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Comment by escanda | Hacker News Reader

Pretty surprising stuff since here in Spain the unemployed make about 400 euros a month after they have ended their actual unemployment benefits. This last resort income is for two years. They must attend courses on job skills like cook, welder and so on though. All these courses are free.

It's not for life, but it takes out of poverty most people.

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The problem with Spain is that there literally are no jobs, and those courses are a charade.

As long as there is a need to be filled (like food) and a way to fulfill needs (like fishing), there are jobs.

There are plenty of jobs to be created, also in Spain.

First you are assuming that there really are needs to be filled. For example in the case of fishing there are limits to how much you can fish, set by the EU, which maybe we've hit already.

Second, jobs don't exist until they are created; saying that they could be created doesn't help unemployed people. Someone has to take the (sometimes very high) risk.

And I bet that once somebody getting those 400 euros a month decides to take that risk, they will not be entitled the support money anymore.

Of course, but in any case, someone who lives off welfare doesn't have the money to start a business. The only option is to ask a bank for money, and they won't give you shit if you're living off welfare.

Some business require money to start, some don't. Starting some kinds of business look pretty much like getting a job. (But then, there are also certainly laws in place that put a few barriers on starting those last one.)

Yes, I am assuming that there are needs to be filled. Is this incorrect? Does not people want stuff, also in Spain?

The limits on how much can be fished is a good point (but I assume the limits is in place to avoid over-fishing, which would result in no fish at all).

Stating that jobs don't exist until they are created may not help unemployed people, but I still believe it to be true.

In economics needs aren't actual physical human needs. The homeless need shelter and the starving need sustenance, but they have none because they don't create economic demand for it because they have no money.

People would only build the homeless man a house or sell the starving mother a fish if they had something to give in return, at least in the naive purely free market economic sense, but that is how macroeconomic observations on supply and demand operate - irrespective of choices made outside of economic rationality.

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