The Dole and The Big Money

My sister's living the dream.

She's hardly left gone outside in the past week. Been fairly drunk most of that. And probably hasn't spent more than a tenner. So given that she gets just under 200 a week from the government for going to college, she's making a pretty hefty profit. The thing is; sometimes I can't help but feel a twang of jealousy. And it kills me. 

It's illogical. If you consider that I pay almost exactly her income in tax each week, it's easy to jump to the conclusion that I'm paying for her to laze around. But it's not accurate at all. In fact, if I understand the tax system correctly, none of my main tax should go towards that: it's my PRSI (much much smaller) - but please correct me if I'm wrong.  Only messing - I looked it up already. I'm sure they need tonnes from the main budget too, though. And I get well enough money after tax; why should I even care?

But it's not her that annoys me. She's just close to home.. It's this constant complaining all around the country. It's like a virus, and I swear the longer I stay working the more I catch it. I'm pretty hippyish; I plan on living on donations while travelling in a campervan for a few years for God's sake. I think if everyone just pretended we weren't all struggling financially for a few weeks we...wouldn't be. Like Scroobius Pip says:

How hard is it to decide to be in a good mood,
And then just be in a good mood?

Here's a letter I wrote to the Irish times a few weeks ago. I dunno if they ever published it..you should probably buy the paper you're writing to. 

Dear Editor,

We’re all economists now. From bailing out the banks to burning the bondholders to austerity plans. Barbers and taxi drivers are a perfect metric of a country’s current interests, and it’s very difficult to get home while hammered on a Saturday night without joining a chorus of how much we all hate the IMF. Or foreign taxi drivers.

But the thing is, who’s really to blame? Too easy to pigeonhole the bankers into a little box of begrudgery and keep them there indefinitely. We never really liked them anyway. Huge salaries, huge bonuses, nice suits. What’s not to hate? And the banks. They gave us too much money. Joe Soap got millions to become a property developer. Things got rough, and it turned out Joe Soap didn’t know his FTSE from his horoscope (Aries) and ended up broke. No-one seems to mind that Joe didn’t in fact have any education or experience in property trading, nor did anyone listen to the daily radio disclaimer “Investments may rise as well as fall”. No, it’s the bank’s fault you gambled all of your money away. You poor thing.

Now jobs. Ireland has jobs. If you can’t get a job in Ireland, you’re either not good enough at your job, or there are no jobs in your field at the moment. This gives you two options. Get better at your job, or leave the country. This is not a new situation, nor is it necessarily that bad. It’s happened many many times in our past and has always worked out pretty well. Now it’s much cheaper, easier and profitable to emigrate than on previous occasions. And so what if you have a family here? Move them. Or pick option one.

If you want more money, get more money. If you don’t have a job, get a job. Or go on the dole - I don’t mind. Just stop ranting to Joe Duffy about it.

Best,

David

But I must admit - it was pretty hard leaving to work this morning knowing my sister was watching King of The Hill in her kitchen. And come on, all I've done since coming in is write this blog. Sometimes even I don't make sense.