Samsung Electronics Co. workers chant slogans during a protest outside the company’s semiconductor plant in Yongin, South Korea, on Monday, July 22, 2024. The rally came only days after talks between Samsung Electronics and the union, where the two sides discussed a framework and schedule for wage negotiations.SeongJoon Cho/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Samsungmakes about a third of the world’s DRAM—the memory inside virtually every phone, laptop, server, and data center on the planet.Together with its Korean rival SK Hynix, it controls roughly two-thirds of the global DRAM market and an even larger share of high-bandwidth memory (HBM), the specialized chips that AI systems cannot run without. Samsung and SK Hynix are two of only three companies that make HBM at all; the third being American semiconductor company Micron.
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When people talk about AI infrastructure, they tend to focus on Nvidia’s GPUs. But those GPUs are useless without the memory chips stacked alongside them, and Samsung’s three fabrication complexes in South Korea are among the most important pieces of the AI industrial boom. Samsung operates 12 fabrication lines, employs over 260,000 people worldwide, and is investing $73 billion in semiconductor capex and R&D this year alone, the largest single-year chip investment by any company in history.
That’s why it’ll be a shock to the system when on May 21, nearly 45,000 of Samsung’s unionized workers plan to walk off the job for 18 days.If that happens, it will be the largest work stoppage in the history of the semiconductor industry, at the single most important chokepoint in the AI supply chain. But unlike past labor disputes, AI hyperscalers won’t be able to absorb a supply disruption.
The strike
Last September, SK Hynix settled with its own union to allocate 10% of annual operating profit directly to employees as performance bonuses for the next decade, while removing caps on bonuses. Based on 2026 profit forecasts, that translates to average payouts of $460,000-$477,000 per worker this year across SK Hynix’s 35,000 staff, with projections approaching $900,000 per person next year. This is nothing new for SK Hynix: it already paid profit-sharing bonuses averaging about $95,000 per employee this past February.
Now, Samsung’s unions are requesting 15% of operating profit be allocated to a bonus pool, removal of the current cap that limits bonuses to 50% of base salary, and a 7% wage hike. Management countered with roughly 13% of operating profit, but only as a one-time payment for 2026, and didn’t commit to permanent structural changes.
The competitive pressure has already become an issue for Samsung’s talent. Union chairman Choi Seung-ho said roughly 200 Samsung employees have left for SK Hynix over the past four months. In 2024, Samsung paid no performance bonuses at all after the chip unit posted operating losses throughout the memory downturn. And while the turnaround has been staggering, with Q1 2026 operating profit increasing nearly eightfold to a record, the workers received none of the payout.
After a 17-hour negotiation session at the National Labor Relations Commission on May 13 failed to produce a deal, the NLRC struggled to find a compromise. The commission initially proposed roughly 40 trillion won ($26.7 billion) in total bonus payouts, which the union rejected. Samsung then sent a letter proposing further direct dialogue, and the union accepted only if co-CEO Jun Young-hyun personally presents concrete proposals on key issues. No deal has been reached yet.
In April, a one-day labor walkout forecasted what an extended strike could do. Foundry output reportedly dropped 58% and memory fabrication fell 18% during that affected shift. Samsung believes a full shutdown could occur for the strike’s planned 18-day span with nearly 45,000 union members expected to participate. Should such a thing happen, industry estimates put potential losses at 30 trillion-100 trillion won. Samsung has begun “warm-down” procedures, scaling back wafer inputs, as halting chip fabrication mid-process means scrapping wafers that cost $20,000 each.
The stakes
A strike would slow down Samsung while it plays catch-up with its rival. For the first time in 33 years, SK Hynix overtook Samsung as the world’s largest DRAM maker in Q1 last year, driven almost entirely by its dominance in HBM for AI. The next quarter, SK Hynix held 62% of the global HBM market as Samsung slipped to 17%, behind even Micron at 21%. Samsung’s HBM3E chips struggled to pass Nvidia’s qualification standards for much of 2025, while SK Hynix and Micron captured the premium global contracts.
By the end of 2025, Samsung reclaimed the overall DRAM market share lead after shipping HBM to Nvidia and expanding legacy memory production. Its HBM4 chips, which began mass production in February, have reportedly outperformed early expectations, and the entire 2026 HBM4 production run is already sold out. But a prolonged strike could put that turnaround trajectory at risk.
Samsung Chairman Shin Je-yoon said he was “worried about losing market leadership amid fleeing customers and falling competitiveness” in the event of a strike. JPMorgan analyst Jay Kwon has estimated that if Samsung meets the union’s demands in full, 2026 operating profit faces a 7%-12% downside from increased labor costs alone. Add more than 4 trillion won in lost revenue from 18 days of reduced production, and the total operating profit impact lands at roughly 2.1 trillion-3.5 trillion won in JPMorgan’s base case, with considerably worse outcomes if the strike expands or recovery is slow.
The memory market has become tight, and the best illustration was none other than Samsung’s negotiations with Apple earlier this year. According to Korean outlet Dealsite, Apple held emergency meetings with Samsung’s semiconductor division to lock down memory for iPhone 17 production. Samsung reportedly planned to push for a 60% price increase. Instead, as a negotiating tactic, it opened with a demand for 100%, a full doubling, and Apple accepted immediately.
A citizen’s dividend
On May 12, presidential policy chief Kim Yong-beom posted on Facebook that South Korea should pay its citizens a “dividend” from the AI boom, arguing that the gains were built on an industrial foundation the entire nation accumulated over half a century. He explicitly compared it to Alaska’s Permanent Fund, where oil revenues are distributed to residents.
That day, the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) fell as much as 5.1% intraday, shedding more than $300 billion in value as investors initially interpreted it as a tax regime aimed at Samsung and SK Hynix—which together account for nearly half the index’s total market cap. Kim quickly clarified that he was talking about redistributing excess tax revenue already generated by the boom, not imposing new levies. The presidential office confirmed the remarks were Kim’s personal opinion, not government policy.
Foreign funds dumped 5.6 trillion won in KOSPI shares on the day of Kim’s citizen dividend comments. But Korean retail investors flooded in, buying 6.7 trillion won. The KOSPI, which had briefly touched 7,400, reversed course and closed at a record high above 7,800 by the next day.
Samsung and SK Hynix together are projected to post around 500 trillion won in combined operating profit in 2026, and their corporate tax bill alone could exceed 100 trillion won.
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Illustration by Andrei Cojocaru; Original photos from Getty Images
When regional Colorado car wash chain Autowash began growing rapidly, adding 13 locations in less than two years between 2021 and 2022, its operations couldn’t keep up. The company was still relying on hand-written sticky notes, text messages, fragmented spreadsheets, and employees’ own memory.
Autowash changed payment systems, but Erin Dreeszen, cofounder and chief of staff at Autowash, told Fortune she knew they had to find a way to “up” everything.They started with maintenance, which is crucial to operations in the car wash world. Each bay involves upwards of 20 different pieces of equipment that work together, and if there’s an issue with any single part, the whole thing goes down.
“The worst thing that can happen is someone shows up and the car wash is down for maintenance,” Dreeszen told Fortune. And now, with 26 locations and 150 car wash bays across them, that’s a lot of potential for something to go wrong — as well as a lot of repeatable problems begging for a more streamlined approach.
Working with MaintainX, Autowash adopted an AI-powered maintenance system that ended up laying the groundwork for the company to reimagine its entire operations layer around data and AI. The results are tangible: repair times dropped 74% across locations; labor productivity jumped as AI enabled workers to better do their jobs; and institutional knowledge that was previously stuck in employees’ heads is now systematized and searchable.
From repairs to everything else
Each day, Autowash maintenance technicians have to inspect every piece of equipment, which they used to do with an old-fashioned clipboard, pen, and paper checklist. Now it’s a procedure in the operations software system. When a technician flags an issue, the system automatically starts creating a maintenance ticket.
Autowash had originally launched this software system in 2023, but it didn’t immediately catch on. The company’s mobile maintenance technicians who service the different locations were used to doing things a certain way, and they took pride in holding the required knowledge. It wasn’t until MaintainX introduced an AI-powered copilot feature that automatically starts guiding technicians on the right steps to take, using information from the equipment user guides and the company’s own repair procedures, that they really started seeing the value in it. Then came the flywheel: the more they used it, adding notes to tickets and building up a database with even more information and knowledge for the system to use, the value became undeniable and adoption grew even faster.
“The guys were saying, ‘Man, it’s giving me a summary of what I need to do before I even get started,’” Dreeszen said. This has helped experienced technicians understand new equipment the company incorporates, as well as enabled new technicians to jump in and learn faster than ever before.
This has also allowed the company to embrace more proactive maintenance; now they know when the last oil change was, when they last serviced each piece of equipment, and all sorts of other niche metrics. They’re starting to track even deeper data too, like how many times a motor can turn over or how many times an actuator can open before breaking down.
The benefits don’t end with maintenance, however. The improved repair data informed inventory control. Then Autowash integrated the system with its warehouse, streamlining how the company schedules deliveries. All this went on to improve how the accounting team creates purchase orders.
“It’s kind of become the backbone of operations in general for what we do,” said Dreeszen.
Combing learnings
Nick Hasse, co-founder and head of GTM for MaintainX, told Fortune he’s long seen software in their category be used like a “digital filing cabinet.” Users historically logged what broke and who fixed it, mostly for the purpose of compliance, audit, and financial audits, but it offered little more than that.
Now that AI enables the system to answer back — sharing summaries up front, surfacing information about what worked last time, pinpointing the exact part that’s needed, and improving as it gains more data — it’s like having a second all-knowing colleague by your side, he said.
This is exactly what’s enabling Autowash to combine learnings and have the various locations work together as a uniform team rather than siloed businesses, which has been one of the biggest unlocks for the company.
“If other technicians at another site across the region have solved that recently, then you don’t need to waste time solving the same problems over and over again. We can just surface it and say, ‘Here’s how Joe fixed it over there last week,’” Hasse said.
This leads to his advice for navigating AI transformation: knowing how to translate the benefits of change to the various people in your workforce. A frontline technician likely doesn’t care about the efficiency gains or cost savings that make a difference to leadership or the front office, but they would care about something that makes their job easier.
Overall, Dreeszen said she’s learned the importance of understanding what your problem truly is. Often, the symptoms of the problem are what’s front-and-center, but you have to drill to the root of it and think in a more systematic way.
“I don’t think that software like this is necessarily a solution as much as a new way of thinking,” she said. “You can’t just turn it on and get it to work for you. You have to integrate it into the system to make it function.”
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Sage Lazzaro is a technology writer and editor focused on artificial intelligence, data, cloud, digital culture, and technology’s impact on our society and culture.
A 10% year-on-year decrease in fundraising revenue for Pieta House, partially due to a significant drop in income from the Darkness Into Light event, has led to the charity letting more than 30 employees go, following a restructuring programme.
Speaking on RTÉ’s This Week, the chief executive of the charity, Stephanie Manahan, said: “We’ve probably seen a 10% decline year-on-year, over the past recent years, but that’s not indicative of people’s incredible efforts up and down the land.
“Despite all of those efforts, we have seen challenges – inflation, cost of living, the unpredictability and volatility of the world that we’re living in – is impacting people’s giving patterns,” she added.
The drop in fundraising has been substantial.
Ms Manahan explained regarding Darkness Into Light: “We would have hoped we would have raised approximately €4 million, maybe a little bit over €4 million, last year would have raised €3.5 million – in and around.”
She said a further projected 10% fall in overall fundraising this year led to a reduction in staff.
Stephanie Manahan said the decision to let over 30 staff go was difficult
“We did have job losses during this phase [of restructuring] and last year’s phase. In total, we will probably lose approximately 30-32 people throughout this process.”
“Those decisions were difficult to make but they were the right decisions to make for us to deliver on our charitable purpose and for us to deliver responsibly.”
Ms Manahan confirmed that some fundraisers had lost their jobs as the organisation restructures.
“We can look at diversifying, and looking at other income pathways and income work streams, and build out on more, I suppose, focusing on philanthropy, focusing on grants and applications.”
She maintained that the challenges faced by Pieta House are not unique.
“Like so many other charities, we have been challenged over the last number of years. It has been difficult to sustain the income required to run the organization and to make sure that we can provide our services.”
Waterford controversy
There was controversy this year in Waterford, for Pieta House, when it vacated a building in the city and the local group decided against participating in “Darkness Into Light.”
The charity’s chief executive defended the policy saying the organisation was moving to another location.
“By making this move, we can massively reduce our overheads, so we’re doing that in, in a number of places.
“In Lucan, two years ago, we had to quit one of our buildings there, and we were able to, on foot of that, open in five other locations.”
Ms Manahan said the organisation’s 24-hour helpline was still operating: “We have in-person therapy; we have virtual therapy; we have schools programs; we have suicide bereavement support services. So all of those services are untouched.
“All of those services are continuing, and indeed we’re currently recruiting for therapists.”
In recent years, the HSE has doubled its funding of Pieta House from €2 million to €4 million.
“We will continue to work with the State. We don’t expect people to fill a gap in any sense or form. What we do expect a meaningful investment in services that deliver – in outcome and impact for the people in this country,” said Ms Manahan.
She said anyone holding suicidal ideation, and struggling with that, they should “pick up the phone, and call us on 1800-247-247.”
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Trump went cap in hand (made in China) to Beijing and came back with it empty. He threatens the gen*cide of 93m Iranians. Starmer challenger Andy Burnham is an Israeli human bot with better diction. And… pic.twitter.com/F8zSdoGPgA
The Free State’s early struggles and achievements in healthcare
By Bette Browne – 02nd May 2026
Credit: istock.com/HanzoPhoto Grafton Street in Dublin in 1931
The recent online release of the 1926 Census prompted Bette Browne to examine the health crises faced by our young nation 100 years ago
Ireland was far from a picture of health when the infant Free State carried out its first census 100 years ago. Life expectancy averaged 57.4 years, infectious diseases were rampant, and mortality rates were especially high among infants and young people. The country was plagued by poverty and poor nutrition and exhausted after years of conflicts.
Resources were inadequate to meet the scale of the health challenges the Government faced. Ireland was one of the few European countries whose population was still declining in peacetime and with it economic growth. On census night, 18 April 1926, the population was just 2.97 million, a 5.3 per cent decrease from 1911. Although the Famine took place eight decades earlier, its consequences still reverberated as emigration, delayed marriage, and low birth rates continued to suppress growth in what was an overwhelmingly rural economy.
Despite the scale and enormity of the challenges, including those in health, there must have been a certain sense of pride among many in the young nation on completing such an historic census. The 1926 census was not the country’s first, but it was the first one carried out under the Statistics Act 1926 and the first to be administered by the institutions of the Irish Free State.
However, independence also meant that the new nation was now responsible for the societal problems which needed to be addressed. In health, infectious diseases, malnutrition, poor sanitation, and slum housing were huge issues that had to be urgently tackled with limited resources.
TB
Tuberculosis (TB) was a particular scourge throughout the early 20th Century and was a leading cause of death in Irish children, driven by overcrowded, damp, and inadequately ventilated housing, particularly in Dublin slums, and high levels of poverty.
Nationally, TB caused 12,848 deaths in 1900 (14.6 per cent of all deaths), 10,016 (13.3 per cent) in 1910, and 7,651 (11.5 per cent) in 1920.
“Close-quartered, damp tenement houses in the lanes of Irish cities, where between five and 15 people occupied small rooms, provided the perfect conditions for the spread of airborne diseases,” noted Dr Ciara Breathnach (PhD), Associate Professor in History at the University of Limerick, and a research team from the University in a 2023 paper on the issue.
“Women’s National Health Association members tackled the disease through raising public health awareness of detection and modes of prevention. They travelled around the country in a caravan named Éire, which was covered in bilingual public health messages. They gave public lectures and published a magazine, Sláinte, to dispel myths and promote better public hygiene.”
Dr Noel Browne
Despite some progress, people suffering from TB continued to endure social stigma and isolation. The Tuberculosis Prevention (Ireland) Act of 1908 did allow county councils to establish local sanatoria, but effective treatment remained limited. It was not until 1943 that streptomycin – the first successful antibiotic against TB – was discovered, and it only became widely accessible in Ireland during the 1950s, when Minister for Health Dr Noel Browne led major efforts to combat and ultimately eliminate the disease.
At the same time, the health system was grappling with other crises. Acute gastroenteritis posed a serious threat, particularly to infants. During the 1930s, as many as 600 infants died each year from TB, and by the late 1930s into the early 1940s, overall infant deaths were averaging around 1,000 annually. Dublin was especially affected, with crowded tenement housing contributing to death rates nearly double those seen in rural areas.
By 1926, the country was still dealing with the aftermath of the so-called ‘Spanish Flu’ pandemic. This had swept through Ireland between 1918 and 1919, killing around 23,000 people and infecting approximately 800,000 more in just over a year.
The Registrar-General for Ireland from 1909 to 1926, Sir William Thompson, stated: “Since the period of the Great Famine with its awful attendant horrors of fever and cholera, no disease of an epidemic nature created so much havoc in any one year in Ireland as influenza in 1918.”
Sir William Thompson
Typhus and typhoid, which had devastated the country during the Famine, were still lingering in parts of the country, with an outbreak in Connemara in 1913 that affected 40 people, of whom five died. Unhygienic living conditions and lack of clean water were still major problems in the early 20th Century, particularly in poor urban and rural areas in many parts of the country.
Urban mortality
But in this period urban and rural areas did not suffer equally from diseases and the poor living conditions that drove them, a phenomenon referred to as the ‘urban mortality penalty’. This can be seen in the statistics referenced earlier for infant mortality. While death rates for infants were exceptionally high with a national rate of 74 per 1,000 births, the urban rate was 110 per 1,000 births, and the rural rate was 56 per 1,000 births.
In housing, major cities like Dublin faced severe slum conditions, often in dangerous and overcrowded tenements that lacked clean water and proper sewage disposal, which accelerated the spread of infectious and respiratory diseases. Many rural houses also lacked basic ventilation, windows, and clean water, facilitating the spread of infection, but at a lower rate.
Respiratory diseases and TB were major contributors to this ‘penalty’, with 32 per cent of all deaths in urban districts attributed to these causes, compared with 25 per cent in rural areas. The ‘penalty’ was not fully eliminated until the mid-1950s, when urban and rural rates converged following improvements in sanitation, food safety, and public health policies.
Severe levels of malnutrition in 1924 and 1925 also horrified – and shamed – the young Free State, so much so that it sought to cover it up, as revealed in State files in 2014. The crisis was triggered by disastrous harvests in 1923 and 1924 due to exceptionally wet weather, causing potatoes to rot. Newspapers in Clare and Galway reported at least 10 deaths from starvation or related diseases in early 1925.
Before February 1925, the State had provided £500,000 in relief and had acknowledged “acute distress” in several western counties. But after only three years of independent rule, the Government was sensitive about the country’s image and international reputation and played down the crisis. The country was eventually saved from a larger disaster by a significantly improved harvest in the autumn of 1925.
One of the Government’s least popular decisions around this time was the 10 per cent reduction in the old age pension in 1924 – a scheme originally introduced in 1909 under British administration.
By 1924, the pension had risen to 10 shillings per week. However, citing serious financial pressures, Minister for Finance Ernest Blythe reduced it to nine shillings. The original 10-shilling rate was reinstated in 1928 – a year that also coincided with local elections.
Health service
From 1922 to 1947 healthcare provision came under the Department of Local Government and Public Health. The 1920s and 1930s were essentially a transition period where the State struggled to move away from the Victorian ‘Poor Law’ medical system (see panel) towards a modern public health framework, amidst high poverty and disease rates.
The Free State faced immense difficulties in managing these crises. It had inherited a system where many hospitals were merely repurposed workhouses, lacking proper sanitation, heating, or modern equipment.
The health sector was based on a relief-type system rather than a public health service. Cash payments for sickness or disability were provided rather than direct medical or hospital benefits.
The ‘Democratic Programme’, which the first Dáil Éireann approved in 1919, had committed to abolishing the Poor Law system and replacing it with “a sympathetic native scheme for the care of the nation’s aged and infirm”.
For multiple reasons – including political instability, economic recession, and the necessity for fiscal prudence – the Democratic Programme was never translated fully into practice, according to a report by the Health Insurance Authority (HIA): Historical and Comparative Review of the Irish healthcare system.
The Free State began the task of dismantling the Poor Law system. Its functions were transferred to boards of health and public assistance, in effect sub-committees of the county councils that had been established a quarter of a century earlier.
“The intention was that each county should have a central county home to accommodate the aged and infirm poor and a county hospital, with a number of auxiliary district hospitals, to cater for the acutely ill,” according to the HIA report.
“The county infirmaries, which had come under the control of the county councils in 1898, were subsumed into this system. By the mid-1920s, county homes, county hospitals, district hospitals, and fever hospitals had been, or were in the process of being, established throughout the new State, many in former workhouses.”
These schemes marked the beginning of a separation between public healthcare services and poor relief. Both were managed at a local level by county councils and funded through a county-wide rate. County and district hospitals offered medical care to people in their area regardless of their ability to pay, though their primary focus was on serving the poor. Publicly funded hospitals run by local authorities were legally required to prioritise these patients and provide treatment free of charge.
In earlier periods, voluntary hospitals served a similar group of people. However, financial pressures in the early decades of the 20th Century led them to rely more heavily on patients who could pay fees. By 1935, only 40 per cent of patients in voluntary hospitals were treated without charge.
During the challenging economic conditions of the 1920s and 1930s, efforts were made to reduce spending wherever possible, and there was strong resistance to increasing taxes. As a result, securing funding became the central concern for the restructured public hospital system, just as it was for voluntary hospitals in Dublin, Cork, and other urban areas. Although voluntary hospitals maintained their status and independence well into the century, by the time Ireland gained independence, dwindling resources, and financial instability were putting their survival at risk.
At the time, the National Maternity Hospital (NMH) in Dublin was the most exposed and vulnerable institution in terms of funding, according to the HIA report.
However, a “uniquely Irish solution”, the legalisation of sweepstakes on horse races to raise funds for the NMH, and other financially pressed hospitals, resolved the difficulty.
The Irish Hospitals Sweepstake began in 1930. For the following decades, it provided essential funding for the evolution of the country’s local authority and voluntary hospital networks.
The Public Hospitals Act 1933 established a statutory body, the Hospitals Trust Board, to administer funds raised by sweepstakes on each year’s principal horse races.
“The injection of sweepstake funds secured the future of the voluntary hospitals,” according to the HIA.
The report notes that although efforts to consolidate and streamline the sector were largely unsuccessful, they did result in certain improvements to general hospital services. Among these was the development of a wide network of county, district, and fever hospitals across the country.
A dedicated Department of Health was not established until the 1947 Health Act which granted the Minister for Health sweeping powers to tackle urgent public health issues. It was the beginning of a new era. The country was still struggling and would continue to face major healthcare challenges, but few would be as severe as those which our forbears handled in far tougher times.
The evolution of a health system
▶ What was the ‘Poor Law’: The Poor Law Act was introduced in Ireland in 1838. The legislation divided the country into 130 administrative areas known as Poor Law unions, each centred on a workhouse. These workhouses were typically located near market towns to serve the surrounding district.
The system was funded by a compulsory property tax, the poor rate, which was based on a nationwide valuation, known as the Poor Law or Griffith’s valuation. The administration of each union was entrusted to a board of guardians, which was composed both of individuals elected by the ratepayers and by justices of the peace resident in the union.
▶ What did it provide: The Relief of the Poor (Ireland) Act 1838 did not provide the Irish poor with a legal entitlement to assistance. Relief was not an automatic entitlement, but depended on whether space was available in the workhouses. Because outdoor relief was largely refused, public assistance was effectively capped by workhouse capacity, which amounted to roughly 100,000 places. Support was also tightly constrained in financial terms. Most importantly in the Irish context, the system was fundamentally ill-equipped to respond to a large-scale crisis such as famine.
▶ Call for reform: In May 1920, the Irish Public Health Council – appointed the previous September to advise and assist the Government in promoting health policies generally – informed the Chief Secretary for Ireland that the country’s medical and health services required urgent reform.
According to the Council, the voluntary hospitals were in financial difficulties, the public hospital system was “disjointed and unsatisfactory”, and the dispensary service was in need of complete reorganisation and modernisation.
The Council submitted a proposal for a State medical and public health service – independent of the Poor Law – which, given the evolving political situation in Ireland, could be implemented in any part of the country in the event of partition.
In the 70 years between 1851 and 1921, the Irish Poor Law provided both inpatient and outpatient care for the sick poor. Those requiring hospital treatment were admitted to workhouse infirmaries and fever hospitals, while patients with less serious conditions were treated free of charge at dispensaries.
▶ Dispensary system: This situation did not change fundamentally over the period. Care for the poor was provided either in their own homes or through independent facilities dispersed across the country. As a result, dispensaries were largely free from the stigma associated with inpatient treatment under the Poor Law.
By the beginning of the 20th Century, workhouse or union infirmaries and fever hospitals were largely obsolete.However, their separation from the Poor Law system and the establishment of a State medical service were not achieved before the creation of the Irish Free State.
▶ Voluntary hospitals: The voluntary hospitals in Dublin and other Irish cities drew their patients largely from the same social groups as the county infirmaries: Self-supporting poor from the labouring and lower middle classes.
Although additional income was obtained from fee-paying patients, it was insufficient to cover running costs and capital expenditure, and by the time of Irish independence many voluntary hospitals were in severe financial difficulty.
The Poor Law unions were abolished in 1923, followed by the boards of guardians in 1925. Their responsibilities were transferred to boards of health and public assistance – effectively sub-committees of the county councils established 25 years earlier.
During the War of Independence, a number of workhouses were destroyed, and the remainder were either amalgamated or abolished and replaced by poor relief and medical services organised on a county basis. The intention was that each county would have a central county home for the aged and infirm poor, alongside a county hospital, with auxiliary district hospitals for acutely ill patients. County infirmaries were absorbed into this system.
By the mid-1920s, county homes, county hospitals, district hospitals, and fever hospitals had either been established or were in the process of being established, often in former workhouse buildings. These reforms marked the beginning of a structural separation between public medical services and poor relief. Both services continued to be administered locally by county councils and funded through county-wide rates.
▶ Sweepstake to the rescue: In the difficult economic climate of the 1920s and 1930s, funding became the central issue for the reorganised public hospital system, as it did for voluntary hospitals in Dublin, Cork, and elsewhere. By the time of Irish independence, however, depleted resources and financial uncertainty threatened their survival, with the National Maternity Hospital, Holles Street, Dublin, which was established in 1894, being among the most vulnerable.
The introduction of the Irish Hospitals Sweepstake in 1930 resolved these financial pressures. The influx of sweepstake funding secured the future of the voluntary hospitals and contributed to improvements in the general hospital service, including the development of an extensive network of county, district, and fever hospitals across the country.
(Source: ‘The Irish Healthcare system: An Historical and Comparative Review.’
A report commissioned by the Health Insurance Authority, September 2018)
Nothing kills you faster than chronic worry. When you stay trapped in constant anxiety over things you can’t change, you’re not just losing your peace of mind—you’re quietly injuring your physical health. Persistent worry keeps your stress-response system permanently switched on, flooding your body with cortisol and adrenaline. Over time, this chronic activation grinds down essential systems:it suppresses immune function, leaving you more prone to infections and possibly even cancer; it drives up blood pressure and hardens arteries, sharply raising the odds of heart attack and stroke. The fallout continues. Excess cortisol throws digestion into chaos, sparks frequent headaches, and locks muscles in painful tension. On top of that, many people cope by overeating, smoking, or drinking—habits that pile on even more damage.
Letting go of what’s beyond your control isn’t just good emotional advice; it’s one of the most powerful things you can do to protect your long-term health. [American Psychological Association. (2023). Stress effects on the body]
The immense power of the new plutocracy: How billionaires like Musk, Bezos and Zuckerberg shape our lives and our democracies
Wealth is becoming increasingly concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. The world’s wealthiest individuals are transforming their money into political influence to shape society and the democratic system to their liking
On May 5, 1789, King Louis XVI of France inaugurated the Estates-General. The institution convened that year to address the problem of rampant inflation and the bankruptcy of the monarchy, which was deeply indebted due to a lack of revenue.Neither the nobility nor the clergy paid taxes. Not because they were short of money. Their reason for exemption was simpler and more absurd: it was their privilege.
The privilege was closely linked to the discontent of 98% of French citizens who suffered from food shortages and rising prices and who were neither members of the nobility nor the clergy — the so-called Third Estate. This discontent stemmed not only from the injustice of taxes that disproportionately burdened those with the fewest resources, but also from the political power imbalance that these privileges revealed.
More recently, on June 8, 2021, ProPublica published an investigation into the taxes of U.S. billionaires. After accessing their tax records, they found in several annual returns of Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, George Soros, and Warren Buffett that they had managed to pay absolutely no income tax without committing a single irregularity. They were the most notorious cases, but the average income tax rate paid by the 25 richest people in the country between 2014 and 2018 was also disconcerting: 15.8%. “That’s lower than the rate a single worker making $45,000 a year might pay,” ProPublica wrote. Although the difference is not as pronounced in Europe, the same rule applies in Belgium, Spain, Italy, France, and the Netherlands: the effective taxes paid by the wealthiest 1% are always lower than those of the average taxpayer.
Seen from today’s perspective, the privileges enjoyed by the pre-revolutionary Church and nobility seem almost trivial. Wasn’t it supposed that privileges reserved for certain social classes had ended centuries ago, precisely because of the progress achieved after the French Revolution? As Max Lawson, who leads Oxfam’s research on inequality, says, billionaires have minimized taxes and other regulations that limit their profits by using a series of tools that transformeconomic power into political power. Among the classic levers for achieving this are campaign and party funding, the threat of taking the money elsewhere, traditional lobbying, and the appropriation of public discourse through investments in media, social networks, and the hegemony of artificial intelligence.
Donald Trump’s 2025 inauguration was attended by leading technology magnates.Shawn Thew (Pool / CNP / Polaris / Europa Press / Contacto)
While middle-class parents in parts of the Western world find it increasingly difficult for their children to match their standard of living, the world’s billionaires have acquired new superpowers to manipulate politics. Some examples? The power to decide a country’s military fate by granting or denying access to its satellites (Musk’s Starlink is one such example); the power to contribute to or not the spread of disinformation that threatens democratic coexistence (the cases of Facebook and X, for instance); or the power to revolutionize the world of work and communication with AI, while many countries struggle to pass even minimal regulation.
That their voices are heard more than everyone else’s wouldn’t be so problematic if their interests were aligned. But the short-term incentives of billionaires, whose wealth derives from capital gains, don’t usually coincide with those of the majority of the population, whose income depends on wages. Greater regulation of financial markets, for example, protects society from cyclical crises, but reduces billionaires’ opportunities to inflate their fortunes. There are also conflicting interests on sensitive issues such as the future of public healthcare and education.
According to economist Branko Milanovic, breaking the link between economic and political power is difficult because those who wield it know how essential that influence is to maintaining their position. “But a savvy plutocrat would do the same thing capitalists did after World War II: faced with the possibility of communism, they accepted many of the demands for equality in order to preserve their power,” he explains. “If the major plutocrats don’t curb their appetites, and their ambition becomes too obvious, the backlash against them could end up undermining the very pillars on which they stand,” he warns.
“There is likely no historical precedent for the wealth inequality that exists today, and indeed, there is no precedent for the level of global wealth,” Milanovic continues.In his opinion, two of the reasons why billionaires seem to continue accumulating wealth without qualms have to do with the “lack of recent precedents in which their power was challenged,” and with the visibility afforded by social media. “Before, the names of billionaires weren’t widely known; now they’re in the news every day, everyone recognizes them. I don’t know if that also makes it harder for them to curb their appetites.”
The biggest fortunes on the planet
Figures in billions of dollars
Ranking
Name
Business
Sector
Country
Fortune
1
Elon Musk
Tesla / X / Space X
Automotive / Tech.
South Africa
627.5627.5627.5
2
Larry Page
Alphabet
Technology
U.S.
271.6271.6271.6
3
Jeff Bezos
Amazon
Technology
U.S.
258.6258.6258.6
4
Sergey Brin
Alphabet
Technology
U.S.
252.5252.5252.5
5
Mark Zuckerberg
Meta
Technology
U.S.
223223223
6
Larry Ellison
Oracle
Technology
U.S.
187.4187.4187.4
7
Bernard Arnault
LVMH
Luxury
France
162.3162.3162.3
8
Michael Dell
Dell
Technology
U.S.
159.6159.6159.6
9
Jensen Huang
Nvidia
Technology
Taiwan
156.2156.2156.2
10
Jim Walton
Walmart
Distribution
U.S.
150.9150.9150.9
11
Rob Walton
Walmart
Distribution
U.S.
147.9147.9147.9
12
Alice Walton
Walmart
Distribution
U.S.
147147147
13
Warren Buffett
Berkshire Hathaway
Finance
U.S.
143.2143.2143.2
14
Carlos Slim
Telmex
Teleco
Mexico
132.7132.7132.7
15
Steve Ballmer
Microsoft
Technology
U.S.
132.3132.3132.3
16
Amancio Ortega
Inditex
Textile
Spain
131.3131.3131.3
17
Bill Gates
Microsoft
Technology
U.S.
102102102
18
Mukesh Ambani
Reliance Industries
Enegía y materias primas
India
91.891.891.8
19
Françoise Bettencourt
L’Óreal
Cosmetics
France
90.890.890.8
20
Gautam Adani
Grupo Adani
Industry
India
87.187.187.1
Table: EL PAÍSSource: Bloomberg
Throughout 2025, the fortunes of the world’s billionaires grew at three times the annual rate they had recorded on average over the previous five years. “Actions of the Trump presidency, including the championing of deregulation and undermining agreements to increase corporate taxation, have benefitted the richest,” according to anOxfam report published in January.
Billionaires’ investments are further evidence of the transmission belt that transforms economic power into political power. In the 2024 U.S. elections, just 100 families contributed one $1 of every $6 spent by candidates, parties, and committees. They invested $2.6 billion that year, more than double the $1 billion they had invested during the 2020 elections, and 160 times what they invested before the U.S. Supreme Court eliminated limits on campaign financing in 2010. Something similar is happening with public discourse: more than half of the world’s leading media outlets are owned by billionaires, according to Oxfam’s calculations; eight of the 10 largest AI companies are run by billionaires, as are nine of the 10 largest social media platforms.
In December 2024, the journal of the National Academy of Sciences published research by Eli G. Rau and Susan Stokes on the pernicious effects of inequality: the likelihood of democratic backsliding was seven times greater in the most unequal countries, they concluded. According to Rebecca Gowland, who works in the U.K. as a spokesperson for Patriotic Millionaires (an organization of millionaires aware of the problem of inequality that campaigns for governments to raise their taxes), this backsliding ultimately delegitimizes the entire system.
“The problem is not only that billionaires are designing policies that affect us all to their own benefit, but that they are doing so in plain sight, and that also makes us lose faith in democracy,” she says. Billionaires themselves admit this in anonymous surveys. “In the last survey we conducted in January in the G-20 countries, we asked them if they believed that extreme wealth was used to buy political influence, and almost 80% responded that it was and that it shouldn’t be,” she explains.
Distribution of capital between the Global North and South
Total wealth (trillions of dollars)
% of wealth
Total population (billions)
% of population
South
155.8155.8155.8
32.5%
6.56.56.5
79.8%
North
322.6322.6322.6
67.3%
1.61.61.6
19.3%
World
479.5479.5479.5
8.28.28.2
According to the latest Oxfam data, the world’s 12 richest people collectively possess more wealth than over four billion people. The growth of billionaires’ fortunes is not solely due to the fact that taxes have little impact on their wealth. According to Francisco Ferreira, head of inequality studies at the London School of Economics, they have also benefited greatly from the weakening of regulations protecting free competition. He argues that the steel industry, or even the oil industry, faced far more competition than today’s tech giants, “which can operate with much larger margins and generate extraordinary profits.”
Antitrust laws
“We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both,” said U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis (1916–1939), a key figure in the fight against monopolies. His jurisprudence and the laws enacted at the beginning of the last century helped contain monopolistic tendencies until the 1980s, when a reinterpretation of antitrust law narrowed its scope to cases involving price increases or reduced output. This laid the groundwork for the creation of giants like Amazon, Meta, and Google, which charged their users little or nothing in exchange for market power that has allowed them to dictate the rules and neutralize their rivals.
Former U.S. president Joe Biden tried to revive the spirit of Brandeis by appointing Lina Khan to fight monopolies at the Federal Trade Commission, but Trump dismissed her as soon as he took office. “It’s not possible to reverse a trend toward concentration in just four years,” says Ferreira. “If Khan’s regulatory strategies had been maintained for 20 years, it would have made a difference; but mergers and acquisitions don’t happen every year.”
Although regulations aren’t perfect, the defense of free competition and campaign financing are better regulated in the European Union, says Belgian philosopher and economist Ingrid Robeyns, author of a book on the idea of limiting wealth — placing a cap on the maximum amount of wealth a person can accumulate. “In the media sector, for example, in Europe we have a whole series of agencies that must authorize companies’ growth operations, while in the United States we see how the Ellison family [owners of Oracle and now also Paramount] is acquiring all the major players; their latest purchase was CNN,” says Robeyns.
Harmful effects
Besides jeopardizing the functioning and legitimacy of the democratic system, the accumulation of wealth by billionaires has detrimental effects on the economy. If that wealth were more equitably distributed, it could boost economic activity and employment through increased consumption. Nor does the global excess of savings generated by this concentration of wealth help —what former Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke called the “global saving glut.” In search of returns, all that accumulated liquidity scans for new investment havens in sectors such as education, healthcare, and housing — basic rights that have gradually drifted further out of reach as they have been absorbed into market logic.
So much for the bad news. The good news is that this isn’t the first time humanity has experienced this drift toward the concentration of power, and we can learn from past solutions. As Guido Alfani, professor of economic history at Bocconi University, says, the ancient Greeks already warned us of the incompatibility between democracy and the concentration of wealth. “Aristotle wrote that in a context of great inequality, the super-rich would be like gods among men,” Alfani says. “The Republic of Venice is a clear example,” he explains. “In the 15th century, humanists said it was the perfect model for a stable republic because its structure prevented the wealthiest from gaining political control, and yet, by the beginning of the 17th century, the rich could buy a seat on the Great Council of Venice, and all their descendants could be part of the ruling family.” According to Alfani, the plutocratic drift usually coincides with the moment when elites perceive a worsening of the conditions that enabled their enrichment.
But perhaps the most useful historical parallel is also the closest: the so-called Gilded Age in the United States, spanning the last three decades of the 19th century. These were the years of the railroad and rapid industrialization, with the rise of gigantic fortunes like those of the Rockefellers, the Vanderbilts, the Carnegies, and the Morgans.“The Civil War had ended, and citizens were unprepared for what was coming,” explains Richard White, professor of economic history at Stanford. “They came from slavery, where plantation owners were also the wealthiest, and they expected to enter a world of small producers competing with one another: they failed to see the industrialization and the world of impoverished wage earners that was coming because none of that had existed before in the country.”
Just as Trump announced $500 billion in joint investments for AI a year ago, Gilded Age governments aided those early entrepreneurs with subsidies and tariffs, arguing that industrialization would be good for the entire country. “But who benefited from that industrialization?” White asks. “When you look at things like wages, life expectancy, and health, in that era, what you find is a decline for the vast majority of Americans,” he says. “Conditions deteriorated so much that there began to be all sorts of signs of an impending class war in the country, with protests in the streets and an overwhelming majority against monopolies, regardless of their political affiliation.”
“[US President William] McKinley was assassinated in 1901 by a socialist, and even conservative publications were saying that something had to be done to address the problem of monopoly power and the concentration of wealth,” explains Ray Madoff, a professor at Boston University School of Law. Madoff recalls how the tax system then shifted from tariffs to the introduction of a tax system that would lay the foundation for the current one.
The progressive income tax was introduced in 1913, followed by the wealth tax in 1917. These levies achieved an unprecedented redistribution of wealth and reduction of inequality for most of the 20th century. This period, in White’s words, coincides with “the most prosperous era in U.S. history.”
Although the structure of the two taxes remains the same today, Madoff says, they have been “secretly eroded” for the benefit of the wealthiest individuals over the past 40 years. He describes various techniques, such as personal trusts and foundations, used to circumvent wealth and inheritance taxes, among other tools. “What they do rests on the following principle: banks need to lend money, because that’s their business, and billionaires have a gigantic amount of wealth to secure those loans, so they live in debt, refinancing that debt over and over again,” Madoff explains.
The solution is technically simple, says Madoff. Ensure that wealth is taxed as soon as there is a transfer of ownership, regardless of who receives it, whether through sale, donation, or inheritance, with no exemptions other than those decided by a democratic majority. “Of course, there’s a desire to help children, especially now that inheritance has become the only way to help them maintain a middle-class lifestyle, but that can be solved by leaving the first million or two million dollars untaxed; whatever society decides democratically,” explains the professor. “But that has nothing to do with justifying the descendants of Zuckerberg or Musk not paying inheritance tax.”
According to analyses by French economist Gabriel Zucman, preventing billionaires from keeping the privilege of paying less tax than workers would simply require ensuring that fortunes above €100 million ($117 million) pay a minimum annual tax of 2%, regardless of the mechanisms used to reclassify or recategorize wealth
In Spain, researchers Olga Cantó and Francisco García-Rodríguez from the University of Alcalá de Henares concluded in a recent study that reforming the wealth tax to align it with proposals by economist Thomas Piketty — or with the existing wealth tax in Norway — would have exceptional revenue-raising power. It would be enough to fund a universal child benefit of more than €2,000 ($2,340) per child, achieving a 5% improvement in the Gini inequality index.
Another solution is to impose especially heavy taxes on activities that convert economic power into political power. This is what Branko Milanovic suggests for any billionaire who wants to finance political campaigns or get involved in media, social networks, and other attempts to shape public opinion. “I don’t know if it will sound a bit far-fetched, but it seems to me that the taxes on these activities should be confiscatory, so that if they want to own media outlets or contribute to political parties, they should pay 2% of their wealth in taxes, for example,” he concludes.
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“And suddenly one morning, we felt lost from one another.” This is how Mehrnoosh Shahhosseini, a 52-year-old fashion designer from Tehran, remembers the hours following Israel and the United States’s first aerial attacks on February 28, the same day that Iranian officials blocked internet access out of “security concerns.”
The blackout continues to this day, and it is forcing a country of more than 90 million people to find alternative ways to stay informed, stay in touch with loved ones, study, and keep their businesses afloat.The digital shutdown has meant that Google Maps isn’t working, that data and emails are lost, that paying a taxi driver through an app has become a real challenge.
Like many Iranians, Shahhosseini reinstalled an old satellite dish at home, since TV set-top boxes and smartphones were no longer helping her stay informed about the situation in Tehran.
“We needed to know where there had been a bombing and where the next could be!” she says, referring to the satellite television news programs that shared occasional warnings from Israel on future attack targets. At the same time, the sale of illegal VPN configurations has soared, as has a more costly service called Internet Pro, used by business owners, other professionals, and academics.
Shahhosseini wakes up in the middle of the night, when the VPN connection is less congested, and she can respond more quickly to clients. “I get up at dawn to respond to emails from people who also can’t connect during the day. If I’m late, I can lose those clients,” she says.
In her house, the internet blackout has had some positive collateral effects: one of her teen daughters is reading more, another has started a beginner’s sewing class, and is considering learning to play an instrument. “Because they can’t play video games anymore,” explains Shahhosseini.
“Before, I was always short on time, and now, my life goes at a tortoise’s pace, and I spend quality time with my family,” she adds. “But it is hard to keep up the spirits of two 14 and 16-year-old teenagers, with no internet and after the trauma caused by the war.”
Government differences
Amirhossein Jalali-Nadoushan, the spokesperson for the Iranian Psychiatric Association, believes that being deprived of the internet could have serious consequences for young people. “It could also gradually snuff out the voice of the Iranians, or make it so that other voices substitute those voices in the future who no longer represent the Iranian population,” he warned, as quoted by the ILNA news agency.
Since April 8, a ceasefire between the United States and Iran has been in place, but it is threatened almost daily by attacks from one side or by disagreements in the ongoing negotiations. Although government statements suggest the internet blackout will not last forever, differences of opinion among Iranian authorities are also evident. “What we are experiencing today, including the general disconnection of internet, is not acceptable, nor is it to the president’s liking,” Mehdi Tabatabaei, presidential adviser on public relations, said May 5, according to ISNA, a semi-official, state-supported news agency in Iran. “With the country’s return to normalcy, which is also coming soon, the internet will return to its normal state,” he said.
These remarks from President Masoud Pezeshkian’s adviser came after a conservative‑leaning member of parliament, Amirhossein Sabeti, said there was no such prospect in the near future. “If the internet is reconnected, there is a possibility that some of the mercenaries whose actions we witnessed on January 8 and 9 will organize gatherings through these social networks,” he said in recent days, according to the online newspaper Hamshahrionline.ir.
Sabeti was referring to the anti‑government protests in January, in which messaging apps like Telegram played a key role in organizing and mobilizing citizens. Iranians took to the streets to denounce the economic crisis, and the movement — which gained momentum and called for an end to the Islamic Republic — was crushed by a brutal crackdown that left at least 3,000 people dead, according to the official tally, though human‑rights organizations say the total number of victims is double that figure.
Ironically, the Tehran Electronic Commerce Association said in an IRNA statement in late April that the most serious cyberattacks to have taken place in Iran, including the hacking of several major banks, actually took place during periods of total internet shutdown.
Ruin for small businesses
The livelihood of more than 10 million Iranians depends on a stable internet connection, and the abrupt blackout has been a disaster for many small businesses. Alireza, 35, runs a kitchen and bathroom furniture company in the northeastern city of Mashhad. “I have been diligently promoting the business on Instagram since 2022. The result was clear in my annual earnings, which went from 15 billion rials [$11,380] four years ago to 40 billion [$30,500] in 2025-2026,” he says in a telephone interview.
But his last Instagram video was posted two days before the start of the war. “I have a showroom in the city center, but I don’t even have a sign on the door,” he says, explaining that her marketing strategy is based on social media.
Since the war began, he has used Iranian messaging apps to make up for his absence on Instagram. But “90% of our followers aren’t on them,” and he has yet to find a viable strategy to keep the business going. As a result, he has had to let go of 17 workers because he has no orders. “Some of the people who were let go have families to feed. At the same time, the price of our raw materials has nearly doubled. I don’t understand why they cut off the internet,” he says.
Iranian designer Mehrnoosh Shahhosseini organizes the shoes she stores in her home and has not been able to sell, due to a lack of internet connection.Aresu Eqbali
In Shahhosseini’s case, the image that best captures the impact of the internet blackout on her life as a small business owner is a room in her home filled with shoeboxes she has been unable to sell. Her income has fallen by two‑thirds because of the commercial isolation caused by the digital blackout. Like Alireza, her Instagram account was her storefront, and her more than 28,000 followers were her business card. “But if you don’t post anything new and you don’t respond, in a matter of days, the algorithm punishes you,” she explains.
Sabeti, the conservative lawmaker, laments that Iran’s existing digital infrastructure has been too weak to cushion the impact of the shutdown. “We should have prepared our national infrastructure previously, so that so many businesses wouldn’t collapse in moments like this one. Like in China, which has a very solid national network,” he said.
In Iran, things are different. For example, schools and universities are using intranet networks developed during the coronavirus pandemic. According to academics, this precarious setup is already degrading the quality of education.
And then there are the invisible harms this isolation inflicts on citizens. For example, Elham, 56, spends her days figuring out how she can speak with her son Taha, 23, who studies in Italy. She had planned to spend the Iranian New Year holidays with him, but the war derailed her plans. It also left her unable to communicate with him through video calls or WhatsApp messages, and she feared dying in a bombing without hearing his voice again. Distressed, she asked a friend who had managed to get a VPN connection whether they could send Taha a message from her home. “I went with my husband, and we were almost like people who had never used a telephone in their lives,” she jokes.
As the days passed, Elham learned through her son’s friends that there was a local messaging and video calling app that could be used between Iran and Italy. “At first it worked, then it started to fail. When we were online, Taha couldn’t get on. Other times, he was waiting, and we weren’t able to connect,” she sighs.
The internet blackout, the resilience of Iranians, and the struggle to use local apps have become a source of inspiration for some artists. In a music video that has racked up thousands of views, two Iranian rappers sing: “My Telegram works. The [Iranian] super app Bale is down… Even if I starve to death, I will buy a VPN. My content is on Insta, it’s to make my public laugh, because we really don’t deserve this. Every night, I see if you are able to connect again. Internet is your right in 2026.”
canisgallicus 