Minimum Wage - How can you survive ?

Springboard is fantastic, I have used it in the past, but it's not a panacea to unskilled work. Distance learning can be tough, the range of courses is limited and very STEM centered and there is no financial support for equipment.

I'm less familiar with SOLAS, more familiar with FAS, until it was shut down after that expenses scandal, the same scandal that our taoiseach at the time, Brian Cowen, tried to play down and defend.

Yeah the choices are to either pay them through their employer or pay them through tax (housing benefit and so on).

The raw supply and demand means that people are paid a wage that means they can't afford to live. So we top up their wages with tax money packaged into benefits. That way we get services for cheaper and pay more in tax. It's a zero sum game. It's just a matter of who pays the workers, the people who use the services or the general taxpayer.

Getting confused now. You quoted another post, but then dissected my post. but anyway:

Em, yeah. 30 years is the 90's, 00's and the 10's. So, to compare the last 30 years, you would compare that to the previous decades.

I'm glad we agree. But now am confused as to why you wrote a huge post just to disagree with that statement.

Em, yes you did ->

...and that is basically the context for the rest of your post.

Em, meat is superior and far cheaper relative to the 80's. Seriously, just talk to a farmer for 30 seconds if you aren't actually aware of this. Or ask an elderly person how often they had steak prior to the 90's.

Ireland still went through the industrial era (and unfortunately, stayed in it far longer than most other countries). Yes, it was predominantly agrarian, but it was industrial era agrarian. The industrial era is more than just large factories in cities. We had small factories and mills etc in pretty much every town. We had extensive canals and rivers passing through pretty much every town for shipping the goods to and from the mills/small factories to the ports (mainly for export to GB). And that is basically the design of the country still to this day unfortunately.

Because your post went on for so long about how some of our towns are in decline and I tried to explain the reason to you.

You really didn't read my post did you. How you could possibly come up with that interpretation is beyond words.

Yes (in so far as high-paying jobs are concerned), cities in the modern era have become the centre for modern jobs. Over the past century, as companies more and more require employees with a wider range of highly specialised skills, they can only base themselves in places where there is sufficient population to provide the necessary skilled people. The bigger, and more dense, a population centre is, the more suitable it is for high-skilled employers.

Apologies, I'm not sure what I missed. There were 6 paragraphs in your post. The 1st talked about how things have gotten worse for some people over the last 30 years and talked about towns as example. The 2nd paragraph was also about how towns are not faring well in the modern economy. And the last 4 paragraphs were about how the current economy is shaky and there may be issues in the future (which I partially agree with, but as it was going really off topic, and is extremely complex, thought it would be better keep for another thread).

You're right, it's not always simple. But most of the time it can be.

You will always find edge cases to disprove a point.

And plenty, like myself, who went to college and graduated only to find out my field isn't hiring. I absolutely hate hearing people trotting out this line about low paid jobs being for teenagers. It's a very out of touch post coming from a Ben Shapiro like worldview. It must be great to be so comfortable and smugly look down on others because everything worked out for you. Go to the small towns in Ireland and there are few jobs paying anything above min wage (few jobs full stop) because all that's in the towns are pubs, bookies, an aldi a lidl and another supermarket, hairdressers, opticians, takeaways and hotels. To those living in these towns they think a job in a pharma factory is the holy grail.

Where I work the pay is barely above min wage and no one working there is under 25, several of us in their 30s and 40s. And there are plenty others in the town same age asking me all the time any jobs going.

There's a lot of society that is struggling fringe cases.

Often people aren't aware of it because they've not had personal experience of it.

..and single, where no one gets sick, or injured. Perfect home life etc.

We need to support those less fortunate.

The wage rate in Aldi and Lidl is well beyond minimum wage. And that's for a customer assistant job.

Turn the TV off, do some study and get into management, and it gets a lot better.

People work in minimum wage employment for different reasons. How they do so depends upon their individual circumstances. Obviously the anecdotes you use in your post paint a terrible picture, but the overall picture of employees on minimum wage is nothing so dystopian -

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/just-11-4-of-minimum-wage-workers-in-ireland-at-risk-of-poverty-1.4531473

People who are earning minimum wage are earning their ‘fair share of the pie’, as are people who are working in employment where they earn more than minimum wage. It would simply be wrong to suggest that employment which requires unskilled labour should carry the equivalent value of employment which requires skilled labour, when they are fundamentally different demands from the outset.

People struggling to live in poverty is an entirely different question from the idea of whether or not people can survive working in minimum wage employment.

I know a couple of guys who choose not to work.

They have done the sums, too much to lose with dole, medical card, HAP.

Its a **** attitude to have.

Depends what the minimum wage job is, working in a meat factory for 10.50 is a lot harder than Mcdonalds or Supermacs.

When I worked minimum wage jobs I did lots of overtime and yes you would be tired but was still pulling a decent livable wage at the end of the week.

My boss knows how to play the system, at interviews always ask do you have kids? yes, is your wife working?, no,( if the answer is no, and yes to these questions then you wont be offered the job), then offers job at minimum wage, obviously interviewee says cant work for that wage i have rent, wife and kids to support, boss replies have you heard of WFP?, this will push up your wage ,he actually works the amount out for them at interview, so pays a low wage gets government to pay rest ,win,win.