alt Hacker News> Some moron always show up with the "but it was all the EU subsides" talking point, which is quite frankly part of racist tropes of eastern Europeans being dumb and worse than westerners. Could you imagine them accomplishing anything on their own? That's ridiculous. It's us, the western saviors, who did this with our penny subsidies!
Ireland were in a similar position for instance (received €40bn in EU subsidies in the first 45 years of membership; now a net contributor).
I'm wondering how much of the net contribution comes from tech companies and how it compares to the loss of taxes due to Ireland acting as a tax haven for tech companies.
EDIT: Net contributions seem to be $3bn/year (total, independent of tech) while loss for other EU countries due to corporate tax evasion is $6bn/year.