Doling out the blame

We seem to hear a lot lately about how terrible all of these people on the dole are. Lazy, not wanting to get a job, spending all of their dole millions on booze and fags like a low-budget Patsy Stone, while decent honest hardworking people pay tax to support them. Never done a day's work in their lives! Why aren't they required to work for their ridiculously vast dole payments, mad people who write into the papers ask!

There's just one problem. It's complete nonsense.

The way the dole works in Ireland is as follows. There are two things generally called the dole; Job Seekers' Benefit and Job Seekers' Allowance. JSB is based on PRSI contributions, and is not means tested, while JSA is not, and is means tested. Yes, PRSI. That PRSI, the one that appears on your payslip. No, it's not just giving money to the government for fun, it's actually for something!

So, in 2006, before the Great Depcession, the unemployment rate in Ireland was about 4%. That's really about as low as is practically possible for unemployment to be. It is now about 15%. So, at least 11% of the working population is (a) unemployed and (b) was working before the economic problems. Is it really sensible to assume that these people are turning down jobs (minimum 346 euro per week) for full time employment, so that they can continue the high life on the dole (max 196 euro per week)? The whole thing is absurd.

And then there's the idea of requiring people on the dole to do some sort of work in exchange for their payment. This is one of these ideas which sounds brilliant if you either don't bother thinking about it at all, or are simply extremely stupid. Once you start asking questions, though, cracks emerge. What would be the nature of this work? Would it be work which needs doing, or make-work? If it's work which needs doing, then, well, somebody is probably already being paid to do it, and replacing them with someone on the dole working below the minimum wage is, well, sort of counter-productive. If it's make-work, well, that's going to cost a lot to administer, which is also sort of counter-productive.

And what, precisely, is the upside supposed to be? As far as I can see, the only real function would be to make people who resent people claiming the dole feel better about themselves. And really, the country has more to be worrying about than massaging the egos of people who are clearly just looking for something to complain about.

And then there is the idea of reducing the dole, perhaps significantly. This is another one of these 'looks good on paper, but isn't' things; people on the dole generally spend all the money they receive, so in effect you would be reducing the amount spent in the consumer economy. It's generally more effective to reduce benefits to the middle class, who don't necessarily spend all that they receive.

Last, but by no means least, there's the fairness issue. Many, perhaps most, people on the dole are getting JSA, so they have, in fact, paid for it through PRSI, which is a form of compulsory social insurance. Now you might complain that you've paid PRSI all your life, and have never gotten the dole, and people do complain about this. But, erm, yes, that is what insurance is. If you claim on it, you often get more than you put in; otherwise there'd be little point in it in the first place. Few people, on hearing that somebody has died and his family has received life insurance, cry "Oh, well, I could do that, but I refuse to die due to my superior work ethic". In countries which use mandatory health insurance, few people resent the guy who gets sick and has to go to hospital. So why resent people who are in the (un)fortunate position of being able to collect on their income insurance?

I've really come to the conclusion that most of the people who object to the dole, or who advocate work-for-dole or whatever, do not understand, and do not care about, what the dole actually is or what effects their advocated solutions would have. They just want something to complain about.