Middle class people deciding to go on the dole ?

Big Gerry wrote: »

We hear alot about the "squeezed middle" who get nothing off the government and have to pay for everything.

I wonder are there any middle class people who just packed in their jobs and went on the dole because they didn't think it was worth commuting 4 hours a day to pay off a 30 year mortgage and paying massive child care bills when they could just go on the dole and get a free house free medical card and have more disposable income than if they were working.

No, they don't have the guts

Seriously, there are other ways around that: working from home sorted me out and I know people who dorpped down to part time because they didn't need the extra income,

The problem is that you need to never work. You still owe the outstanding mortgage even if you quit work, you only qualify for help with the interest when you're in arrears, you don't qualify for social welfare if you voluntarily leave work etc.

It's very hard to leave the rat race once you're in it.

Big Gerry wrote: »

We hear alot about the "squeezed middle" who get nothing off the government and have to pay for everything.

I wonder are there any middle class people who just packed in their jobs and went on the dole because they didn't think it was worth commuting 4 hours a day to pay off a 30 year mortgage and paying massive child care bills when they could just go on the dole and get a free house free medical card and have more disposable income than if they were working.

No. People don't do that because it's a **** life.

You seriously seem to have a complete lack of understanding of the housing system if you think you can just rock up, hand the keys back on your mortgaged home and ask for a council house.

Big Gerry wrote: »

There is not really a big drop if someone is paying a massive mortgage and huge child care bills they may have no money left at the end of the week once all the bills are paid.

Yes but at the end of the day the Mortgage will be paid, the kids will be reared and there will be money to spend then.

Big Gerry wrote: »

There is not really a big drop if someone is paying a massive mortgage and huge child care bills they may have no money left at the end of the week once all the bills are paid.

If they are not taking a big drop then they are not middle class as having very low disposable income, comparable to social welfare, would put them firmly in the working class category.

Deleted User wrote: »

A study was done in 2012 that suggested 44% of Irish families would be better off on the dole.

https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/esri-refuses-to-reveal-data-that-contradicts-tols-claims-26864918.html

What income would you class as "middle class"? A family on €40 - €50k renting wouldn't experience a huge drop on the dole.

Disposable income, like I said.

On JSA you have to be actively seeking work to qualify and will be sanctioned if you don’t.

There’s always going to be an unemployment rate of <4% made up of undesirable characters with numerous past and pending convictions who will never be employed to pick up dog shïte on the street, never mind the likes of Tesco. Some of these people would have some mild form of learning difficulty that would exclude them from qualifying for the likes of Disability Allowance too.

If you want to pack it all in and sponge off the state, get bumped up the housing lists and bought off by the budget every year, then lone parent is the payment you go on by having a child every 7 years.

KiKi III wrote: »

40-50k is two low wage jobs or one slightly above wage. As a household income, I wouldn’t describe it as middle class.

If it is, it’s on the lower end of it.

There is no denying that. If a single person was on 50k with no high rent or mortgage to pay then they would be middle class earner IMO.
And the drop in income to become a sponger would not be something they would willingly do.

machaseh wrote: »

Being a foreign expat here in Ireland, what would happen if I would quit my job?

I wouldn't be getting on the dole anytime soon here. Most likely I would be evicted from my home and would end up in the streets shooting up dope. No thanks.

I could, of course, return to the Netherlands and live on the dole there. But even there it would take many months of bureaucratic nightmares to finally get on the dole, and then once I am on it I would be obligated to apply for an X amount of jobs every month + do community service labour such as cleaning up parks and the like.

Shooting up dope? You're from the Netherlands?

Big Gerry wrote: »

Someone could just declare themselves bankrupt or change their name and let the bank whistle for the mortgage payments.

If someone is on the dole there is nothing the bank can take from them.

They can get a court order to take a percentage of benefits, you' ll also lose any assets you might have. Same commitments ,less money to meet them.

As soon as the mortgage is paid off I am out of here. And that will be long before I hit 68 no matter what Leo and Pascal want.

A friend of mine packed in her job , hubby still works though.
Got sick of sitting on the m50 panicking about getting back to the creche in time, not seeing kids etc.
She minds a neighbours 2 kids , 1 is in school n collects him etc. Gets a few quid on the side from that. Nearly no difference in income, when factoring in creche, no tolls, less diesel n wear n tear.
Intends to go back at something in a few years.

monty_python wrote: »

For the past 7 years I have worked 8 months per year and willfully took 4 months off.
Some years I take the dole. Some years I go traveling.
Why should I spend my whole life working when I don't need to?? Fook that .
Bunch of slaves

Teacher?

The main problem for the middle class in Dublin is simply that too many people are trying to work in too small an area. What the f does that have to do with people being on the dole?

There isn't enough housing in greater Dublin and we lack an adequate transport infrastructure to bring people from surrounding counties where housing is reasonably affordable into the city. There are only three possible solutions to this:

• Increase the density of housing in Dublin city. This would require compulsory purchase orders on low rise parts of the inner city. Would also require the planning laws to be changed to allow high rise apartment buildings in the city centre. No government has had the balls to do either of these.
  
• Build a proper grown-up transport system e.g. an actual subway for city proper and light rail network reaching out into the surrounding counties. This should have been done long ago but is again something the parties don't seem to have the nerve to do as it is expensive in the short term and would also require compulsory purchase orders in order to build it out.
  
• Massively decentralize both private and public employment. This has been tried using various carrot and stick approaches, both with the civil service and with grants etc. to private industry to encourage relocation to other parts of the country. It largely hasn't worked, or hasn't worked to a sufficient degree. Of all possible solutions it is the least likely to succeed as it requires both individuals and companies to co-operate, something that is almost impossible to force them to do.

The logical solution is to expand the city outwards and upwards, build better transport links (not just another Luas branch line or other half arsed childish nonsense) and then do all of the things that other cities do to reduce congestion in city centers (e.g. congestion charges, having a subway for internal movement, etc.).

All of this is expensive. All of it requires a certain amount of short-term sacrifice both by the tax payer and by people who will be affected by construction etc. Certain areas would basically have to be bulldozed in order to do it - the sort of thing that cities like Paris and New York went through in the 19th and 20th centuries in order to modernize.

The problem is that with planning and infrastructure projects like this we only seem to think in the short term and are massively unambitious. We could have built a subway during the boom but nobody had the balls or foresight to push it through. I don't know if anyone else here has noticed but we live in a ridiculously wet climate. Having people standing around at bus stops and Luas stops is moronic. Dart stations aren't much better. Hence everyone wants to sit in their car to get to their job.

The commuter situation in Dublin is simply down to a childish refusal on the part of populace to support these measures and cowardice on the part of various governments to push them through. We're just reaping what we've sown.

Trying to blame people on the dole (!) for the craptastic situation of middle class commuters in Dublin who are squeezed between ridiculously high housing costs versus insane commuter journeys is a perfect example of scapegoating. If the dole and housing allowances were eradicated tomorrow it would do zilch to solve this problem.