Most Recent Posts

Here's a fact that might surprise you: All of the top 10 U.S. companies that were born on the Internet — including Google, Amazon, eBay — have overseas corporate headquarters in Ireland.

The American tech sector is huge in Ireland. It's growing rapidly — and having a huge impact on life there.

But the tax system that's fueling the growth is also infuriating some people in the U.S. and Europe — and has Ireland reconsidering its tax code.

A City, And Country, Transformed

Cork is one of the places benefiting from the U.S. tech boom. The Irish city is home to 120,000 people — as well as Apple's only global corporate headquarter outside the United States. That headquarters — all gleaming metal and glass — employs 4,000 people.

Apple didn't have anybody available to talk with us, so we asked the neighbors what life is like in the shadow of the giant.

Shane Galway, an electrician who works across the street, says it's had a big impact. Roads have been built specifically for it; recent VIP visitors have included the head of the Irish government and Apple CEO Tim Cook.

And the impact on the economy stretches far beyond the 4,000 people who work for Apple. Galway, for instance, used to do electrical work at Apple headquarters, even though the company never employed him directly.

Christina Brannagh is a local English teacher. She says a lot of her students work for Apple.

"We even teach English at Apple, because a lot of them don't have English as a first language," she says.

At a real estate office called Trading Places, Gina O'Donovan says she always knows when the U.S. tech workers walk in the door.

"They're usually quite trendy and very, very nice and polite," she says. "Whereas the Irish are a bit more — I suppose, not as polite, you know?"

Twitter is among the tech giants that have hung out their shingle in Ireland. Stephen McIntyre, the managing director of Twitter in Ireland, is shown here in 2013 after the company announced 100 new jobs at its European headquarters, located in Dublin. Niall Carson /PA Photos/Landov hide caption

itoggle caption Niall Carson /PA Photos/Landov

She says the city has transformed. Home prices are up. There are more diverse restaurants and trendier bars — another place the tech arrivals stand out.

"They try to adjust to the drinking, but it doesn't always work very well for them, I'm afraid," O'Donovan says. "We're more hardened at that."

The changes in Cork are playing out across Ireland. These days, you can find company towns all over the country — where the companies are American tech firms. In Limerick, it's Dell, which employs 2,500. In Dublin, IBM has a couple thousand employees and Google has around 3,000.

Twitter arrived in Dublin about three years ago. It's now the company's largest office outside the U.S., with more than 200 staff.

Stephen McIntyre is the managing director of Twitter in Ireland, the company's European headquarters.

"We've doubled in the last year, and we're expecting that growth to continue over the forthcoming years," he says.

So what attracts all these tech firms to Ireland?

If you ask people like McIntyre, they'll tell you it's a variety of things: the experience of other companies, the availability of skilled talent, the business-friendly environment.

But if you ask someone like Bob Goulder, with the nonprofit group Tax Analysts, why these U.S. companies are in Ireland, you'll get a much shorter answer.

"Because they don't have to pay a lot of tax," he says.

The Lure Of Big Financial Breaks

Ireland charges U.S. companies only a third of what they'd pay in America.

"There's a huge differential between profits being taxed at 35 percent in the United States and being taxed at only 12.5 percent in Ireland," he says.

And those are just the official rates. In reality, Goulder says, some American companies pay less than 2 percent tax on their profits in Ireland.

Take Apple, for instance.

"According to their own disclosures, they currently have $137 billion sitting offshore, indefinitely reinvested outside the United States," Goulder says.

That makes American lawmakers furious. At a hearing last year, senators accused Apple CEO Tim Cook of dodging taxes.

Cook insisted his company does no such thing.

"We pay all the taxes we owe. Every single dollar," he told them. "We not only comply with the laws, but we comply with the spirit of the laws."

Young professionals in Ireland understand how the country is perceived.

Sean Brannagh, an American web developer who moved to Cork, likens it to a "duty-free zone, but for companies."

Traffic on the streets of Cork city center in southern Ireland. Paul Faith/AFP/Getty Images hide caption

itoggle caption Paul Faith/AFP/Getty Images

His friend Seamus Obuadhachain is getting his doctorate in artificial intelligence.

"I have friends who have graduated in the last couple of years who've gone to work for companies like Facebook and Microsoft and Yahoo who all base themselves in Ireland, and they know that it's explicitly because of the tax laws which are lax over here," Obuadhachain says. "Everyone knows this, but we benefit from it, we're not complaining."

Of Complaints, And Change

People outside of Ireland are complaining — and not only members of Congress. The European Commission recently started an investigation into whether Ireland's tax arrangements with Apple amount to illegal state aid.

A couple months ago, Ireland's finance minister, Michael Noonan, acknowledged that his country has a perception problem.

"Aggressive tax planning by multinational companies has been criticized by governments across the globe and has damaged the reputation of many countries," he said.

He announced that he is changing a policy known as the "Double Irish" that lets some companies base themselves in Ireland but register for tax purposes in an overseas tax haven.

"I am abolishing the ability of companies to use the Double Irish by changing our residency rules to require all companies registered in Ireland to also be a tax resident in Ireland," Noonan said.

But companies already in Ireland won't have to make that change for another six years. And Ireland is introducing a new provision known as a "patent box" that may reduce the tax bill for these companies even more.

Through all of this, nobody accuses tech companies of actually breaking the law.

"The outrage is not what's illegal," says Goulder, the tax expert. "The outrage is what's perfectly legal."

Ireland

i i

Hog parts are displayed on a table during a workshop for female butchers in Chapel Hill, NC. Leoneda Inge/North Carolina Public Radio hide caption

itoggle caption Leoneda Inge/North Carolina Public Radio

Hog parts are displayed on a table during a workshop for female butchers in Chapel Hill, NC.

Leoneda Inge/North Carolina Public Radio

Kari Underly is slicing through half a hog as if it were as soft as an avocado ... until she hits a bone.

"So what I'm doing now is I'm taking out the femur bone," she explains to a roomful of about 30 women watching as she carves the animal. "The ham is a little bit of a drag, if you will, 'cause we have to make money, and not everybody wants a big ham."

Underly is a fit, 46-year-old master butcher from Chicago. Her father and grandmothers were butchers. She put herself through college cutting meat. These days, she encourages other women to enter the business.

The meat industry has always needed women, but for generations, women have worked for low pay in slaughterhouses, or in other support positions. Now, a small but growing number of American women are taking ownership in the meat business.

The Salt

Everything But The Squeal: How The Hog Industry Cuts Food Waste

Underly, who runs a meat training company called Range Incorporated, was recently in Chapel Hill, N.C., demonstrating to about 30 women how to slice and dice the tastiest and most profitable parts of a hog.

"You just want to be careful," she advises the women gathered around. "There's the scapula bone right here, and we want to make sure we don't wreck it."

Tootie Jones was one of the women leaning in as Underly sawed, hacked and sliced. "She's a knife-wielding rock star in her own right, and has quite a following," says Jones, referring to Underly. Jones owns a cattle ranch in West Virginia.

"And I think one thing Kari's done is inspired a lot of people to go out, pick up a knife, learn how to handle a knife and to go out and develop a business," says Jones.

In addition to demonstrations like this, Underly organizes "Grrl's Meat Camps." She says the meat industry is changing in a way that now allows room for more women.

The Salt

'Test Kitchen': How To Buy The Safest Meat And Make The Juiciest Steaks

The Salt

No 'Misteak': High Beef Prices A Boon For Drought-Weary Ranchers

"Meat production has always been a male job, just because of the sheer size" of the animals involved, she explains. "It's a physical job — actually being able to lift these large animals. But as we're choosing to buy meat closer to home, we're looking for more craftsmen, if you will, to be the butcher, so we can get them on every corner."

She's echoed by Sarah Blacklin, director of NC Choices, a nonprofit in North Carolina that's trying to build more local meat supply chains. "That has opened up this avenue for not just the raising of the meat, but the selling, the marketing, the distributions," says Blacklin. "I think it's a natural avenue for women to move into."

In North Carolina, the number of people raising and selling their own meat has gone from a few dozen, a decade ago, to more than 800 today. It's unclear how many of them are women, but one of those businesspeople is Jennifer Curtis.

In a chilly walk-in storage cooler in Durham, Curtis watches as fresh beef is tagged for distribution. Then she reaches down and picks up a thick chunk of dark red meat: "Oh my gosh, have you had this before? It's Osso Buco, or beef shank," she tells me. "It's right down there, close to the ankle. It's got a lot of bone in it, bone marrow, just fantastic for braising and stewing, beautiful flavor."

Curtis is the co-CEO of Firsthand Foods, along with another woman. She got into the meat wholesale business four years ago, after meeting too many farmers having trouble marketing their meat.

"We were also meeting more and more chefs who wanted fresh local meat but couldn't get enough from an individual farmer," says Curtis. "So I thought, there needs to be a business right here in the middle."

Curtis says 90 percent of the people that she works with are men — farmers, processors and chefs.

"We run into a lot of men," she explains, "and it's taken some time for them to get used to the fact that we own this company and we're selling the meat. But it's been good."

She says it has taken a long time to build trust, especially among cattle ranchers in what she calls the "old boy network." But Curtis says she proved to them that she could get them top dollar for their product. And that's the bottom line.

local meat

meat

women

Ebola has had a brutal impact on the economies of three West African nations at the epicenter of the outbreak. In Liberia, the World Bank has more than halved projected growth for the nation, compared to what they predicted before the epidemic.

Ebola has killed more than 3,000 people in Liberia and, at the height of the outbreak, closed shops, businesses and offices. As the situation eases, many have now reopened — but it's still tough going.

In downtown Monrovia, on Ashmun Street, a large, windowless, derelict building — a bank, locals say, and a relic from the civil war — is still pockmarked with holes from mortar shells or some other artillery. Nearby, above a low building painted in greens, there's a hand-painted board announcing Mrs. Quaye's restaurant, with a map of Africa.

Goats and Soda

Liberian President's Ambitious Goal: No New Ebola Cases By Christmas

Mama Quaye, the restaurant's namesake, welcomes NPR reporters into her almost-empty, low ceilinged restaurant. The dining room is small and dimly lit.

The gracious, elderly widow, wearing a pale green gown, matching elegant headtie and shawl, sits at one of three long wooden tables. There are seats for at least 30 people, but only one couple is lunching.

Mama Quaye throws her arms up in the air in desperation, saying Ebola has as good as wrecked her business.

This restaurant was an institution in Monrovia before Ebola. Before that, it weathered Liberia's 14-year civil war.

Goats and Soda

For Ebola Orphans In Liberia, It's A Bittersweet New Beginning

"Before the war ... this was a very famous restaurant," Quaye says. "I had a lot of customers. During lunchtime this place would be crowded. Sometimes I'm so frustrated I want to close the entire business down. How would my family survive?"

Mama Quaye's restaurant is in the heart of Liberia's capital, where it has served potato greens, cassava leaf stew and other Liberian delicacies for decades. The back-to-back civil wars, which began at the tail end of 1989, were bad, says Mama Quaye — but with Ebola the situation is even worse.

"We're not making any business; we're only struggling for our lives," she says. "All I want to do is be alive. Now that Ebola has subsided we reopened, but we hardly get customers. As you see it is now empty, that's how it always is. Sometimes in the daytime we get two customers and that's all."

Mama Quaye says people are afraid of catching Ebola by eating out. She says people prefer eating food they've cooked themselves instead of going out to restaurants. This makes her sad, she says, but admits that is important that everyone is fighting to prevent Ebola.

"Because life is important; as long as we have life there is hope," she says.

Despite the difficulties, Quaye continues to support more than 16 people in her family, which includes children in the family who lost parents in the civil war. She cares for and educates them as well.

"I'm taking care of them. So I have very a huge family," she says.

i i

Unsold fufu — a Liberian staple food — sits on a tray in Mrs. Quaye's restaurant in Liberia, where customers have been slow to return. John W. Poole/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption John W. Poole/NPR

Unsold fufu — a Liberian staple food — sits on a tray in Mrs. Quaye's restaurant in Liberia, where customers have been slow to return.

John W. Poole/NPR

At the restaurant, Mama Quaye points to an almost full tray of fufu, a Liberian staple food often made with flour made from the cassava plant. This batch has been cooking since the morning, she says, but no one has bought any yet. There's no business.

"I'm thinking now, what I will do?" she says.

Goats and Soda

Idris Elba Plays A Soccer Coach Out To Crush Ebola In New Ad Campaign

But Quaye says that at least the meals she prepares don't go to waste if there are no customers, because she serves the leftover cooked food to her family. A full meal costs about $2.50.

And then, as if to add to the troubles, a high-pitched lament floats over from behind the kitchen counter, filling the restaurant. As if it's all just too much for her, Mama Quaye's friend Zinnah Gray tells us she has lost a number of her family members to Ebola and that the virus is not just a sickness, but a war. If it kills one person, she says, it kills the rest of the family. Then she begins wailing, pouring her pain and her loss into the lament.

Mama Quaye looks over at her friend sympathetically. Like many others during this Ebola outbreak, the two elderly women have plenty of problems.

But there's one bright spot: a customer walks in, and another has just finished his meal. Alfred T. Karngar says he works across the road and is a regular at the restaurant at lunchtime.

"She prepares good food here," Karngar says. "I actually have been eating here [since] before the Ebola crisis and I see nothing that would stop me from eating here."

Karngar says he observes all the health directives, including hand-washing with chlorinated water when he enters the restaurant. He says he tries to keep himself safe from Ebola, and will continue to enjoy a good meal at Mama Quaye's.

ebola

Liberia

More Awesome Than Money

Four Boys and Their Heroic Quest to Save Your Privacy from Facebook

by Jim Dwyer

Hardcover, 374 pages | purchase

Purchase Featured Book

TitleMore Awesome Than MoneySubtitleFour Boys and Their Heroic Quest to Save Your Privacy from FacebookAuthorJim Dwyer

Your purchase helps support NPR Programming. How?

Amazon

iBooks

Independent Booksellers

Digital Culture

Nonfiction

Business & Economy

More on this book:

NPR reviews, interviews and more

Standing in a Silicon Valley bookstore, Jim Dwyer knows not too many people are going to show up to his reading. There is, after all, a huge San Francisco ballgame tonight. Maybe that's why the Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The New York Times seems content waxing long and poetic about the motivation behind More Awesome Than Money: Four Boys and Their Heroic Quest to Save Your Privacy from Facebook. Freedom's new frontier. Moral, democratized communication. The Big Bang moment of the digital age. "Plus, my wife told me about it," says Dwyer.

The book chronicles the life of Diaspora, a feisty, nonprofit social network born during long nights coding in an NYU computer lab. Four undergrads were given "a global commission to rebottle the genie of personal privacy" after scoring $200,000 in a Kickstarter campaign and support and mentorship from Silicon Valley's brightest.

In the end, Diaspora didn't take down Facebook, but its hardcore followers have kept it alive.

This interview has been edited for clarity.

Diaspora wasn't the first pro-privacy social network to take on Facebook's monopoly and it isn't the last (see Ello), so why did you write a book about them?

It was a perfect storm of social dissatisfaction and technical capability. Facebook was making it clear that their definition of connectedness included following you wherever you went on the Web, taking note of your interests and "giving you a better user experience," which is an abuse of language that means "we want to surveil you and sell to you better." People were starting to recognize that, especially when [Facebook CEO Mark] Zuckerberg launched the push for "likes" to be the tariff system of the Internet. Ryan Singel in Wired bluntly explained it to the non-geek world when he said "Facebook has gone rogue," and called for a distributed social network system.

And the technical?

The technical aspect was that people had been developing this very system. It's called the federated social web, which decentralizes power over the network, so there isn't just one puppet master in Palo Alto. Technologists like Tantek elik were creating so-called microformats that allowed simple but vital communications to happen between one social network and another, in the same way that you can pick up an Apple phone and call a Samsung phone.

Another guy, Eben Moglen, a professor of law at Columbia and a technologist, has a project called the FreedomBox. It's an attempt to equip very small servers with stacks of free software in order to make it possible for people to plug this thing into an outlet and to be able to do all the things a server needs to do without having a systems administrator managing it all. Moglen actually was the inspiration for the Diaspora kids.

Digital Life

Who Are You, Really? Activists Fight For Pseudonyms

Diaspora was heralded as a "Facebook killer," but Facebook still reigns supreme. Why does its story matter?

The point of Diaspora wasn't killing Facebook, it was about creating an alternative. The Diaspora group are members of a tribe that we ought to know about and count on. They are not people you can keep score on in the business pages; there is no alpha dog like Steve Jobs barking at the world on behalf of a company. It's all these really smart men and women making small changes to open software that are aimed towards what they consider the public good. All these changes, by the way, are adopted and adapted by the likes of Google and Facebook.

The Diaspora project was done in the spirit of the Mozilla Foundation, which was founded by a group of people that crawled out of the rubble of Silicon Valley's first jackpot, Netscape, and created the first Internet browser everyone could use. They, and Diaspora, are about resisting the surveillance economy that underwrites so much of what goes on online; it's about using the Internet as a vehicle of human communication rather than simply human appropriation.

The story took a tragic turn when Ilya Zhitomirskiy, a co-founder and the soul of Diaspora, committed suicide in November 2011. How did you process it?

It was heartbreaking and I basically dropped the book for four months. I didn't sign on to write a book about a young man killing himself. At Ilya's wake, I had an argument with Dennis Collinson, a collaborator on Diaspora, about who knows what. Ironically, it was his [and programmer Rosanna Yau's, among others] generous and idealistic decision to quit their lucrative jobs and help pick Diaspora up that gave me the inspiration to finish the book. It took a massive amount of bravery, hubris and brass to keep their promise and finish the job.

social network

online privacy

Facebook