Spain to Roll Out Permanent Universal Basic Income ‘Soon’
forbes.com
forbes.com
What they want is to roll at some point some budget for affected bussiness but thats all... but isnt any different of what other EU countries are doing at the moment.
My suspect is that Spain relies heavily on turism, which is affected in the short term and probably in the long term, so people will have to find another source of income otherwise they wont be able to sustain their families.
Probably there will be some bugdet for that sector, but everything is just speculative atm.
There is a link in the article (I don't speak Spanish though). They refer to the Economy Minister Nadia Calvino.
https://www.lasexta.com/programas/el-objetivo/noticias/nadia...
The article has a link to this Spanish article (and an embedded video), I'm curious, does it contradict the statements of the Forbes article?
https://www.lasexta.com/programas/el-objetivo/noticias/nadia...
General consensus in Spain is that this proposal don't have enough support to actually go through, but the world media is reporting like it's already been passed and will for sure happen. It hasn't.
My speculation: For one, it's really just talk until something happens. Also, I'm thinking if not for the eye-opening shock that is coronavirus, a lot of things would not be happening that are probably going to happen now. No one can really say with authority what the world will look like when this is over.
This animated graph of historical unemployment claims data from the 60's through March 2020 really emphasized how big of an impact this disease has had in the US, and it's unsettling.[0]
0: https://twitter.com/SteveStuWill/status/1246577148220989440?...
Some problems with the “universal” in universal basic income are:
a) the money must come from somewhere. Realistically, certainly the top half, income-wise, will have to pay more in taxes than they receive in UBI. So, a lot of it will just be pumping around money; to those paying those taxes, that may feel like they’re worse of than when there’s ‘just’ social security.
b) if you want to go for “UBI replaces all of social security”, it will have to be high. If you don’t want to do that, you can’t have the cost savings of doing away with the whole apparatus of determining who should get how much in social security.
320,000,000,000 / 47,000,000 = 6808.51
But, like you said - €500 would reduce their budget to zero. I imagine UBI would be less for underaged - say €150/month (which is what government pays for every child in Poland btw). This reduced the budget requirements by, say 20% - so, they’d need around 260B.
Then, with UBI, you can dismantle parts of the retirement system. I couldn’t find the proper figures for Spain, but in Poland it is a half of the government spending or something like this. If Spain is similar, then they’d save €100-200B on this p/a.
That’s still 100-200B short, but you can generate extra savings by getting rid of unemployment benefits and some other social safety nets.
Also, Spain’s budget is €400B, not €320B from what I found (https://www.statista.com/statistics/275333/government-revenu...).
I’m not sure it’s feasible, but it’s not totally crazy either.
Even if you plan on only taking income from the top 0.1%, that's not going to get you very far. You'd have to take 100% of that just to come up with 10% of the total UBI distributions. That means, you're pretty much back at square one. Everyone gets 36%+ their income taken in taxes, and then they roughly get it right back, with an extra €25 or so added on (best case, more realistically, you'd probably come out €50 behind).
I don't see how the average person benefits from this? I only see how this benefits people who don't work, and incentivizes more people to not work.
You can't say that you can pay for this with existing taxes. If you use all your existing tax revenue for UBI, how are you going to fund everything the government actually does?
As you point out UBI is otherwise completely unaffordable on an ongoing basis.
I think the scariest thing is not doing anything right now.
Much like legalizing weed here in Canada - it's not about making the perfect decision and going with it, it's about at least trying to improve something. Maybe in 5 or 10 years we'll look back and decide it didn't improve stuff and we'll roll it back, but that's OK. We tried and we learned.
More opportunity for the rest of us!
Instead of asking if some significant number of jobs will go unfilled because people are paid a poverty line level of income by the government, we should be asking:
"Why aren't we paying people who work 40hrs/wk a living wage?"
The decision not to work and live off of UBI is only attractive to people who are currently working many hours and earning about the same as what UBI is offering -- and that should give us pause.
The evidence of people usually choosing to retire upon reaching the age they are able to receive much smaller stipends than their current earnings suggests otherwise. Many people value their free time highly, and a poverty wage to a single parent living in rented accommodation can be quite comfortable when doubled and applied to a homeowning couple with savings for rainy days.
> The evidence of people usually choosing to retire
The key word in that is "choosing". A huge number of people even in G7 countries comprise the working poor. They cannot, and likely will never be able to "choose" to retire. They work 40hrs/wk, often with two incomes and have no savings.
While we can debate the life choices of some of these people, it remains that working 40hrs/wk should not lead to an outcome where you can only just scrape by.
As a developer, you could ave your money for 3 years then live the next 10 in a country cabin doing nothing but watching movies.
This is the same choice faced by most people in the real middle class. Yet why do we want more? Not just entertainment, but better schools, and the chance to make an impact on the world.
Sure some people would take the money and do nothing, but many more will take this guaranteed income as a chance to take risks. Imagine, anyone who wants to can go to community college for free now, but can’t practically do it because they will starve without their job. Now anyone can do it.
It's note quite UBI, but if the negative consequences were what you're saying, we'd see it in Australia. The fact is less than 5% of people sit around and do nothing, and Australia's economy is doing great.