Budget 2016

Saw Renua talking about a flat tax, and how it'd be more fair... how about scrapping income tax? Surely that'd be the most fair way of doing things, considering it's extortion through and through (that'll never happen though...)

davmol wrote: »

Yes- I am a begrudger.

What really gets my back up is that those on social welfare get a Bonus.Why cant all the taxpayers who have actually got up every day ,gone to work rain hail or shine,get a bonus.

So,basically ,sit on your hole and we will award you.

Grant it,there are valid reason or those who are genuinely on the dole but just walk thru town and you will see all types of 'people' who have no intention on working.We also have ALOT of foreigners who will leech the system dry and also have no intention working.

Ireland is slowly becoming a welfare state and people are being discouraged from working.We should follow Cameron and the UK with encouraging people to work by reducing welfare payments and increasing tax credits for workers.

I would worry a lot more about what they get up to them people rather than worrying about a few of them on the dole.

Ireland is not becoming a welfare state in the UK you get more money though indirect means Ireland they give you the money and you have to budget it. If it's so great give your job to someone unemployed and live off their €188 pw.

davmol wrote: »

188 can go a long way when you have rent supplement,back to school clothing and footwear allowance and medical card.

And to top it off you get a little bonus for nothing.

There are Many jobs out there and people just consider themselves too good for them so remain jobless by choice.
Just go on any employment sites and you will see the huge number of vacancies.
People should get the dole for a specified time and then be forced to take a job rather than sponge off the taxpayer.

And if you are single or have no kids ? This is the trap many Anti dole people fall into assuming everyone get everything. All based on anecdotal evidence. Everything is means tested. Many jobs you say who's not taking them ? You mean the ones advertised so a company can avail of free schemes as they have to be looking for employees to avail of them.

Geuze wrote: »

As half the population are recipients/beneficiaries of welfare (excl. CB), then I would argue that we have a massive welfare state.

That's a government choice it should be means tested like everything else. One item cannot be used to portray something that is clearly not true.

What about a fat tax they cost the health system more than cigarettes.

I'll vote for anyone who'll:

• Take a normal salary, package and pension, so they're living the same life as those they represent
• Bring sanity and decent equality to the salaries and pensions of the public service
• Fix the health service, in fact, institute a proper National Health service
• Keep house prices from ballooning, so that wages don't have to rise to follow them, with bad effects on the economy
• Refuse to have 'special advisers' and instead use the expertise of the civil service, as was the norm until recent madness
• Control rent so that people can pay their rent and still have enough to live well and save
• Set up a fair and equitable system that will represent the rights of both landlords and tenants
• Build excellent social housing, and rent it at a fair rate, and mix it with other housing so that it doesn't become a ghetto or a tribal group
• Help people back to work, rather than punishing them for not being able to find work
• Build a system of fair-priced State creches that are genuinely on the Scandinavian model - where children get kind and intelligent care - so that parents can work without worry or beggary
• Get rid of national embarrassments like the Dáil bars and garda-chauffeur-driven cars
• Fix the transport system so that we have clean, efficient, regular, punctual and reasonably priced public transport, a superb network of wide cycle paths separated from cars, and fair-priced, preferably offstreet parking (with no parking fees for patients, staff or visitors in hospitals or at park-and-ride facilities)
• Return community gardaí to communities

Avatar MIA wrote: »

You might want to think just a little bit further.

For example, how about all the days missed from work because of people's ill health, what's the cost of that? And that just took 10 seconds of extra thinking.

The cost of ill health from smoking just isn't what the government pay for treating smoking related illnesses.

However, the article you reference backs up the general gist, the money collected in smoking taxes goes back into paying the costs of smoking.

Thanks for the 10 seconds of your time.

You were going along grand till the smarmy bit at the end.

Give yourself a pat on the back there.

With smoking, the cost resounds into the next generation. Many Irish people are asthmatic or bronchitic or worse as a result of growing up in a family of smokers - of course, in the old days people didn't know they were harming their children, but they do now!

I'm old enough to remember the week the British Smokers' Study was published, in 1951:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Doctors_Study

I'd been to the doctor's the week before, and as usual you had to cut your way through the haze of smoke in his office to his desk with its butt-piled ashtray.

The week after the study came out, the smoke was gone, the ashtray was gone, the butts were gone. Overnight, virtually every doctor in Britain and Ireland became a non-smoker. The evidence was just too horrifyingly clear.

Life expectancy in Ireland has increased by a stunning 15 years since 1950, principally due to reductions in smoking.