1) Unemployment rate is very high (16%+)
2) Under 25 unemployment is extremely high (40%+)
3) Inequality is very high, with 10M+ people struggling to make ends meet
4) The country lacks affordable housing (property and rent are expensive when compared to salaries)
Some areas of Spain have implemented different forms of basic income for decades now (these usually go by names such as 'renta de gastos esenciales', 'renta de ingresos', etc).
I have lived in two of those areas and I can say that this form of income only mitigates poverty and improves quality of life slightly. You don't just get rid of the four points I mentioned above.
I think that's the main point of the idea. It doesn't promise to make everything better for everybody just not horrible as it is now.
Spain has also absolute and radical aversion to the private enterprise collaborating with universities, meaning that research is poor and underfunded.
Barriers to entrepeneurship are high, both in the form of red tape, and taxes.
Spain has, at any point in space and time, AT LEAST 3 bloated and redundant administrative layers: local, Comunidades, central state, with some areas having more (e.g. cabildos, diputaciones). More red tape, more redunancy, more pensions and benefits. This means more taxes.
Like in the US, Spaniards have massively invested, with money they didn't have, in real state. Unlike in the US, though, Spaniards have been convinced any private property other than housing is useless, or plain evil, so there's ZERO equities culture, other than those having the 401k equivalent. Major Spanish corporations are less owned by Spaniards, compared to other countries like the US.
And all these UBI equivent measures just feed into the same narrative: the State will feed you, no need to innovate, no need to work hard, and if you want to thrive, affiliate to a major party.
The country lacks affordable housing
See above: high taxes (e.g. IBI, property taxes), plus housing being the only true value reserve, inflate the prices.
Whatever people mean when they say inequality, I don't see how a UBI can help. If some people are not working hard enough to justify their existence to the economy without a UBI, they are never going to be even imaginably close to equal with someone running a big company.
The only way for the economy to recognise someone who is only sorta-working is equal to someone who is devoting their life to running a successful and productive business is to bankrupt everyone. It isn't going to happen, and if it does happen it will be worse than the status quo.
Inequality isn't a problem. Low living standards among the poor is a problem. Conditions at the unhappy end of the spectrum is more important than both conditions at the good end and the gap between the two endpoints.
Because it allows people to take risks that are normally only available to the financially secure, like starting a business.
Nothing wrong with the argument that UBI gives people opportunities. It may well do that. But if it succeeds at that, it is decent evidence it will increase inequality.
The last few years before COVID, wages were improving and things were looking a bit better overall. All of that seemed to vanish the moment lockdown started.
Regarding lack of skill, as a developer I notice two things:
1) Most young people seeking a technical position are hilariously unqualified despite having spent many years studying some engineering degree. School here has no connections with the real world and there is a lack of personal project culture.
2) Those who are qualified have to compete against hundreds of applicants for a position. Job scarcity is a serious problem for developers here, since it also means having no leverage to negotiate your working conditions.
Another thing is that there is a significant "black economy" in Spain. I.e. the unemployment numbers do not exactly reflect the actual number of people who cannot find any work, which is less than the official figure.
What does that mean?
And to keep the jobs of those doing that kind of production. I read an article a few years ago about Spaniards living in small flats more than any other country in Europe.
There are a few features of Spain that can explain why:
- Spain is mostly empty space and population is concentrated in cities
- Spaniards spend a lot of their time on the outside, so they don't need much space at home
- There are 18.5 million of families in Spain, the largest group are families of two people (with children), the second largest are people living alone (4.5 million) that would explain why there are empty houses, many people living alone cannot afford or do not want to live alone and share an apartment.
> so we have to think of a post-work society
You mean the pre-work society, right? :)
Work as the means of subsistence is a relatively recent invention.
There are other factors beyond the economic value of work, most of them are non-rational.
Take for example Christianity, for Christians until 19th century work was a form of redemption and salvation.
The idea has never completely faded away among them.
Calvinists and Protestants still believe that "born of poor parents and made his way up the ladder by sheer ability, self-reliance, and perseverance in the face of hardship. In short, he had to be "self made." The so-called Protestant Ethic then prevalent held that man was a sturdy and responsible individual, responsible to himself, his society, and his God. Anybody who could not measure up to that standard could not qualify for public office or even popular respect."
Do you think that large segments of US population (just as an example) would believe that or what Martin Luther King jr. said?
> We have deluded ourselves into believing the myth that capitalism grew and prospered out of the Protestant ethic of hard work and sacrifice. The fact is that capitalism was built on the exploitation and suffering of black slaves and continues to thrive on the exploitation of the poor — both black and white, here and abroad
More recently work for Christians has become a means of subsistence but it has become a way to express righteousness, as Weber said "Good works may express our devotion to values of care, compassion, or love for our neighbor, to a way of being that emulates the life of Jesus".
So in a way people go to work for reasons other than simply the salary.
To imagine a society without work one needs to also address the social and political issues revolving around it, it's not simply a technical solution to a technical problem, it's much more than that.
This is critical. Most people think passion first, then you'll find the perfect job, and it's not always like that. You may need to work for a while in order to find what you truly are good at, and enjoy.
For that to happen, though, there needs to be reduced red tape and taxes, so switching jobs is easy and affordable for both parties.
UBI torpedoes this: it means higher taxes, and reduces the incentives to look for a better job.
Same also for Italy and Ireland I guess. It's half and half in England. It's more protestant in Scotland, and of course the US was founded on the notion
The south of Germany is meant to be Catholic but I don't know if culturally they are more laid back when it comes to work there.
basic income, not Unconditional BI. I would be surprised if those programs were unconditional, which is what makes UBI work - the ability to work while still earning them.
Also, I've always wondered, if unemployment is so high, is it because the work just isn't needed? Does spain already produce and provide services in a way that scale to all its population?
Well, obviously it isn't needed today but you can always change the economy so that it becomes profitable enough to hire everyone.
>Does spain already produce and provide services in a way that scale to all its population?
A lot of products come from China nowadays which means your domestic workers have to do high skill jobs to compete internationally or low skill jobs that can only be done domestically. You can also argue that environmental protections make it unprofitable to a lot of things domestically.
That's the part that I don't understand. Like you're saying you could increase demand, so more people want more services and more products, implying the current set of employed people would now no longer be enough to keep up with this new demand, so they'd need to hire more. Ok, well assuming the latter is true, that the current set of employed people can't scale to higher demand, what still doesn't make sense to me is where would this higher demand come from and especially how would this new demand afford to spend more money? If everyone is unemployed, it seems only if the existing employed people spend more money can the demand increase, since the unemployed cannot afford to spend more anyways.
But why would the employed suddenly choose to spend like twice as much money? You'd need to come up with some innovative new product or service that is irresistible. (Side note: I believe this is actually where the US excels at. They're always creating new services and products, creating an accretion of the total set of things people want.)
So you've got this chicken and egg problem. The question is how do you bootstrap this?
I think one way is investing in new ventures. Give incentives to the currently employed to invest their money in an attempt at creating a new product or service that will in turn cause the other existing employed to spend more money (continue to spend on what they currently spend on + this new service or product). And that will create new jobs (hopefully), allowing more people to enter the pool of employed, and repeat this until you have full employment.
In this model though, we're relying on an infinite growth. Because the pendulum goes: create new spending habits, this leads to new jobs, now optimize production and offshore, this leads to job loss, now hope that we come up with some more growth that leads to even more spending habits, etc.
So it basically says, as soon as there's no longer any new shiny thing, the rich will just hord the money. So if you want the rich to redistribute their money, you need to give them shiny new things in exchange. And so you want to create policies that promote the creation of shiny new things.
Well, this model has worked pretty well to be honest. So I'm not going to criticize it too much. But I think we are seeing some of its downsides as well. It's based on a very unsustainable consumption model, that takes a big tole on the environment. And it might also have a maximum, maybe there is now so many shiny things, that the speed at which we can come up with even more shiny things that people would keep wanting is slowing down. (Also because you need the existing shiny things to continue to be sold as well, if you replace an old one by a new you didn't grow the pie, just changed hands).
And I believe that's the motivation for finding a different model that be more sustainable. Maybe UBI ain't it, but I understand the drive to search for one.
There is no 'sufficient' quantity of services for a given population, there is always demand for more industrially manufactured goods, personal services, or artisinal wares.
Or are you referring to the $600 that supplemented the unemployment insurance? But those went to people who were just recently working and had their livelihoods wrecked by government action and/or inaction. I'm pretty sure you would agree they deserve that money and it's okay for them to do what they damn please with it. Even if that means them not going back to work for some time because they have the freedom to. Imagine how less fucked we would be if we just paid the majority of non-essential workers to stay the hell home. Less competition for the essential jobs, so people who do really want to work can work and the essential jobs will be filled.
Handing of the money in an emergency situation has also the fundamental difference that it isn't meant to be sustainable: it's one off, and the preparation does not include reworking the financial structure of the state to make it permanent, like all UBI proposals I've seen so far.
You were going to have to pay one way or the other. It was just about a matter of when and what form of payment. Most of the world has decided that going into debt was better than paying with the lives of their people. You can renegotiate debt later on. It's just numbers in a excel sheet or some shit. Can't renegotiate the lives of dead people.
If people don't work they lose their productive output irrevocably and can lead to a cycle of poverty. The damage caused by unemployment is far worse than any damage caused by debt because debt can be reversed easily once you have mild inflation around 2-3%. Just the effects of inflation alone will reduce the debt burden, let alone the potential tax increases through higher employment or the economic growth that will happen once the economy is no longer broken.
Modern economic theory proposes that nations, with full control over their currency, have infinite spending power (aka can go into infinite debt) without any issues, as long as full-employment hasn't been reached
This is of course not entirely possible for many EU countries, since being a member of the eurozone means the country does not have full control over its currency - which was a large contributor to, for instance, the Greek financial crisis
The responses to the covid lockdowns, which are incredibly expensive, were only considered because they were one-offs and time-limited.
If payments are restricted to a minority, the poorest, then it boils down to what already exists in most European countries and the question is then "what's new?"
In general UBI proposals are ideological solutions to ideologically-constructed problems. They are not realistic nor practical and thus thin on practical considerations and hard numbers.
That's not an ideologically-constructed problem.
It's pure logic. What is ideologically-driven, in my opinion, is claiming that "other jobs will be created, so no need to worry". Which implies, on the other hand, that the poor deserve being poor, due to their own negligence, lack of education, or laziness. We don't need to care about them. We provide a capitalist system which rewards the brave and the competent, and it's meritocratic. That is pure ideology, not based on reality.
There are smart ways to do it though, such as doing it in a second-tier currency that buys only essentials or directly in terms of food, shelter and education. Just a free STEM/business education will go a long way if we can find some way to keep students engaged and committed to put the effort to actually learn.
Based on the last year, you can conclude nothing because people, countries, and politicians were just panicking and trying to survive on incidental handouts which don't allow for planning a future. That's not basic income.
Universal basic income would be living in the certainty that no matter what you will always have enough to take care of yourself and your family without obligations to do anything that you don't want to do. This is why libertarians like the idea because they don't agree being told how to live their lives by governments.
UBI leads to different life choices; including maybe not spending your career working double jobs cleaning and flipping burgers in double jobs while still not making enough to cover rent, insurance, or the ability to retire. This kind of poverty exists in some places that are filthy rich (i.e. the US).
But it is kind of an anomaly among other similarly wealthy (and even a lot less wealthy) countries. Elsewhere, it's basically what a lot of us already have except it's still surrounded in rules and morals that dictate that you have to live a "productive" life.
IMHO UBI could just be formalizing that status quo. We're basically taken care of anyway and now we simply take care of everyone unconditionally. It's not that massive of a change once you accept that there's a cost per person in each country for sustaining them that these countries are basically already paying for. But just in a really convoluted way. Making that less convoluted would probably result in some savings and allow some of the poorest people in our society to get a grip on their life or make some different choices. Some people would qualify that as fairness.
It could be as simple as if you don't work you receive X; no questions asked. If you do work, you also receive X and you now urn Y-X, where Y is your total income. If you get unemployed, you get X+benefits from your (optional) unemployment insurance. If you get sick, basic health care is part of your basic income but you can insure for benefits (optional). The hard part is establishing a value for X that is high enough that it matters and low enough that we don't destroy our economies.
It would basically mean labor gets a lot cheaper and simpler for companies. Of course UBI has to come from somewhere. Like for example corporate, income taxes and part of what used to be separate insurances for e.g. unemployment, state pensions, etc. We can still have those insurances except that they would now be about insuring the difference to UBI so the cost would be lower. And we can also make those optional since UBI would be enough, thus making everything extra something you'd opt in for.
For, many countries, this is effectively what they have already except that they tend to have these hugely inefficient bureaucracies to try to get you back to work. Which in the case of e.g. Spain with double digit unemployment numbers tends to be a bit futile. Hence, the discussions on UBI are a bit further there.
Secondly it creates dependency between receivers and givers. I'd rather empower workers collectively than make people dependent on welfare. This, in contrast to UBI is I think viable across the spectrum and actually what people want.
I think UBI rests on a sort of naive utilitarianism that overrates material equality and underestimates what's wrong with the system as it is and what really makes people angry and pessimistic. For that reason I also don't think it's ever going to get a political majority.
Suddenly if you're hating your job, it's not that scary to tell your boss that their abuse is over. You can have some time to re-train, and be whatever you really wanted to be.
There's also loads of activities that aren't counted as work that would suddenly become very developed such as volunteering.
Yes, some people might suddenly realise that if they live on the cheap they might play video games all day, but I don't think it will be most people.
It also depends how it's rolled-out, if its start at 50 EUR a month, then increases each year for the next 15 years, the economy will have the time to adapt, the citizens will have the time to adapt etc.
It also present an interesting effect. Low paid jobs that aren't well valued such as cashier or delivery person will become less attractive and will have to be paid decently to be worth it. Contracts with a lower amount of hours would also become more common
That's a reason to like UBI.
(1) It allows more people to work. Current social programs discourage work because earned income reduces benefits; not so with UBI.
(2) It allows more meaningful work. People aren't so desperate they need to take any job and we can safely drop minimum wage, making it affordable to hire people for less commercially viable tasks.
This one I don't get. Empowering workers, in leftie politics, usually means some version of labor, wage, union,... protection laws (not saying this wrong, I'm myself seeped in leftisms). Thus creating a dependency to the state to protect one's work from the ruthless.
Where is the principal difference between being dependent on the state for cash vs protection?
Wrt the larger UBI point: I see it more as an opportunity for people to find deeper, more personally meaningful, work. My inner optimist hopes people would seek out more fulfilling, self-determined, work. My inner pessimist sees the Wall-E thing, though I would not call it underpinning. My inner realist would like to see more studies.
There’s no such thing as the sanctity of work. This is just ancient propaganda.
I think it’s the complete opposite. Happiness would increase with UBI because it would increase leisure time. Just look at how many people say WFH has made their lives so much better. It’s not because they can spend more hours hunched in front of the computer managing slack notifications.
Both those numbers are way below the level needed to.mske people not motivated to get even very crappy jobs.
Right now that's hard to do because all the economic activity is in cities. But when a baseline of economic activity follows people anywhere it'll help revive less successful areas, where that UBI goes a longer way.
I don’t have an answer or know better...
Not sure why people repeat this so much when men's extra need for calories to fuel their larger bodies greatly outweighs that.
Variability in those needs are taken care of outside of UBI. You can still have a separate funds for medical equipment and you can still have prices of pads subsidized by goverment to promote hygiene.
But now it's turning into a beast that doesn't remove much of existing complexity and adds additional welfare. Money source for a meaningful payout be damned.
Not everyone has the same needs. So UBI either has to be so high that everyone can have a basic standard of living (e.g. a nurse for a disabled person) or you retain a plethora of other social programs to address those needs.
And I always ask - what about the drug addict that blows through their whole UBI on day 2? What then? Let them starve in the street? Of course not, there will be a separate social program for them as well.
What is meant by "unconditional universal basic income"? How much would it be? How would it be financed? What are the expected effects? Why would that be 'better' than the existing welfare state schemes in the various EU countries?
These are too often not described when discussing UBI or discussed without much facts or data.
Personally, I would like UBI to be tied to GDP per capita, like say 10% of the GDP would be redistributed to every person. It would help to solve the wealth and income inequality problem that causes huge misallocation of resources (for example, EU has twice as many empty apartments than it has homeless people).
IMHO, it is generally better than welfare because it is less overhead and less patronizing. It should replace a portion of existing welfare system. (Things like pensions are often considered welfare but they are really not.)
And I also think that people simply deserve some equity (large portion of total economic assets in our society was created by our ancestors), just by virtue of being part of the society. UBI is just a dividend from that equity.
I'm sorry for that. I intend to fix them up and rent them eventually. I just can't get my self around to actually doing it recently.
I'm actually more in favor of entirely removing any economic support, that people can use to buy what they _want_, I'd much rather give people what they _need_ to survive, anything beyond that (tobacco, alcohol, entertainment, fashion clothing, cars, etc..) should be the privilege earned by working.
How would not having a car affect their ability to get to the job interview? And how would not having a fashionable formal attire affect their ability to do a good impression on the interviewer? How would not having access to entertainment affect their mental health?
People probably know more about what they themselves _need_ in their situation than you do. Give them the opportunity to divide resources on their own.
And investing in people beyond merely keeping them alive will generally pay dividends and be a good investment in the long run.
Vaguely related: Unconditional cash transfers in charity are generally successful and have a strong multiplier effect leading to increased long-term income (must people don't just spend them on alcohol and drugs, as some would believe) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030438781...
No money will go to healthy food, all of it to alcohol, drugs and tobacco, and whatever is left, will go to expensive (but not the kind you can show up in a job interview for) pre-worn-out designer clothing and cellphones that are way above what is needed.
You get these "rich-poor" kids who are unsatisfied that they're merely the top 10% instead of the top 1% without having ever lifted a finger for any of it.
I think part of this dissatisfied complacency (yes, I know how this seems opposites, but really what it is: "My life sucks, I've watched all there is to watch on Netflix and HBO so now I'm just browsing youtube and getting drunk and high most of the day, life is so _HARD_") stems from the lack of real consequence if you "fail", it breeds a special type of mentality that is hereditary, see Norway, Denmark, Sweeden and Finland for examples.
I have massive doubt about that statements from a social and behavior perspective.
Imagine you were transported to a society where housing, food health care, and entertainment was free, but you belong to the lowest social economic status group that existed. Everyone else are above you in term of status. While cultural rules and norms dictate that people still treat you nice, they will not see you as their equal. Members of the other sex will, for reason which is not needed to be specified, select others with higher status. Your social circle will be much smaller, possible zero. Siblings and family members might treat you differently than those of higher status. Your stress levels will be on average higher than of other people, and your health lower.
Would you be happy? Housing, food, health care and entertainment is after all still free.
Take a population and look at those with lowest rate of reproduction, lowest amount of social network, highest risk of loneliness, suicide, and what you get is a correlation to social economical status.
Take a population and measure stress hormones, and the output correlate to social economic status. Take a similar population and look at health outcomes over a large period of time, and the outcome is directly correlated to social economic status. Just a few weeks ago there were a paper showing that the outcome of defibrillation by doctors in hospitals is influenced by the patient social status. The higher the status, the more time the doctors spent in the room and the better the outcome was in shocking the patients heart. Low social status is predictor for slow recovery rate to injuries, and high social status has the opposite effect.
Even in biology we can see the effect clearly. Take a group of female students and their reproductive systems will sync based on social status. There is similar research that links male hormone levels directly with social status changes.
If we compare people in a very rich country with people from a very poor country, the people the share most similarities are those of the same social status, regardless of the actually wealth. It is sometimes refereed to as the paradox of welfare.
I want so see the effects on the total economy. If for example UBI leads to massive inflation it would completely nullify the UBI.
How about productivity? Saudi Arabia is an interesting example, since their economy pretty much runs on free oil money. Saudi nationals are notorious for having bad work ethics, and they have to import foreign workers to run the economy.
I personally don't believe in UBI, but I'm willing to change my mind if proven wrong, as long as my own country is not part of the experiment.
Actually that would be highly desireable because it would mean the UBI acts as "employment of last resort" rather than free money, except you don't have to do anything to keep your job. It also means that every job will pay more than UBI which means there is no incentive not to work. Considering the financing challenges you want as few people as possible on the UBI.
I think it will lead to inflation of rents untill landlords capture most of BI value. Unless it's specifically prevented by rent controls or progressive real estate tax that's fed straight back to BI funding.
They are good at organizing conferences and barbeques though.
You want to sell to them as much as possible, at inflated prices because they can afford it.
Even manufacturing is not obviously a problem there. Sure you can't blackmail your employees with being destitute, but those who choose to work for you are doing so out of their free will which may improve quality of their work. Also more better quality employees migh be available there because they had time and flexibility for self-improvement instead of being forced to work any job just to sustain themselves.
What happens when developing countries have younger people who buy more things, better laws, and comparable wages.
For example a former french president left france for russia cause of their taxes. Many people left california for much the same. Does california have more wealthy citizen than nevada or texas sure. But at a certain point the math tilts.
1) Be less repulsive to those who think that salaried work is virtuous in itself. 2) Not discourage work (people would still need to do something)
These "jobs" could include any activity that is good for the person and/or society, like taking care of old/dependent people, studying, working for a non-profit, even looking for private employment, depending on the needs of the state.
(Of course, if the person does not show up for work, then they get the pay docked)
UBI would be ideal, but job guarantee might be a less radical approximation.
Just giving people money is way less harmful then giving them money and excuse of a job to take away their time and strength from them.
That said I wonder, if done globally and long term, I wouldn't fall into laziness or very low productivity life (stress levels would sure fall to zero too, which is good)
Why do we think UBI is necessary, when there are European countries such as Norway and Switzerland with near-zero unemployment and below-average inequality spanning decades (these two are very different countries, so I don't think we can attribute their success to some specific advantage no one else has).
Imo the countries/people advocating UBI just don't want to come to terms with the reality that their institutions and particularly their culture needs to change in order to tackle the problems that they think UBI will magically solve.
