I am convinced that Ireland is in Serious trouble

hfallada

6541 wrote: »

Looking at the responses here a good few are saying we are fine on the road, stop being so doom and gloom etc. I urge people to look around where they are living, a whole generation of people have left, the country is falling down around us. Open your eyes folks.

I think people would shocked if it was the first time it ever happened. But there was mass emigration in the 1950s and then again in the 1980s. The economy recovered in the 1990s and 2000s. Then most people that left returned with skills that they could have never gained in Ireland. Irish people ended up getting top jobs during the celtic tiger, due to skills learned aboard. Emigration can be an excellent thing. People learn skills they could never learn here. Irish people get more open minded when they live abroad.

With the economy at 2004/2005 living standards now. Which is still higher than the UK. Im sorry but no one is going to believe your BS that Ireland is a sinking ship. When have the best performing economy in the EU and our Government deficit is almost balanced

RecordStraight

Streetwalker wrote: »

Ya don't say :rolleyes:
Well funk me ya learn something every day.

Like I said I am talking about supposed educated people voting in the same shower of corrupt spineless tossbags we have in power here for the last 40+ years.

What is the alternative? Economic dunces like Sinn Fein who want to turn Ireland into a socialist paradise? Or outright lunatics like the Anti-Austerity Alliance who want to turn Ireland into East Germany in 1978?

Goat the dote

shamrock55 wrote: »

But dont you know we will have full employment by 2016 ( cos by then there will be nobody left)

I wondered how we'd get full employment.
There's always the lazy skangers who never worked a day in their lives, nor have any intention of

RecordStraight

Goat the dote wrote: »

I wondered how we'd get full employment.
There's always the lazy skangers who never worked a day in their lives, nor have any intention of

You just pretend that they don't exist. They are 'the most vulnerable', don't you know.

andrew

Just a little Samba wrote: »

Youth unemployment at 29%, one of the highest rates of graduate under employment in the EU.

#sureitsgrand

It's 21.6% now, it hasn't been that high since 2012

El_Duderino 09

The_Captain wrote: »

There's plenty of people your age with fourth level educations who are still struggling in crap jobs. There's people who haveve suffered more than they should and who still suffer.
But you have no sympathy for them because you did your time in bottom level jobs for a couple of years out of college? Everyone went through the same, you're just lucky that you don't consider yourself still in that position.

There's lots of people who aren't as lucky as you and still have to work their shítty jobs every day.

Well I spent almost 8 years since then fumbling around living hand to mouth, renting cold student digs, unable to afford any of the nicer things in life. Dealing with employers who's attitude was 'if you don't like it,ill have you replaced by the morning'.

I've been with my partner for a decade and we can't have children or invest in the future until we both have stable jobs.

So people who have full-time permanent jobs andhad their salary frozen don't need to cry poor mouth to me. I certainly don't need to take them seriously when they deny the increase of new jobs when they probably were never seriously looking for jobs because... They already have a job

Tony EH

chrysagon wrote: »

we are along way from recovery, despite the spin, i have friends of mine, most with degrees and barely get a response from their applications, but they keep trying to move forward, and to be fair, 2 of them have set up a community project in their village to do with tidy towns, and have made major strides,as they feel it increases community spirit and keeps their sanity whilst applying for jobs.
Its all well and good reading about positive news on the economy front, but till the good news reaches our actual doorstep, its only natural to be a bit sceptical.

And this is the salient issue. Even though the gombeens will try and tell you that everything's grand, the fact remains that, on the ground, the majority of news reaching peoples doors is negative.

With a lot of European economies finding themselves in trouble, it may look like Ireland is doing relatively ok (and just ok). But the reality remains different for the vast majority of people in the country.

RoryMac

6541 wrote: »

Looking at the responses here a good few are saying we are fine on the road, stop being so doom and gloom etc. I urge people to look around where they are living, a whole generation of people have left, the country is falling down around us. Open your eyes folks.

That may be true where you live but it's not for me, I live in a part of west Dublin where there is building work going on, houses & apartments being built, a pub has re-opened after being closed for almost 2 years, new shops openings, far more traffic on the commutes to work, restaurants doing great trade at reasonable prices etc etc

Far from doom & gloom

AudreyHepburn

Ah it's not so bad here OP. Of course there are some people who are struggling and some who just can't seem to find work etc but this idea that we are somehow on the verge of being a Third World country is over the top imo.

padd b1975

Just a little Samba wrote: »

Youth unemployment at 29%, one of the highest rates of graduate under employment in the EU.

#sureitsgrand

Have you any breakdown of what qualifications these unemployed graduates actually have?

A staggering amount of degree courses offered by Irish universities are actually less than worthless in the real world.

Of course that doesn't stop young and not so young signing up for them....

Four years down the line-bang!-they get hit by a strong dose of reality and it slowly dawns on them that the last four years have been a complete waste of someone else's money.

Then the whinging and negativity starts....

El_Duderino 09

Streetwalker wrote: »

Ya don't say :rolleyes:
Well funk me ya learn something every day.

Like I said I am talking about supposed educated people voting in the same shower of corrupt spineless tossbags we have in power here for the last 40+ years.

Who do you want though? The people blew the boom on BMWs and Garish McMansions.

What is the ideal state for the country? I think people are saying they want sustainable growth (which appears to be what we are heading for right now). But secretly they are pining for the next boom where we can throw economic reality out the window, buy a Beemer and blame the government if I goes wrong

RecordStraight

El_Duderino 09 wrote: »

Who do you want though? The people blew the boom on BMWs and Garish McMansions.

What is the ideal state for the country? I think people are saying they want sustainable growth (which appears to be what we are heading for right now). But secretly they are pining for the next boom where we can throw economic reality out the window, buy a Beemer and blame the government if I goes wrong

Buy a Beemer and a house with over-borrowed money, then say that the banks tricked you and demand the house for free.

TinCanMan

I see a lot of young fine gaelers on here banging their drums and before you ask I'm not affiliated to any party whether left or right. If you take off the rose tinted glasses then you can clearly see that this country is in serious trouble, with an increase in emigration, homelessness, household repossessions and more and more people being pushed below the poverty line. Perhaps if people looked outside of their own little bubble and thought about others then they might see this, rather than thinking "well I'm doing well, anyone who isn't is a sponger".

RecordStraight

TinCanMan wrote: »

I see a lot of young fine gaelers on here banging their drums and before you ask I'm not affiliated to any party whether left or right. If you take off the rose tinted glasses then you can clearly see that this country is in serious trouble, with an increase in emigration, homelessness, household repossessions and more and more people being pushed below the poverty line. Perhaps if people looked outside of their own little bubble and thought about others then they might see this, rather than thinking "well I'm doing well, anyone who isn't is a sponger".

You know that the rate of repossession in the UK is TEN TIMES higher than here PER CAPITA, and they didn't even have a crash?

Eugene Norman

RecordStraight wrote: »

Tell that to the kids in Bangladesh picking plastic bottles out of the river 14 hours a day. Is everybody entitled to some sort of dream job now? When did that ever exist? Does it exist anywhere in the world?

There will always be a lot more crappy jobs than nice ones. That's just life.

And there are billionaires. And other kind of people who selected their parents well.

I've noticed that the term "entitlement" is generally used by right wing yahoos about workers, but not anybody else.

Valetta

TinCanMan wrote: »

I see a lot of young fine gaelers on here banging their drums and before you ask I'm not affiliated to any party whether left or right. If you take off the rose tinted glasses then you can clearly see that this country is in serious trouble, with an increase in emigration, homelessness, household repossessions and more and more people being pushed below the poverty line. Perhaps if people looked outside of their own little bubble and thought about others then they might see this, rather than thinking "well I'm doing well, anyone who isn't is a sponger".

Emigration is decreasing.

TinCanMan

RecordStraight wrote: »

You know that the rate of repossession in the UK is TEN TIMES higher than here PER CAPITA, and they didn't even have a crash?

Why not create a thread for that so and ignore the problems that we have in this country.

RecordStraight

TinCanMan wrote: »

Why not create a thread for that so and ignore the problems that we have in this country.

Uh...you raised it buddy.

El_Duderino 09

RecordStraight wrote: »

Buy a Beemer and a house with over-borrowed money, then say that the banks tricked you and demand the house for free.

You forgot to mention how it's the government's fault

irishguitarlad

Valetta wrote: »

Emigration is decreasing.

Emigration is decreasing because there is no one left to emigrate

TinCanMan

RecordStraight wrote: »

Uh...you raised it buddy.

I didn't mention anything about the UK, so no I didn't raise it. I actually give a sh1t about this country and the people in it. I come from a middle class family with a good job and income and it sickens me to see what is happening here.

RecordStraight

Eugene Norman wrote: »

And there are billionaires. And other kind of people who selected their parents well.

So, under an alternate government, all our parents would be billionaires? Great! Which party is that?

Eugene Norman wrote: »

I've noticed that the term "entitlement" is generally used by right wing yahoos about workers, but not anybody else.

Actually, right-wing people typically give out about the entitlements of the non-workers - the people who have never worked and never intend to. Anybody can become unemployed. Only a small percentage of people make themselves unemployable.

chrysagon

I was out with a close friend a few weeks back, she works with a well known agency that tries to help and advise people who are struggling with personal money/debt issues etc.She told me she is as busy as she was 5 yrs ago, and fears the banks are stepping up their repossession orders, even when people are trying to renegotiate.
She told me id be surprised at the people in trouble, isnt just"layabouts" but respected people in the town who are putting on a brave face but behind it all are barely keeping head above water,

Unfortunately the crash and the remnants of it, have affected a wide spectrum of people, and will so for next few yrs.

TinCanMan

irishguitarlad wrote: »

Emigration is decreasing because there is no one left to emigrate

Exactly.

TinCanMan

chrysagon wrote: »

I was out with a close friend a few weeks back, she works with a well known agency that tries to help and advise people who are struggling with personal money/debt issues etc.She told me she is as busy as she was 5 yrs ago, and fears the banks are stepping up their repossession orders, even when people are trying to renegotiate.
She told me id be surprised at the people in trouble, isnt just"layabouts" but respected people in the town who are putting on a brave face but behind it all are barely keeping head above water,

Unfortunately the crash and the remnants of it, have affected a wide spectrum of people, and will so for next few yrs.

A very sensible and truthful post. You wont be popular on here.

The_Captain

El_Duderino 09 wrote: »

Well I spent almost 8 years since then fumbling around living hand to mouth, renting cold student digs, unable to afford any of the nicer things in life. Dealing with employers who's attitude was 'if you don't like it,ill have you replaced by the morning'.

I've been with my partner for a decade and we can't have children or invest in the future until we both have stable jobs.

So people who have full-time permanent jobs andhad their salary frozen don't need to cry poor mouth to me. I certainly don't need to take them seriously when they deny the increase of new jobs when they probably were never seriously looking for jobs because... They already have a job

So things are getting better and there's more jobs but neither you and your partner have stable jobs and can't afford children or to invest in the future?

I'm probably the same age as you (maybe slightly younger), college degree, masters. I put up with the same crap, fixed term contracts with no prospect of being kept on, being more qualified and significantly less paid than other employees there even only five years before me.

I'm very lucky that both my wife and I have stable jobs, but if we lost our jobs tomorrow we'd have nothing, and neither of us would walk into a job.
I'm not sitting here blithely unaware of the outside world happy with my permanent contract, I have friends and family who are struggling to find work. I'm looking to move up the ladder and it is absolutely bottlednecked with overqualified people looking for anything to keep them going

I'm not saying the economy isn't getting better, but if it is, it certainly hasn't worked its way down to medium and lower end wage workers.

El_Duderino 09

irishguitarlad wrote: »

Emigration is decreasing because there is no one left to emigrate

Does that mean it's actually still increasing or not?

Do people realise that even when we get to sustainable growth, there will still be unemployment, emigration, businesses will still go bust and people will still lose jobs at some level?

RecordStraight

TinCanMan wrote: »

Exactly.

Would you be interested in knowing the net migration numbers at all, to test your theory?

Or do we want to keep this a fact-free zone?

Phoebas

6541 wrote: »

I drove across the country at the weekend and it is shocking the state of some of the towns, street after street are lying derelict.

Last weekend!!
Have you been in a cryogenic sleep for the last 7 years?

Eugene Norman

hfallada wrote: »

I think people would shocked if it was the first time it ever happened. But there was mass emigration in the 1950s and then again in the 1980s. The economy recovered in the 1990s and 2000s. Then most people that left returned with skills that they could have never gained in Ireland. Irish people ended up getting top jobs during the celtic tiger, due to skills learned aboard. Emigration can be an excellent thing. People learn skills they could never learn here. Irish people get more open minded when they live abroad.

With the economy at 2004/2005 living standards now. Which is still higher than the UK. Im sorry but no one is going to believe your BS that Ireland is a sinking ship. When have the best performing economy in the EU and our Government deficit is almost balanced

Hmm, gosh we got that deficit almost sorted after 6 or 7 years huh? In the meantime debt has been pilling up.

Ireland isn't quite f*cked but it isn't in any sense of the world back on track.

Firstly we have vastly more debt than we used to have, meaning any shocks will destroy the country. We just can't afford another housing boom. But we are having one.

Secondly the deals we made have kicked some cans down the road, because the interest payments are backloaded. So they will grow as a percentage of our tax revenue over time. Our kids won't thank us. We won't be giving too many tax breaks either. High income, personal, water and house taxes are here to stay.

Thirdly we are unlikely to eat into the debt as we did in the 90's. Back then inflation and GDP growth were high enough to reduce the debt to GDP ratio every year. Despite the recent blip ( and we were in recession in 2013) we are not going to grow at 90's levels. If inflation takes off, then see point 4.

Fourthly - interest rates are low. We are in the unusual position of hoping that we grow while the rest of Europe doesn't. If Europe starts to grow and interest rates climb to anything like normal levels, then the tracker mortgage holders will be another round of defaults when their 600K 2 bedroom in Ballsbridge serviceable now at 1% a year will not be servicable at 3% plus.

That will add to the arrears we already have. Still 16% or so ( compare to the UK at 1%). We've decided to do nothing about that.

fifthly: we've started another housing boom, just to aggravate the issue when interest rates rise.

So good luck, but the good times are not going to roll, because if they start to roll for everybody else, then it's curtains for Ireland.

I don't think people realise how seismic an event 2008 was and -- even though we have saved the ship for now - how dangerous a position the ship is in. We're like sailors at sea who having patched up the ship with whatever materials were at hand, think the boat is as seaworthy as ever and sure they might as well make that dangerous crossing again.