According to a recent survey carried out by The Economist(经济学家) magazine, Ireland is by far and away the best country in the world to live in.
Once Ireland joined the EU in 1973, the base for economic growth started to be put into place. The 1990s saw the economic growth finally arrive-a total change in Ireland's economic fortunes was born. The country experienced year-on-year growth of almost ten per cent and now has the fourth-highest GDP per head in the world—a massive 36.5 thousand dollars per person. Coupled with this has been a huge drop in unemployment(失业率) from 20 per cent15 years ago to around four per cent today, all of which has meant Dublin's newspapers now come with larger job sections and the country is looking to import up to 300 thousand new workers in the next few years.
In many ways, Ireland is the perfect advertisement(广告)for the policies of the IMF and the World Bank as it is one of the few economies that has opened itself up to free trade, foreign investment(投资) and unregulated business activity, cut welfare(福利) spending and checked wage(工资) increases and yet still managed to grow rapidly.
