[mkl95]

As a middle class Spaniard, these are a few things that stand out about my country's economy:

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.

[scotty79]

> mitigates poverty

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.

[bassman9000]

Decade after decade education in Spain has been attacked, reducing the amount of hours spent on basic subjects (check OECD stats), and allowing 17 different education systems to appease nationalists. This meant the bar had to be lowered, which affected college output.

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.

[erik_seaberg]

“The State will feed you” is pretty reasonable when the state temporarily forbids you from working to feed yourself.

[bassman9000]

Not talking about covid. Talking long term.

[roenxi]

> 3) Inequality is very high, with 10M+ people struggling to make ends meet

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.

[akvadrako]

> Whatever people mean when they say inequality, I don't see how a UBI can help.

Because it allows people to take risks that are normally only available to the financially secure, like starting a business.

[roenxi]

The most successful story of new businesses starting in the last century has been what, Silicon Valley? Inequality is very high there because the people who started businesses sometimes became filthy rich and hired a bunch of overpaid engineers to help run the new businesses.

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.

[polskibus]

How come you don't observe massive emigration with such levels of unemployment? In Poland it is hard to find workers (observed for example by long waiting queues when asking around for builders, heat or water specialists, etc. In general construction and house refurbishment market is booming during covid. PL demographics projection is very bad , further worsening the forecasts on the market. Wages are growing but the workers shortage is too big to be fixed by this. Is it different in Spain? Or maybe the young are not skilled in the work that is in demand and would only accept office work?

[mkl95]

Spain had a massive property / construction bubble years ago. Wages grew substantially until 2008, when the industry crashed. It shattered the economy for many years until we started to slowly recover, in 2015 or so.

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.

[mytailorisrich]

There is quite a bit of emigration judging by the number of young Spanish people in the UK.

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.

[lcamach84]

The aim of the economy before the covid is to produce things and this production is no longer synonymous with increased comfort. For example, Spain has many more houses than families but these families have more difficulty in paying rents. However this production has to exist in order to maintain a profit of a few and above all to give work to the rest. But what we have to do to avoid anthropocene is not compatible with this economy and so we have to think of a post-work society.

[bassman9000]

post-work society

What does that mean?

[fsflover]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-work_society

[africanboy]

> However this production has to exist in order to maintain a profit of a few and above all

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.

[bassman9000]

So in a way people go to work for reasons other than simply the salary.

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.

[mkl95]

It cannot be stressed enough how limited job mobility is here when compared to somewhere like the US.

As a personal anecdote, I have been threatened with legal action by two CEOs when I gave them my notice. The first time it was because I mentioned that I was interviewing for positions at local competitors, the second time it was because I gave them a week's notice instead of two weeks, even though I wasn't required to give them any notice. It is that ridiculous.

[bassman9000]

This will sadly ring so many Spaniard bells. I was told, upon giving my first job's two week notice, that I'd never find a better job and that I was wasting a lifetime opportunity.

But that's because employers know mobility is close to none when no one wants to risk moving, so they're emboldened by the asymmetric relation. Fun fact: this was a large consulting company with its own union, aside from the national and local ones. Never heard or saw any of their doings.

[thinkingemote]

Just a note about Spain. It's mostly Catholic so culturally the protestant work ethic is pretty weak there.

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.

[africanboy]

> It's mostly Catholic so culturally the protestant work ethic is pretty weak there.

So is Italy, my country.

And I think there is a strong correlation with the fact that in Italy and Spain capitalism is different from, say, Germany or Netherlands.

[akvadrako]

> 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).

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.

[didibus]

Supposedly it would help with #3, because you'd need to tax something to get the money no?

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?

[imtringued]

> is it because the work just isn't needed?

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.

[didibus]

> Well, obviously it isn't needed today but you can always change the economy so that it becomes profitable enough to hire everyone.

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.

[nickff]

The barriers to employing people are very high there; they have secured jobs for the elderly at the cost of jobs for the young.

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.