Should Jobseekers Benefit and Allowance be reformed?

Welfarite said:
Don't see why this is relevant. Did he not get paid his benefit? Taxes (Revenue) are not linked to Social Welfare.
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I think the point being it demonstrates that there is a history of working rather than chasing benefit. I have had experience of that before, people being grilled and finding is difficult to get anywhere with the SW. Which is hard to take if you feel you've paid your dues and other who haven't get SW with ease. Thats the perception at least.

ClubMan said:
Maybe jobs are hard to get if the applicant is not willing to be flexible on what work s/he will take?...
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I think thats a bit unfair. Its as hard to get jobs your overqualified for as those your underqualified for. Even for casual jobs with minimal skills.
 
rock3r said:
See post number 1
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Ooops, thanks I had read that and then lost it :/



What I was originally suggesting (and I only suggested it as a general idea needing perhaps some development) was more than a tax credit but an actual flat rate payment which everyone gets for example if everyone got 100(?) euro a week and then was told your life is what you make of it , sit on your This post will be deleted if not edited to remove bad language, go back into education (get a book allowance etc) or get a job (and enter tax system perhaps at the low rate) but thats yours for life, what would be the likely result ?

A lot of civil servants would lose their jobs in the welfare exchanges and fraud prevention for one thing or be moved to work elsewhere and become more productive for society. Maybe they could be shifted to revenue compliance instead. And a lot of people might suddenly lose any disincentive or fear of taking up opportunities and suddenly become entreprenerial or am I being too optimistic?
 
The whole premise of unemployment payments is to tide you over...basic living...until you find a new job. They should be short term payments. In the 1980s in Ireland, the system was stretched to breaking point with unemployment reaching 20%. There were no jobs, no training, no help for you if you had to sign on. That, to all intents and purposes, is still the case.
Despite the Celtic Tiger, and with full employment, the state has failed to put any system in place to cater for such a scenario in the future.

There are many people on the dole who never worked and are unemployable. The state is happy to pay them Jobseeker's Allowance, a misnomer for all those let down by the state's agencies. If we did away with unemployment payments, the state would have to pay these unemployable people something else. Moving deckchairs on the Titantic springs to mind....

Until we can say; "here's a payment for six months, after that you will be moved into training/retraining for six months, after that if you don't get a job you can starve", nothing will change. It's the middle bit that's the problem for the state.
 
after that if you don't get a job you can starve
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There would be an uprising.

Benefits are a good way to enforce state control over the masses.
 

I think it is a great idea as it holds to the original reason for introducing social welfare - a safety net to prevent people from starving if they lose their job, the existence of which should stimulate more entrepreneurial ventures (because you always have welfare to fall back on if you fail).

It is only of late that it has become a career option.
 
room305 said:
Benefits are already too high, it's a stretch to say making them even higher is "vastly superior" no matter how strict or short a duration you would intend them to be.
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There are cogent arguments to be made against having any welfare system at all.

But if you look at the measured results of differing welfare systems, especially regarding the level of extreme poverty among the children of welfare recipients, the Irish/UK/USA is blatantly and obviously very far below the Danish model. It is illogical to accept the need to have a welfare system, yet to choose a model which causes vastly more child ultrapoverty than an alternative which costs only fractionally more, and less in some cases.

The current model used in our Irish/UK/USA systems guarantees child ultrapoverty at a structural level.

If child ultrapoverty is an acceptable ill (as the Beijing government, for one, believes) then it's sort of weird to even bother with a welfare state.
 

What leads you to believe that the differences in child poverty are related to the social welfare system? Perhaps it is a cultural problem. Also, the benefits systems in Ireland and the UK are vastly different to those in the US.
 
room305 said:
What leads you to believe that the differences in child poverty are related to the social welfare system? Perhaps it is a cultural problem. Also, the benefits systems in Ireland and the UK are vastly different to those in the US.
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Well, let's scientifically experiment to see if it's really cultural or structural to the welfare system.

We simply take every welfare recipient whose name on the birth certificate begins with an 'L' (or some other method of assuring a reasonable amount of randomness), and offer them the choice of the status quo or the Danish system.

Then we track poverty amonf those on the Danish system against the rest of the state. If there's no difference between them outside the margin of error, then it may indeed be cultural. If there is a major difference between them outside the margin of error, then logic suggests it's systematic and not cultural. Frankly, I think the chances of the difference being cultural are laughably low, but show me data that says different and I'll change my mind. What will it take to get you to change YOUR mind?

There's no quantum physics involved, just tried and true testing methods.

By restricting the experiment to the L-names, we limit the cost massively, obviously, but get the benefit of knowing whether our welfare system can be fixed based on hard data, not ideological assumptions.
 
"Ultra poverty" in this country is 'cultural'. No matter how much money you give it will be drunk, smoked, injected or gambled etc. As 'normal poverty' is now taken as having a family income in the bottom 15%, there will always be poverty. But using the old system of 'can you afford a pair of shoes and warm coat?' there is no longer a problem, unless they are trapped by an ultra poverty ‘culture’. But will our nanny state save children effected by ultra poverty, by taking them away from their parents. No, not until they are already damaged and trapped by the Ultra Poverty they are brought up in.

You could also go into how the SW state breaks down the Family, but that is another debate.
 


I'm curious where you got the notion that 'normal poverty' is now taken as having a family income in the bottom 15%.

In fact, poverty's defined as having below 40% of the median income, which is so different from "having a family income in the bottom 15%" that I don't even know where to begin explaining the difference.

Obviously, ultrapoverty requires that income be very far below the basic metric of "below 40% of the median income", and "very far" is a subjective measurement on which reasonable people will differ.

What constitutes poverty which is "very far" below in your eyes?

I think, given the huge and rising cost of living, that anything less than 80% of the basic poverty metric constitutes ultrapoverty, especially when you consider rampant inflation.

Maybe you think that a human child could be trying to survive on half (50%) the poverty metric and still not be ultrapoor, I'd disagree but would accept your right to a different point of view.
 
It is an interesting discussion of a complex issue. I wonder though, if we were to have this discussion in the 80s or 90s if people would have the same attitude?

While many of us feel pretty good about the economy we should remember that it wasn't all that long ago since we were exporting people out of here and we didn't have enough jobs for the population who stayed here. I am not trying to be a prophet of gloom, but there is a possibility that over the next 5 years or so more people will need the supports the State provides. We should bear this in mind when deciding that we should turf people off benefits.
 
rock3r said:
Obviously, ultrapoverty requires that income be very far below the basic metric of "below 40% of the median income", and "very far" is a subjective measurement on which reasonable people will differ.
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Not obvious at all - I asked for an explanation of what "ultrapoverty" is and how it is defined (and who defines it) but nobody seems to know...
 
rock3r said:
In fact, poverty's defined as having below 40% of the median income ...
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This is an absolutely nonsensical definition of poverty and is used by the likes of Fr. Sean Healy to pretend poverty is still a major problem. I read an interview with him before and he was calling for social welfare benefits to be kept on par with a "comfortable wage". Why not two cars and the 3-bed semi-detached in an exclusive address as well while we're at it?

If we imagine a country with population of 100 people, one person earns a million a year, one earns €10k a year and the rest earn between €100,000 and €150,000 a year. Assuming a similar cost of living to Ireland, we might reasonably assume that only one person in this country can be considered "poor". However, according to CORI, this terrible country is afflicted with a truly horrendous poverty rate of 99% as everybody but the millionaire lives below the "poverty line" of €198,000 a year!

People living on state support are can do so because of the labour of others. It is a privilege not a right and should be afforded to those who truly deserve it.
 
rock3r said:
I'm curious where you got the notion that 'normal poverty' is now taken as having a family income in the bottom 15%.
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This is what various religious groups have recently been using on the radio etc as a measure of relative poverty.

rock3r said:
In fact, poverty's defined as having below 40% of the median income, which is so different from "having a family income in the bottom 15%" that I don't even know where to begin explaining the difference.
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According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relative_poverty The "European Union uses 60% of national median equivalised household income."

Anyway. The problem in Ireland is Cultural or what is now called Generational Poverty. It is either self induced or inherited from parents. The SW system will always take care of you. Money it not the answer, €500 per week can be drink or injected just as fast as €100.

Clubman, I have seen at first hand levels of poverty that I would call real Ultrapoverity, street children with horrific festering injuries/missing limbs etc. It does not exist in this country.

Towger
 
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