Posted on 07/22/2016 11:01:34 PM PDT by Olog-hai
Minister for Social Protection Leo Varadkar has thrown his political weight behind indexing welfare payments to inflation.
Speaking at MacGill Summer School in Donegal, the Dublin TD struck a socially aware tone throughout his speech — referring to the period of economic downturn as “Ireland’s lost decade” and bemoaning a stalling in living standards.
“Were it not for social welfare payments over half of the country would be at risk of poverty,” he said, before he emphasized the need to “protect the value of these payments now and into the future”.
“I believe this can best be done by indexing weekly social welfare payments to the cost of living or to average earnings, and enshrining that principle in legislation,” he said. …
(Excerpt) Read more at thejournal.ie ...
i would support raising our local welfare for the genuinely disabled (not the recipients with sore elbows)
then toss the fakers off the disability rolls to pay for the increased benefits for the truly disabled
just me.
i DO favor taxes to help the truly disabled.
NOT any fakers.
Obama signed up MANY new fakers quickly after he occupied our WH. There are MANY fakers on disability, and disab pays more than general relief too.
DT has gota clean up the welfare rolls.
they are a very expensive ripoff.
help the genuinely needy who can’t help themselves (this to me means the really disabled plus some short term assistance maybe for others, NOT LIFETIME DOLE!!!!!)NO!
let able bodied people work
for a living.
DT will get back a lot of the jobs Obama has destroyed so this will be practical, too
Will he push for the Irish workers to get raises indexed to inflation? My guess is he cares more about those without jobs than those who bother to get up in the morning and drag their butt to a job.
I started working again last year after I think 6, maybe 7 years on SSDI falling head injury.
What a ####ing nightmare. But besides maybe the first two months, I looked outwardly like there was nothing at all wrong with me. There was plenty wrong.
Still deal wth a lot of symptoms but work overnight close to home. Got lucky.
There are PLENTY of fakes on SSDI, believe me.
What I worry about are the brain injured soldiers who aren’t getting SSDI because their brain injuries dont show.
MRIs SUCK at picking up brain injuries at the callular level. DTI ones are better and PET scan is best as of now.
Hell, more than half of people in comas have normal looking brains.
Those are the guys i worry about. It’s an invisible illnes and they deserve to be believed.
I agree. I would always give the benefit of the doubt. I only want to kick the obvious fakers and folks with only minor problems who really can work off disability. As you note, there are plenty of them — this will save tons of money and then I would want some of that savings to raise benefits for those who really are in bad shape and need more help. I am For a good — and generous — disability program. ( I know it’s not kosher by pure conservative standards, but do be it. This is my one clear compromise or departure if you will). Anyway, I just want to make it honest.
There’s probably 50k soldiers who have TBI but negative MRI.
It KILLS me that doctors are saying they are faking it, which is what is happening.
But they CANT prove it.
How do you give the benefit of the doubt to maybe 100k soldiers?
I’m a big advocate of the TBI soldiers because many of them or worse of than me, and that’s a living nightmare.
One test i took that showed damage to cerebellum and brain stem was a visual test with goggles. It’s called a videonstagrophy (and I KNOW I spelled it wrong!).
It was backup to my MRI which showed thalamic injury.
But now doctors are trying to make it as acceptable as an MRI. It should be. It’s very accurate.
Being humane because that’s the whole idea of disability benefits to begin with. As you’ve pointed out, some conditions are more difficult for the doctors than others. I’m just saying to clean things up by removing the clear fakers and those with only minor ailments.
Were it not for social welfare payments over half of the country would not be at risk of poverty due to over taxation. Most of the other half would have gotten off their backsides and found employment.
Interesting. In Economics 101 (in the dark ages, when I was in school)
I was taught that inflation was defined as “too much money chasing too few goods.”
And the corrective for inflation was to REDUCE the money supply, which in turn would stabilize prices!
Welfare programs in fact cause prices to rise for everyone.
Suppliers (capitalists) naturally want to employ as many people as possible at the lowest acceptable wage, in order to place the most product on the market.
At the same time, the capitalist wants to get the highest price that people are willing to pay for their goods. Willing to pay=affordable. If the price is set too high, nobody buys, and the capitalist loses.
The wage earner who sells his labor on the free market naturally wants the opposite of all this. He wants the highest possible wage, in order to purchase the most goods at the lowest possible prices.
It is the tension between buyer and seller in a free market that regulates prices.
When the gubbermint taxes both capitalist and wage earner in order to redistribute free money to people who do not sell their labor, this is excess cash flooding the market, while at the same time, too few goods are being produced.
People who survive on free money don’t give a chit what the sticker price is, because they’re not having to work harder—or at all—to pay for the stuff. If the price gallops upward, no biggie! The gubbermint will simply increase the supply of free money!
Thus welfare payments fuel inflation.
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