I know a lot of kids, young men and women, from disadvantaged areas and broken homes. Most of them are very decent but one way or another get themselves into trouble.
Their attitudes become more and more hardened as they get older, as after each training program and jobs program they get let go into the big bad world to fend for themselves. Its their they face the difficulties in competing for work against educated kids with solid backgrounds. And its there, through rejection, the contempt for the system, and employers, and life in general develops - hence the barge pole statement, their view not mine.
Not all it has to be said, some do great things for themselves.
Good point. I agree completely. That is my experience as well and it's hard to understand that mind-set and how deeply it colours a persons perception of the world until you see it first hand.
I regard poverty (or relative poverty; the areas/people you are talking about here) as a symptom of a social problem. As with many symptoms it exacerbates the problem but it is not the root cause. The root cause is the mind-set you outlined above. That can only be changed through education and the that will take generations. Changes to welfare etc are only nudges in a direction, not a solution. They are important nudges through.
But the cycle of poverty continues, and like I said, I dont have the answer. I have a great respect for Irish people, workers and employers. I think irish people in the main have a great work ethic and attitude to self sufficieny.
I despise the corrupt elites, who lie at the top of every sector of society, in sporting organizations, in charity, financial, legal, property, state-sponsored bodies, in the media, in the churches, who leech off the back of the fantastic efforts of real entrepreneurs, with real ideas, and who brought this country to its knees. These are the bastards that we need to root from the system.
I agree here again about corrupt elites (not about the Irish work ethic) but I include the elites at the top of the Unions, particularly the Public Sector Unions, who sat at the table like the pigs at the meal at the end of Orwell’s Animal Farm, and screwed billions in totally unsustainable wage increases out of the people of Ireland. I'd also include Doctors and Nurses and all the other vested interest groups in the Healthcare Industry which stymie real reform and engage in petty blackmail of sick people in order to get more money. They may well be worse than their counterparts in the Legal Industry. All that notwithstanding it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t construct a system which makes work pay.
With respect Purple, the US applies a (35% I think) corporate tax rate on company profits. And its applied, no messing. This would surely facilitate a reduced employee tax rate.
It certainly does not apply “no messing”. I worked on a project with a US company which was looking to set up here with IDA support. The State of Missouri gave more tax breaks, grants, supports and write-off’s than we could dream of. Small to medium private companies, the ones which employ the majority of people in this country, make small profits and so what the corporation tax rate is doesn’t really matter.
The fact that struggling companies used to get some of the redundancy payments back as a result of the Employers Social Insurance they paid but now they get nothing, increasing wages, increasing rates and charges and a severe lack of skilled labour because our schools are rubbish at teaching sciences so we end up with too many marketing consultants and not enough scientists and engineers.
In my sector the movement of control for Apprenticeships from the Department of Trade and Industry (as it was) to the Department of Education resulted in utter collapse of the engineering trades until now there are no apprenticeships available which actually train people to be useful or skilled in the sector. We are 20 to 30 years behind Germany and Easter Europe in that area and increasingly falling behind the UK which has invested massively in that area and is designing their training around industry needs, not around a bunch of teachers and academics who design training based what they want to teach.
Should everyone, employees, employers and businesses all pay their taxes? Absolutely. Multinationals included.
In this country we have a 12.5% corporation tax rate, with, in some instances an effective rate of 4%.
This puts pressure to extract taxes from elsewhere, unfortunately, workers are hit hardest.
We have the most “progressive” income tax rate in Europe and, along with Israel, the most “progressive” in the developed world. That means that despite a very uneven pre-tax/welfare income distribution we have a very even distribution after tax/welfare. We have high sales taxes and very high income taxes on moderate to high earnings. The burden actually falls on those high earners, especially if they don’t have children.
Again, lots of people work; carers, volunteers and others outside the employment market. We are talking about unemployed and employed people here (employed people including business owners, self employed and sold-traders), not workers.