Sabrina Dent: Freelance web designer, developer and internet marketer living in Cork, Ireland with one dog and a husband in no particular order.
The New Ireland: Rockin' the 80s
While following the story of Penelope Trunk, the career columnist who just got fired from Yahoo! Finance, I ran into some interesting concepts she’s been dishing out in the new book that will hopefully see her through this bout of unemployment:
Looking for happiness through financial success? Wondering what the magic number is? It’s $40,000. Really. So pick a job you are going to enjoy instead of one that makes a lot of money — just be sure your job will get you to that $40,000 mark.
In fact, this salary guideline is well established in research: the first $40,000 makes a big difference in a person’s level of happiness. Happiness is dependent on being able to meet basic needs for food, shelter, and clothing. After meeting those needs you have to turn to something other than consumerism, because additional money has negligible impact on how happy you are. Your level of happiness is instead largely dependent on your outlook.
I’m not sure what euro figure you’d have to adjust to for that benchmark, but at the current exchange rate, it’s less than €30,000 per year. Granted, the current USD value is more amusing than anything else at the moment, but it’s worth pointing out that the average Irish income is now about €35K. So in theory, most of us should be able to get off the consumerist bandwagon and just relax in our cozy slippers over our hot dinners inside our four walls; after all, we are rocking Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs like never before.
Except nothing could be further from the truth in Ireland today, where we’re chasing consumer goods and racking up consumer debt outside of mortgages at an unprecedented rate. The irony is that with our obsession to bring Ireland’s lifestyle up to date and acquire the most current Chanel bags, Jimmy Choo shoes, and Dualit Combi toasters, we are in fact indulging in an orgy of extended 80s flashback.
I’m exactly old enough to have watched the advent of the Yuppie hatch in it’s NYC birthplace. It was fairly revolting, even at the time; wretched excess, the worst kind of 80s crass, and really bad clothing, too. London managed the clothing a bit better, but the overboard wealth and attendant expenditure was just as bad.
Of course, the kind of money, social climbing and property acquisition that characterized the 80s wasn’t on the cards for most people in Ireland ; the economy was non-existent and unemployment was just too high. Luckily, those of us with a taste for nostalgia and shoulder pads have been able to watch the birth of the DubYup, live and in glossy Technicolor, complete with soaring housing costs and a totally passe obsession with cocaine.
Except of course we’re being really feckin’ Irish about it, because we refuse to stop having children the way we’re supposed to. For the true Yuppie experience, you need a majority of DINKs fueling expenditure – Dual Income, No Kids couples. Yet the Irish birth rate is the highest in Europe, with 15.3 births per 1,000 people against the EU average of just 10.5.
Please, people; kids are just so last decade.
Or as we said back then: Gag me with a spoon. Babies are like, so totally grody. I mean, like, credit cards are totally bitchin’ and awesome but babies are just, like, totally heinous. Whatever.
On the plus side, no doubt the Health Service will shortly deliver healthcare like this:
Which is fine with me, because House is like, so totally mega. Fer sure.
30 Dec 2007
| In: Domesticities + Ireland |
Great post. Having left Ireland as a youngster in the 80s and growing up for the most part in the US and continent I honestly expected it to be so different from the US when we moved back here in 2005. When I say different I was thinking provincial – the same welcoming friendly people I’d left all those years ago! Hah! We seriously thought it would be a better place to bring up the kids (the-unexpected-weren’t supposed-to-arrive-for-at-least-ten-more-years-but-thank-God- we’re-married-kids!) but now realise it’s quite the opposite. Suburban USA is where it is methinks… but now being caught up in the consumerism, getting back there is not going to be within our means for a very long time! You summed it all up quite well though! ;-)
30.12.2007, 4:24 pmThanks!
I think suburban USA is a bit of a crack pipe dream, though. The cost of health insurance for a family of four will kill you (unless you are fortunate enough to have a tremendous company health plan, which isn’t out of the question but is something people native to Europe tend to overlook when assessing job offers, for example.) There is, as much as we reel in horror at rising crime rates here, far more violence in your average Anytown USA than in Ballymcnowhere, Ireland. Education can be dicey (although I wretch at the education “choices” here, too) and the economy is about to tank, big time. I would far, far rather be unemployed here than there, that’s for damn sure. And I’ll take Bertie over the the Shrub any day, too.
30.12.2007, 6:29 pmThe grass is always greener isn’t it? ;-) I guess I let the financial side of things overtake the pros. I did have an amazing company health plan and salary mind you, and now here there’s no point in me going back to work as I wouldn’t be able to afford the car and childcare required to do it. Wouldn’t be worth it – yet if it stays like this – we’ll never get back. *SIGH*
With you on the education though. That was the main plus of coming here. Ever compared the leaving cert to the GED/SAT/ACT? I started university in the US as a junior just based on having the IB (EU equivalent to the leaving cert.) SCARY! I guess I’d rather them be brow beaten with Catholicism than enter university not knowing how to write an essay!
30.12.2007, 6:38 pmHaving worked for US startups, worked in USA, Europe and now working and living in Ireland with my wife and our two boys in a small rural village. I would have to recommend the Irish way of life, Continental Europe may have more public infrastructures/services but can me more restrictive as to which doctor/dentist or school you can send your kids too (Sweden for example).
Rural Ireland hasn’t changed much, people are moving back instead of moving away and people still stop for a chat at the local shop and coop hardware shop. Community development associations have played a pivotal role in retaining the glue that keeps communities together. The Church and the GAA may have lost some of its influence but communities still work together to get Creches up and running, hill walks developed etc.
Our social/public systems of health and education are superior to what one may find in the US. When you have small children you suddenly realise the benefit of after hours doctor service such as shannon doc and the work that nurses do in the intensive care sections of maternity wings of your local hospitals. Things could be better, hospital services could be better but what we take for granted is pretty significant.
I don’t think I will ever understand how SAT scores work and what they indicate. The classical approach of studying subjects and discussing them using meaningful mechanisms such as essays etc seem more practical and realistic.
02.01.2008, 3:23 pm