I’m €11 per week better off since I recently rejoined the workforce, but in my mind I’m a millionaire. Working beats moping around the house every time!

That’s fine if it’s only yourself, but if you’ve dependants you might look at it another way

Clearly Rob we should correct the problem you’ve pointed out,

What do you think of cutting the dole by 10e a week?

Certainly makes a job more attractive now, don’t want people better off on the dole after all

Thats true bob. Children gotta come 1st.

Well Barry, that’s one answer I suppose… frankly I’m shocked that it got such a large amount of thumbs up!

The sad truth is that, in most of Europe at least, the same jobs will pay a lower wage or salary. You may be better off financially if you based yourself in another country, not because of higher earning potential, it would be lower, but because the cost of living would be significantly lower. Lowering cost of living would have far stronger long-term benefits for Ireland than increasing wages, which would, for most companies based here, be unsustainable.

I agree, but the report is reporting on what is, not saying how things should be. It’s not intended to be a mission statement.

Yeah marginally is the key worked. They could be better off financially by say 20e per week, and I for one would not go back to work just to gain an extra 20e.. Time spent at home with the family is worth way more than 20e.
Also going back to work could involve working shift or night work which can cause physical and mental effects all of which are not worth the marginal financial gains. I bet the human side is not taken into account with reports like this and just bottom line figures are all that count. People are not just number and calculations on paper

I wonder did child care cost get factored into their doctored equations!!

Simon if we all took your attitude who would pay the taxes that support your dole. I would love to stay at home and spend time with my family and no money can equate to that but I choose to work to set a good example. The benefits make it too easy to stay at home. Personally I think if your able to work and choosing not to even if its only for 20e extra a week, then your a pathetic little man

What’s that supposed to mean?

You hit the nail on the head there Ryan. I have a friend who works for the ESRI and they told me that figures are forever being manipulated to suit the Government. I tend to take these findings of the ESRI with a mountain of salt! ;-)

it means exactly what it says, there first report was right

For some money wise they might be however mentally they will never be better off on the dole

Oh my God, never get rid of the dole.
If you did, you might put the department of social protection out of business (or the entire government for that matter)

When you have idiot ”leaders” getting paid €100′s of thousands a year to squander billions and destroy and depopulate the country,
it is very difficult to criticize the people whom they ”lead” for claiming their few euros on the dole.

People who say nasty things about other people on the dole make me very angry. It’s not like they want to be on the dole, the evidence is back in the boom time when there was work available, you didn’t see long ques for the dole back then did you? (And the dole was worth a lot back then)

Unfortunately The Journal.ie is not very good at reporting the full story. You’ll have to go to other news outlets to get that information but to answer your question yes it did include childcare, welfare transport ect

I don’t think it’s so black-and-white. I’m absolutely convinced that in some cases, social welfare payments ( including subsidies and allowances ) are too high. But that’s not a basis for blanket reductions, rather it’s grounds for a reform of the allocation procedure for allowances. Wages are not too low in Ireland, they’re higher than the their equivalents in most other EZ countries. The cost of living may be too high in Ireland.

I agree Nikolas, it certainly isn’t.
I think the cost of living is way too high in Ireland.
My wife and I calculated once we need a minimum family income of 4500 a month to fulfil our basic needs and about 5500 or more to have a comfortable life. When you look at other countries as the Netherlands or France 4500 would be very generous as in general things are a lot cheaper.

Not the attitude to have man

Not the attitude we might be WANTED to have, true enough, but Mark is right about the cost of living, it’s very high. That fact alone means there’s little reward for the low paid or no paid. People need to earn a sufficient margin above mere subsistence to be able to spend and boost the economy. Either that, or look to another economic model to replace capitalism.

they’ve a friend of a friend who said that eating raw onions cures cancer. Anecdotal evidence, received wisdom and pseudo-science eventually lead to people drilling holes in their heads to let the bad feelings out, and a doctor of economics is far more likely to be correct then someone who has a random wavelength after scanning the financial pages. Just because you don’t like what someone says, that doesn’t mean it’s incorrect. Please remember also that this was following on from an incident at the ESRI a staff member was let go because of “personal differences and improper research procedures. The original working paper was proven to be flawed and its results inaccurate.

@Nikolas Koehler, do you have a blog or anything? I’m always very impressed with your level headed comments and will always read and agree with them

@Nikolas, do you have a blog or anything? I’m always very impressed with your level headed comments and will always read and agree with them

@ Cholly – thank you very much. No, I don’t have a blog. I only started commenting here because a few months ago my son have me a tablet-computer for my birthday. It’s very addictive. I used to be amazed at all the comments here. Where do people find the time? But now I’m doing the same, checking in throughout the day. The onscreen keyboard drives me to distraction though, that’s my excuse for all the typing mistakes.

The initial document was not a report, it was a working paper which was released to have it’s methodology, not it’s results challenged. The working paper’s was found to be flawed, the data on which it was based was shown to be out of date and incomplete, and so the initial results were proven to be invalid. The working paper was brought to the public’s attention by a disgruntled ex-staff member who wanted to create difficulties for the ESRI. The political manipulation angle makes for a good story but, at least in this case, simply isn’t true.

now, now, Nikolas, some fact checking would suit you

94 per cent of workers better off employed than on the dole, says ERSI???

but well all know 98% of statistics we read from the news is bullshit

Hello Richard, good to hear from you. I’m quite aware of the facts of your unofficial invitation to leave the ESRI, and, while this is by no means the correct forum for hacking that issue out once again, it is fair to say that your working paper was not the reason for the above invitation, it was rather a minor element made major purely through an escalation in the tensions surrounding that time. But even you have to acknowledge the differences between a working paper and a published report, and also that these differences are not usually clear in the general media. You had an axe to grind, and you ground it, but please don’t further blur the differences between symptom and cause.

Nikolas:
I assume that “Nikolas Koehler” is a pseudonym.

You claim to be privy to information that is confidential under Irish law. That is bluff. You’re wrong.

@ Richard – of course Nikolas Koehler is an alias. Quite simply, I would have knowledge about the case if I had been involved in the case. But I’m not going into details here because, firstly, this not not the proper forum for such details, and secondly, I have no proof that you really are Richard Tol. That’s the nature of the Internet. If you would like to discuss this in via more private and secure means, then I would be very happy to do so.

The ESRI are nothing do do with the Government. They are not civil servants. A better way of describing them is as a university without any students and with only an economics and sociology department. They were not even set up by the Government if the time. They were founded and initially funded by an American business magnate.

@ Will – but I’d imagine that you haven’t actually read the report, only a general news article about the report. What what are you criticising as amateur and vague?