Ireland to America

Fr Tod Umptious

Heebie wrote: »

It needs to be now, because not having health insurance is a civil infraction (tort) punishable by very large fines that accrue each *day* you don't have health insurance.

As someone who was born a dual US/Irish citizen, with the ability to freely travel and live in either the US or the EU... here I am in Ireland.

In the US, as a person with a college degree, and 20+ years experience in my field already, I couldn't get a job that would keep a roof over my head and keep me fed. The company I worked for "provided me access to" the company's health insurance plan, the normal way of doing it for companies, where I got the company's discounted rate, but I paid the premiums out of my earnings. There was no help from the company in that regard. (Remember that I said this is normal)
I wasn't living in the deep South or anything. I was in an fairly affluent area, where most people are well-educated.
Another serious deficiency was the lack of any access to a pension, and no financial ability to save for retirement. (My "life savings" was effectively about $1,500. There is a social retirement payment in the US, but it is tiny, monthly it provides about the same as social welfare payments here do in a week and a half.)

I moved to Ireland in 2006, found a job in my field that paid me a wage that allowed me to start putting some retirement money away on top of being able to house, feed, and clothe myself, and provide me with private health insurance and access to private hospitals, with the public system to fall back on the small period I was out of work due to a redundancy. (In the US I wouldn't have received any redundancy payout, either)

I'm certainly not looking to go back to the US with Dump in charge.
Someone above cited help wanted posters all over, but didn't bother to mention that it's because companies are moving all their full-time employees to part-time, so there are twice as many jobs with half as many hours pay. Companies are making these moves specifically to avoid having to give those employees any benefits.
Having twice as many jobs available is irrelevant if you need to have 3-4 of them to get by on at minimum wage of $7.35/hour and only 15 hours/week per job.

Anyone looking to emigrate to the US is just a chump.

Well that certainly sounds tough.

But my own experience was completely different.
Worked in the US for 6 years in the late 90s early 200s.
Worked in IT, got a great wage, had 401k (pension) and good healthcare plan.
I came home but know many others like me that stayed and are doing great.
I found the cost of living really high in Ireland when I came back.

But the point I was making was that America is more attractive to Irish people than the EU.

If you're young and no commitments, and are not to bothered about the legalities of it all (and many aren't), then you could head over to the US and find yourself work in construction or hospitality making good money much easier than you could do so in the likes of Spain or Germany.
Because straight away there is no language or cultural difference.

CelticRambler

Fr Tod Umptious wrote: »

you could head over to the US and find yourself work in construction or hospitality making good money much easier than you could do so in the likes of Spain or Germany.
Because straight away there is no language or cultural difference.

That assumes that your only reason for emigrating is to make a shed load of money. Some of us think that "language and cultural difference" is actually worth a heck of a lot more than a fistful of dollars.

HDMI

Heebie wrote: »

It needs to be now, because not having health insurance is a civil infraction (tort) punishable by very large fines that accrue each *day* you don't have health insurance.
.

The Obama penalty for not having health insurance was cancelled for the year 2019. The adult tax penalty for 2018 was $695 and $347 for a child or 2% of your yearly income depending on which was more.