Who are the people who pay for everything? It's certainly not someone on welfare. It would be great if we could get more of them off welfare, to help shoulder the burden. That's not going to happen with the level of benefits being given out now to people who aren't working, which creates the culture of dependency - I haven't heard anything in this thread to contradict the central point.
But, is the answer reducing the benefits or somehow maintaining them or dispersing them amongst the general workforce?
In the long run I think a straight reduction would work as it would get people into the workforce, who over time have opportunities they would never have caught in a poverty trap.
In the short term, and to make things politically palatable, I think we need to look at making the benefits (eg medical card) conditional on working, rather than as now, on not working. There will be costs to this, but this is balanced against the savings to this as instead of relying on the taxpayer to 100% fund things, there will be a mix between taxpayer and employer.
Its the same old defunct analysis that is regurgitated time and time again. The original article takes a stat (23% VLWI) and calls it something else (jobless households, which peaked at 16% in 2012), then it tries to imply that the NESC report is refering to Irish unemployed as opposed to all nationalities.
Then out trots the 'people who pay for everything', mantra. The implied assumption that educated and skilled workers do not rely on welfare, pay everything, and only unskilled uneducated are costing the taxpayer.
They may well have been well paid and highly educaed but I have to disagree with your assertion that they were skilled. The older I get the less of a connection I see between education and skill.There are, and were, plenty of educated and skilled workers on welfare at the height of the crash. Plenty of skilled and educated workers working in banking and finance, on large salaries, whose ineptitude was the equivalent of the entire McDonalds, Supermacs, Burger King etc giving all their customers a serious dose of food posioning at the exact same time.
So what?Nobody pays a rate of tax on any level of income that is higher than anyone elses. The first €20,000 is tax free (for everyone), then next tranche is at 20% (for everyone) and then its 41% (for everyone).
No it’s not. That’s another nonsensical metaphor from you. The discretionary income of a single earner family with 3 kids paying a mortgage in Dublin won’t be far off a family on welfare with three kids living in Dublin where the state (i.e. the family earning €80,000) is paying for their house. Add medical cards, back to school allowances, family income supplement, 3rd level grants for the kids, etc etc etc and the gap continues to close.Comparing the tax liability of someone who has an income of €80,000 to someone on €20,000 is like comparing a bike race between two cyclists, only not accounting for the point that one cyclists has no wheels on the bike.
Ok; mind opened, so what alternatives do you suggest (and please base them in reality and not some whimsy derived from a morally and economically bankrupt socialist ideology?So, open your mind to alternatives, dont be so formulated in spouting the same guff that has no basis in reality.
You aren’t making any sense there. That or you are introducing a straw man argument so you can dismantle it.
You are the only one implying an assumption. The top 30% of tax payers are net contributors to the exchequer. The 70 to 80% group are only slightly on the plus side. The top 20% are the real net contributors. The other 70% are net recipients. Of course there are exceptions but it’s statistically sound. That has nothing to do with education and only a little to do with skills. It has a lot to do with hard work, intelligence, luck and family/scocial background. None of which changes the statistical facts.
They may well have been well paid and highly educaed but I have to disagree with your assertion that they were skilled. The older I get the less of a connection I see between education and skill.
So what?
No it’s not. That’s another nonsensical metaphor from you. The discretionary income of a single earner family with 3 kids paying a mortgage in Dublin won’t be far off a family on welfare with three kids living in Dublin where the state (i.e. the family earning €80,000) is paying for their house. Add medical cards, back to school allowances, family income supplement, 3rd level grants for the kids, etc etc etc and the gap continues to close.
Ok; mind opened, so what alternatives do you suggest (and please base them in reality and not some whimsy derived from a morally and economically bankrupt socialist ideology?
And thats not counting the army of people deemed to be disabled and so not counted int he unemployment statsFull employment was never reached. it was 4% at best
It would help if you made fewer assumption about what other people have read.It would help if you read the article in the Irish Independent and how it barely relates to its source, the NESC report on jobless households. Then you would be able to engage more meaningfully.
No it doesn’t. It merely cites insurance costs as a drain on the income of working people.For instance, the Indo article points to increasing car insurance premiums as evidence that the welfare state is too heavy a burden.
No, it makes your net income higher for low paid jobs, even taking childcare costs into account. You’ll never move to a high paid job if you don’t take the lower paid one to start with. If you are working for minimum wage for more than a few years then you have no ambition or no ability.And the Indo article admits that it doesn't pay to work a low paid job if the worker is going to end up paying childcare costs. The answer? Cut welfare payments!
Somehow cutting welfare payments will make the cost of childcare cheaper if you work a load paid job!!
Btw, Family Income Supplement is only payable to people who are at work. A minimum of 19 hours a week. Medical cards are also supplied to working people. In some instances, reasonably paid people, but in some instances the medical attention required (like a disabled child) are too much to bear.
These people are not part of the NESC report on jobless households, so why bring it up?
No it doesn’t. It merely cites insurance costs as a drain on the income of working people.
No, it makes your net income higher for low paid jobs, even taking childcare costs into account. You’ll never move to a high paid job if you don’t take the lower paid one to start with. If you are working for minimum wage for more than a few years then you have no ambition or no ability.
The crux of the matter is that some people believe that society has a duty to support people who choose not to support themselves. I do not agree with that proposition.
Some people also believe that people should be paid a wage in excess of the economic or social value of their work, rather it should be based on some notion of what they need to “live on”. That in effect means “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need”. I do not consider quality of outcome to be desirable, preferring instead a society based on equality of opportunity, and I’m not a Marxist, so I also disagree with such notions.
Comparing the tax liability of someone who has an income of €80,000 to someone on €20,000 is like comparing a bike race between two cyclists, only not accounting for the point that one cyclists has no wheels on the bike.
The "problem" is that social welfare provides a standard of living that some people aspire to. Instead of being what it should be, i.e. a support to keep vulnerable people housed and fed at the most basic level, it allows people to live comfortably. That is wrong.
Nice metaphor. I quite prefer the one where two people are on a tandem bike and the one at the front is doing all the peddling and the one at the back is free-wheeling
Is it beyond your thinking to assume that an unemployed person also has a car? Is it beyond your thinking that an unemployed person can use their savings from previous employment to pay car insurance?
Car insurance, and an increase in the premium, is a drain on all people who have a car, whether they are working or not. People who are working are not supporting non-working people in terms of their car insurance. It is a farce to imply it, but implied it is in the article written in the Irish Independent on jobless households.
Not only that, your own comment above would suggest you have the blinkers on this morning "insurance costs as a drain on the income of working people". Oblivious to the fact that unemployed people have to deal with insurance and its costs also.
If welfare rates are higher than the economic value of someone’s labour then they are unemployable. It’s the ultimate poverty trap. The State should not do for people in the long run that which they can and should do for themselves. The solution is to force employers to subsidise their income (Marxism), cut long term Welfare rates or, the best option, increase their economic value through skills training and education.That contradicts what the Indo article says, which states that it doesn't pay to take a low paid job if you have to shell out for childcare. Hence adding to the jobless households figure. Whereas you are stating that a low paid job, coupled with welfare provides too much sufficiency, acting as a barrier to advance careers and pay for fear of losing the welfare payment.
So for low paid jobs with welfare, are they too cushy? Or not worth taking?
When we were in a boom where a shortage a labour meant vastly inflated wages for non skilled employment there was 4% unemployment (ignoring the vast number of people on disability). That’s hardly a good model upon which to base your argument.I don't disagree with you, but I suspect they are a relatively insignificant minority. When this economy had the capacity to reach full employment, it did. This suggests that most people on welfare would rather earn a living than be reliant on the state. To cut their welfare benefits on the wrong assumption that 'they believe that society has a duty to support' them, is more of the same old nonsense.
The evidence is there, if there a jobs available, people will work them.
Yeh, it'll be great craic with you determining what the economic or social value of persons job is. For the craic, what is the economic and social value of the following;
a worker at a fast-food restaurant
a childcare worker
an investment fund manager
You have been shown that the full employment argument is nonsense. Please shop repeating it. While most people do indeed try to avoid being on welfare that's yet another strawman argument. We are not talking about that, we are talking about the minority who are on welfare and the dependency culture which keeps so many of them there.Thankfully, the vast, vast majority of people do their upmost to avoid being reliant on welfare. Those that are in receipt, would mostly like to get out of it by earing more income. This was evident during the boom when the economy reached the capacity of full employment.
Can we base things on something more than your experience please?Or course, there will always be a lazy, even criminal element of society that will always play the victim of hardship, and sponge of the state. But from my experience they generally come really deprived areas of the country with all sorts of barriers.
That's a harsh view of things. Most people have a sense of social responsibility and don't want to free-load off their neighbours.But here is the trick, the option of such a lifestyle is open to everyone. Just quit your job or business, take up an addiction or two, bring the kids out shop-lifting and before long you will lose your own home and be down Benefit St, with your own social house and 52" TV - because that is what welfare recipients aspire to.