations as being black or white, presuming all cops are bad is stupid. Thinking in absolutes is not a good way to live your life.

So are you going to produce any data to show that calling the police to someone’s house in the UK put them at a non negligible risk of being killed or injured by those police, or are you not?

Are you just going to keep assuming that America’s issues are universal rather than accept that America is broken?

I have a water resistant smart watch and I take it swimming all of the time. I see lots of others swimming with smartwatches too. Smart watches are usually fitness tracker. I very much care that the watch is water resistant. I care more about that than having a user replaceable battery, which I’m unlikely to replace given that I never did when replaceable batteries were common in phones.

Perhaps if you want to enlighten people you should give more than short overly hostile replies to comments?