Jobseeker allowance discourages people to find work?

And now with the water charge which will in all likelyhood not apply if you are on the dole, there will be another addition to the incentive not to work. A household charge of €200 makes the person not paying it around €400 better off. Add to that a property tax, with the same exemptions, and the incentive not to work could be increased by over €1000 when income tax is taken into account - perhaps even more depending on the charge.

Note that in the USA the unemployed must continue with their property tax payments - no waivers AFAIK.

csirl said:

People who have worked and paid social insurance should be entitled to a % of previous taxable income for a set period of time and this should be paid out of the social insurance fund (thus being cost neutral).

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I agree with the gist of what you are saying, but there is no social insurance fund. In fact, if a private company were to run an insurance product like the government run social insurance it would be prosecuted for running a ponzi scheme.

Purple said:

In that context I’d be all for a system that links benefits to former income levels and then steps down to a lower long-term rate over a few years.

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I would only be in favour of this if the whole system were run like an insurance product, that was not allowed run at a loss and stood in open competition with similar private products. Two chances in that happening though.