The Unpopular Opinion Thread

Lets look at the fahcts a la benitez. About ten years ago Ireland had its lower ever rate of unemployment, roughly 3.6% of the potential workforce. This is the best place to look to try and get a fairly accurate idea of the numbers of people who choose to receive welfare instead of working as it was when the job market was at its healthiest. The rate of long term unemployment (12 months or more) during this perioid was 1.2%. This is obviously what we have to look at if we want to asses the impact of 'scroungers' on the state. So of this 1.2% we obviously still had people who were genuinely unable to find full time employment; there were parts of rural ireland or large working class areas where prospects remained poor even during the height of the boom. 

A large percentage of the live register consists of people in part time or casual employment who receive a small income which is in essence 'topped up' by the state. I myself was in this position for about 18months or so; working in a job on a zero hour contract, constantly being promised full time hours but rarely receiving them. It's unfair to label all of these people scroungers, I personally consider myself hard working and would take offence at being labeled a sponge due to work circumstances beyond my control.

There are also fairly large numbers of people who find themselves unable to hold down a job due to an underlaying or undiagnosed medical condition, often related to mental illness. I've known at least two people myself who were constantly out of work during the boom and were later diagnosed with serious and debilitating mental illnesses. I also know a girl who was similarly unable to work due to chronic back pain but it took a couple of years for her to be certified as medically unable to work in full time employment. People in these situations are still labeled as part of that 1.2% of long term unemployed, and I imagine their situations are fairly common. Again; not scroungers. 

There is also the case of people who don't work for practical reasons e.g. caring for a loved one who for any number of reasons are technically inelligable for carers assistance and thus remain on the live register as full time unemployed. Hard to asses numbers here but they definitely exist, even in tiny numbers.

Finally we have the situation of young people in their late teens or early twenties who drift about for a bit and maybe only work part time while they figure out what they want to do with their life/f**k about in a band/as an artist before copping on and joining the world of full time wage work. Also lumped in with this young people who lack the confidence to go out working straight away and take a year or so to mature. Maybe not model citizens they are hardly destroying civilisation. 

So after all of those exceptions, and others that I havn't thought of, we are left with the tiny percentage of people who choose not to work despite being fully capable in a thriving jobs market (which we have not had in this country for nearly a decade). The total numbers of these people is so small that the economic strain they put on the economy is more or less statistically negligible (someone about said 'bleeding the state dry'!!), particularly when its gauged alongside the impact of the tens of billions of euros of private banking debts that the state regretfully took on. 

I don't blame people entirely for holding such ignorant views though when the media is constantly peddling rubbish about the scourge of 'scroungers' despite the real lack of evidence that they are anything more than a rare anomaly, and we even have 'leftist' politicians like Joan Burton blaming this mythical figure for the state of the countries finances.  

Hah yeah prolly ranting a bit there, just trying to point out that theres little evidence of welfare scroungers having a major impact on the countries finances, something i've seen alleged a fair bit on these forums!