I've heard from a lot of people who lived through the 1980s in Ireland that this is worse. Of course there's probably an element of a sort of misguided nostalgia in that. But I do get the impression that in the 1980s there was a more of a sense of the whole country being in the shits together, whereas having been through the "Tiger" era there's now a much more pronounced class division and a much greater amount of resentment in the middle-to-upper range of having to pay the dole for those people who have the temerity to lose their job and not be able to find another one. I think the working class may be more divided, too, now that there's a race/nationality factor which there really wasn't in the 1980s, and which is being very effectively exploited by the types of people who exploit that kind of thing. I'm not sure if it's actually *worse* now, but it sure seems nastier.