"The Great Resignation"

Wanderer78

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118190885#Comment_118190885

unfortunately another part of these ideologies is to promote and encourage monopolisation of markets, which effectively crushes sme's out of existence, you can see our of government defaulting to this continually, its happening as we speak, for example, pandemic supports for employees and employers should have never been withdrawn, this seriously increases the likelihood of many sme's failing in the coming months, whereby most large businesses/corporations will just be fine.... and baring in mind, most are employed in the sme's sectors.

another element of these ideologies is balancing budgets and taxation, governments actually dont need to balance budgets, in fact by doing so, is actually dangerous, it means we become largely solely reliant on the private sector money supply, which is created by the fire sectors itself, i.e. the credit supply, as happened pre 08, which generally leads to a credit fueled bubble, and......

we may not in fact need to raise taxes post covid, but since we re locked into these ideologies, i.e. including balancing budgets, we more than likely will, we could just run a budget deficit indefinitely, making sure we service our debts, until fully serviced

MilkyToast

The way that the welfare system is set up means that it acts as a poverty trap, where people end up in a situation whereby if they start a minimum wage job they're earning the equivalent of cents per hour extra by the time you factor in things like rent supplement payments and medical cards on welfare, and the cost of travel etc. in work.

Most people don't realise that, having worked since leaving school, until they're put in a position where they're no longer employed or working. Covid will have made a lot more people realise it all of a sudden, so they're probably wondering whether 40 hours (excluding travel) of their time is worth scraps of extra cash. There is very little distance between being very poor and a tiny bit more than very poor. Plus in the age of the internet they wouldn't necessarily need to go to college or official courses to upskill. They could easily sit at home and use their newfound extra time to do online coding bootcamps or online marketing/advertising courses or whatever to put themselves in a position to apply for better paying jobs. Or they could be catching up on every Netflix series ever made. Whatever.

The downside of that is that as a society, we need the "grunt" workers to man the shops and fast food joints and clean and serve pints and so on. So we need to find a way to bridge the gap between welfare and work to make it worthwhile without the do-gooders getting up in arms about there being a marked difference between the standard of living of people on welfare and people in entry-level employment. It should pay to work.

My suggestion would be something like a tax system that starts negative (so that people who cannot work or are temporarily unemployed receive whatever the minimum standard of living income is) and adjusts for changing circumstances. So if you start a minimum wage job, your negative tax decreases but only by, say, half, so you're getting half of what you were getting when unemployed plus whatever your employer pays you. And since your income tax at that point is negative and your gross wage is your net, the minimum wage amount could be lowered to make businesses better able to afford to take on new/more workers. As/if your earnings increase, then your income tax would adjust so that eventually you enter positive income tax where you begin to pay into the system. But at every stage, working would afford a significantly better standard of living than not working.

Of course, the government would have to stop fleecing middle earners on tax and start taking more in corporate, and people who have a bee in their bonnet about "welfare scroungers" or whatever would have to wind their necks in... so that won't happen. But it could!

I'm nowhere near retirement but I've been actively changing things over the last two years. I want to get out early, as early as possible. I've family commitments that will always be there and need to be looked after but for now I'm minimizing my outgoings and maximizing my savings, investments and pensions payments. Reducing the taxes I pay as well to the minimum.

I'm lucky I'm in a high paying job in a booming I.T. industry but I've had enough and hope to be out in the next 5-10 years. This may or may not happen, let's see 😀

Wanderer78

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118190954#Comment_118190954

irish hedge fund manager eric lonergan is also watching this unfold, and is becoming increasingly concerned about it, he realises his sector is playing a critical role in this situation, its very worrying to see serious failures occurring, and we re not sure in how to approach it, but you can see that many keep defaulting to what theyve been told throughout their lives, i.e. blaming welfare classes and foreigners for these failures, when in fact, reality is far more complex than this....

PommieBast

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118190465#Comment_118190465

I do wonder if a large part of that is just busy-work by recruitment agencies. Even pre-Covid I wondered how many ads actually had jobs behind them..

Sleepy

I'm genuinely at a point where I despair for the future my kids will be trying to live in tbh. Between climate change and the massive inequality our rampantly capitalist system is causing I just don't see how ordinary people have any chance unless there's some kind of global socialist revolution.

cafflingwunts

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118190835#Comment_118190835

are you overqualified perhaps?? family member has a similar problem, was very high up in an Irish bank in her previous role and now can't even get an interview at a Spar because they all expect her to ask for mad money I think.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118191191#Comment_118191191

The world has always been a tough, rough and harsh place. The last 50-60 years have been an anomaly in my opinion. I'm certain our kids will be fine though, they will just have different challenges to overcome.

ancapailldorcha

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118191315#Comment_118191315

Sure hard work always paid off. Now, it just gets you subsistence. If you can work smart, that will improve things but not by nearly enough.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118191191#Comment_118191191

I think there are less dramatic solutions than global socialist revolution. I think a bit more tax on the top 1% will recoup a lot these days, given how the gap between the rich and rest has grown so big in recent years. Just 5% extra tax help the little people.

funkyzeit100

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118191191#Comment_118191191

A very large part of the problem is globalisation.

The fact of the matter is that very, very few people get to take advantage of it, while very, very many are paying the price of it. And no, being able to get on a plane is not globalisation.

The key to a sustainable future is that countries and their people take care of themselves first and foremost.

When you lump yourself in with global socialism, or global anything, Ireland is going to suffer simply because if it's size.

We're too small. We're too small to house anyone that wants to drop by from Mozambique, we're too small to have a health system that caters to an exploding population, we're too small to have a strong social welfare system for the rest of the world and so on and so forth.

We don't need a never-going-to-happen global revolution, we need a national-centric revolution. It isn't as dangerous as it sounds.

Turf out people that sallied in for free housing and benefits, turf out venture capitalists that have sewn up the housing sector into a nice retirement fund for Canadian teachers unions and Indian conglomerates, and generally get back to being a country of it's people and for it's people.

If you think a Chinese investor needs help to grow their wealth, you should go off to china. If you think new zealanders have a right to housing, go off to New Zealand and join a housing charity.

There's a lot that can be done effortlessly and relatively pain-free, you just have to overcome the profiteers and their fake narratives on globalisation.

Until that penny drops, be prepared to see this country, and others, circle the drain.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118191025#Comment_118191025

I agree, in part, although there is the problem of sustaining unprofitable businesses. The EU has a program in effect throughout Europe aimed at subsidizing businesses, even when they're unprofitable, just to keep people in work. Businesses fail. They're either badly operated, or their markets dry up. New businesses emerge to take advantage of open space in markets, or to create new markets.. and these are the businesses that tend to employ people in the long term. However, this desire to support companies that are failing is dangerous because they're not forced to adapt to changing market conditions. That should be the overall focus in building a resilient economic backbone. It's understandable to help those in hospitality due to covid, but only in the short term, due to the costs to the State, and the taxpayer.

But yes, there is far too much emphasis in Ireland on multinationals and big business.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118191198#Comment_118191198

Not really. I find that's just a convenient excuse people throw around. If someone is applying for a position where the salary range is listed, then they're already accepting what's being offered. Besides, I'm not trying to get a retail job, when all my experience/qualifications point at Finance, and/or management. In any case, I've heard of similar difficulties from friends who lost jobs when covid hit, and have since been looking for similar positions to what they had before.

Sleepy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118191451#Comment_118191451

Do you think a 5% tax on the wealth of the top 1% could be achieved by any means other than a revolution?

The sad reality is that there probably aren't enough resources on this planet to afford every adult in the world the 3 bed semi with the white picket fence, partner and two kids, holiday abroad once a year, new car every 5 years lifestyle that most aspire to. As the developing world advances and more are lifted out of poverty, the developed world will need to take the hit for their increased share of those resources (resources being a finite thing). You can be damn sure, however, that it won't be the top 1% whose share of global resources is increasing year-on-year who take that hit though. It'll be the ordinary working and middle classes (who the media owned by the 1% will tell to blame it on the unemployed and immigrants).

ancapailldorcha

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118191467#Comment_118191467

Globalisation isn't the problem, it just needs to be managed so that the benefits can be kept and shared around while the costs are mitigated. Many of these problems can be addressed with legislation and better law enforcement.

The country is not circling the drain by any metric I can see, nor is it anywhere close. It just needs to modernise and adapt just like the UK, the US and everywhere else.

Sleepy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118191467#Comment_118191467

I'd agree that globalisation is a large contributor to these issues but the "build a wall and ignore the plight of those on the other side of it" approach seems a solid recipe for WW3 to me... (particularly when those on the other side happen to be those who climate change is likely to hurt most driving them to migrate to the other side).

The western world has far more than our fair share of global resources (largely because our ancestors stole it through imperialist invasions of less industrialised societies). Isolationism might seem an appealing strategy for countries that are large enough to be a self-sustaining market (the USA) or rich enough (Switzerland) but De Valera's governments here proved quite conclusively that it's a road to ruin for a small island nation such as ourselves.

techman1

Well the reason why wages are not rising as much as house prices is because of immigration , we need to tackle irregular migration from outside the EU , the whole language school thing is a sham and a vehicle to get many people into the country to do low paid , under the counter work.

The language schools are profiteering because they know that people will pay the extortionate fees just to get a student visa to enter the country, then they can work legitimately for 20hrs a week and God knows how many hours illegally. There is virtually no checks on the illegal economy in Ireland, you never hear of immigration raids to check on work visas like what happens in other counties.

B2021M

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118191315#Comment_118191315

Yes good point. From around 1990 to the crash in 2008 was an unusually quiet and benign time in the Western world (with storm clouds gathering from 9/11 onwards to an extent)

funkyzeit100

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118191547#Comment_118191547

Globalisation is 100% the problem. If you have to redefine "globalisation", then it is no longer globalisation as we know it.

It has allowed cheap labour to ruin economies, to transfer wealth surreptitiously to ruin housing markets for indigenous populations, to escape taxation and overall become a playground for the wealthy to become obscenely wealthy off the backs of people that have no say. Globalisation is 100% the problem.

As for you saying you can't see how the country is circling the drain "by any metric", you're saying this in a country where the housing crisis is in full swing ruining people's futures, in a thread about "the great resignation", for starters.

And then you're using the comparison of the likes of the USA, where in this thread alone people are giving first hand experiences of how it's in dire straits, rampant homelessness, drug abuse, the origin of the great resignation and crime all going off the charts, how Irish people over there are looking to escape it.

Whatever ideas you have about a different form of globalisation, it is patently, evidently not globalisation as it exists right now.

funkyzeit100

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118191609#Comment_118191609

There is a very large conversation to be had on the use of resources, I've been involved in many of them.

The bottom line is that countries should operate on a voluntary, mutually beneficial form of cooperation, rather than forced, single-side benefiting integration. That is the future.

Regardless of solutions, there's be very few people who would say there aren't mounting problems with how things are done now. It is unsustainable and already it's falling apart at the seams.

If this is supposed to be "the good times" with a "great economy", then the next recession is going to be out of this world. And all the fingers need to be pointing in the right direction when it comes time to clean up this mess.

ancapailldorcha

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118191783#Comment_118191783

Feel free to provide evidence for your claims. As I said, I'm not seeing it. If economies were in ruins, there'd be throngs of homeless people everywhere, riots and so on. Instead, people are just getting on with it. In the UK, we have Brexit and it's the same, economic loss but it's not the end of the world.

We need global solutions to global problems. Snarling nativism and autarky have never once solved anything.

funkyzeit100

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118191638#Comment_118191638

It was a period of increasing prosperity, with the aid of money from the EU, and the hard work of Irish people, who made that come to fruition.

When certain clever so-and-so's realised that renting the essentials in life was far more profitable than selling luxuries, the housing market was doomed.

Following the last recession, when the country hadn't an arse in it's trousers thanks to housing, that's when these profiteers doubled down and bought up everything they could get their hands on. And the governments helped them to increase property costs as a way to balance the books of a ruined economy.

And, no surprise, the doubling down on stupidity has resulted in a powderkeg of an economy that has many people wondering if it's even worth working or trying anymore.

It's really not a complicated story.

B2021M

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118191895#Comment_118191895

I was talking about the Western world in general.

Viscount Aggro

ERE, FIRE

Ive done it myself, 3 months ago, quit in a rage with my manager.

I was already set up for it.

Never felt happier.

funkyzeit100

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118191857#Comment_118191857

I literally just wrote out my reasoning and I'm in no rush to demonstrate that the sky is blue to someone who refuses to believe it.

Again, you are saying you don't see any metric for a worsening life in this country and others, with a housing crisis (don't forget what "crisis" truly means, overuse has probably negated the reality) and things like "the great resignation" and the hospital systems and inflation just getting started and massive unemployment in demographics.

You don't see any of that, no? Grand. I'm not going to help you open your eyes to something so obvious, that's up to you.

The whole point of this thread is demonstrating that no, people are not "just getting on with it".

As for riots and rampant homelessness, it's on the way. Just as homelessness was some niche issue before the globalist-minded freaks got their hands on our housing, and is now an increasing problem, the riots will come too. There's no other conclusion to a society of spiralling inequality.

It's brutal as it is, nevermind the inevitable outcome.

I missed the part were you mentioned "snarling nativism". Why do you feel the need to attach negativity to people looking after themselves? Why does it have to be "snarling"?

Or is that just what you've been programmed to think, by the very people robbing you blind?

ancapailldorcha

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118191953#Comment_118191953

Repeating your rhetoric and telling me that it's obvious despite a clear lack of evidence doesn't make it any more true.

funkyzeit100

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118191969#Comment_118191969

It's better than sticking your head in the sand, that's for sure.

funkyzeit100

Just to add to the "snarling nativism" comment, it really goes to show how far the wool has been pulled over some eyes.

I wonder, when the Chinese buy the likes of fota island, do you think "those snarling nativist Chinese looking after their own interests!"

When an American multinational sets up shop here and imports most of it's labour from abroad, for the sole reason of taking advantage of our tax loopholes, do you think "those snarling nativist Americans looking after themselves!"

Or do you strictly reserve those thoughts for Irish people that aren't buying anything, but paying the price for it? "Look at these snarling nativist Irish in Ireland complaining about getting robbed!"

A curious phenomenon. I'd also say a very well cultivated phenomenon that has worked wonders, fooling people into defending their own demise so as someone else can profit.

seenitall

In my home country, we have a saying, translated, “The sated man does not believe the hungry man”. What it fails to add, in my opinion, is “but he will”.

funkyzeit100

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118192335#Comment_118192335

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118192335#Comment_118192335

I haven't heard that one, it's good.

However, the sated, in many cases, are often the hungry too. They just don't realise it, despite the growing frustrations that assail them.

dunno about this great resignation business? is it actually happening? are we being gaslit for some reason?

look at this:

https://www.reuters.com/business/more-chief-executives-join-great-resignation-2021-11-18/

not much behind the claims at higher levels.

Had a read of this, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Resignation#Causes seems to be mostly a thing in the USA