Tens of thousands in austerity protest in Spain | Hacker News Reader

Tens of thousands in austerity protest in Spain

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23 pointschailatte37 comments

Spaniard here. Male, 24. People are mainly protesting against bipartidism not addressing the country's problems and working together for the greater good of the country, since they only play dumb and fight childishly.

The party in charge hasn't done shit about the whole economic crisis. First they tried to fool the people into thinking there was no crisis. When it was so obvious they couldn't keep lying, they passed some stuff that didn't really address the main problems (rigid two-tier labor market, too much spending on pointless bs, almost no-value added economy, too much regulation, and so on). They prefer to spend their time battling oh-so-important problems as fierce copyright laws or populating our roads with pickpocketing speed traps. Oh yeah right, and wether we should be able to speak to a civil servant in any of our languages (spanish is not the only language spoken in spain, almost every state has its own regional dialect/language, which are for the most part mutually intelligibility, but hey, let's make a big deal out of it anyways, who the fuck would care about easing conditions for the self-employed or the start-ups, right?).

The opposition, luckily in such a good place to just play the nice guy part and thus get the job with a few good proposals, are drowned in their own pile of corruption-related shit and instead of making easy proposals to win voters back, they prefer to try countless aggressive ad-hominem attacks against the prime minister and his clique wishfully hoping they'll eventually step down.

And while they all are pulling each other's hair as if this were a playground, there's +20% unemployment, +45% unemployment for young spaniards and a whole lot of just plain misery sweeping the country. I'm talking tonight-there's-no-dinner misery.

Making it easy, attractive for the self-employed and start-ups is great and would really help; favorable tax, easy to fire people (horrible atm), etc. And last but not least; educating people that it is an option to start for yourself and that life is not all about maintaining the population their comfort level.

Since you'll likely be directly involved politically in this issue (by protesting and/or voting), I urge you to read the comment I left as a reply to another comment further down the thread:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2558318

It's important to understand the reasons for the crisis. Your leadership should take responsibility for what happened, but the voting public should develop and demand different policies from their successors. I think it's crucial to realize austerity could only make things worse and that it's currently being forced upon a number of the poorer EU countries (I'm also a citizen of one). I'm sure corruption is a problem, but in this case it goes much deeper and runs right into the almost religious adherence to neoliberal economics throughout Europe and the US.

While fine-targeted spending can foster growth and productivity, that thing you've thought of about having one person digging and other one filling holes is completely wrong.

How do I know? The idiot in charge in my country spent thousands of millions of euros developing that near-sighted idea to no avail. He just kept the housing-bubble men busy for a while longer.

And then along came deficit.

It's clearly a dumb thing to do, I agree. I'm just arguing it's better than austerity.

I'm sorry, but that is completely irrelevant to the situation in Spain, which among other things just suffered a housing bubble that almost makes the one in the US look like child's play.

The employment market and other aspects of the Spanish economy are stuck in the middle ages.

Surprisingly, the big Spanish banks were mostly responsible and have done better than banks in other countries, but the rest of the economy is bust because half was in the construction sector and the other half was is the government sector, you can't have a viable economy like that, you need private productive industries, and for that you need to make it possible for people to start new business and properly run existing business.

Well the construction sector is nothing like half of the economy (16% of GDP, 12% of employment before the crash). Still, if you have 16% of your economy collapse, you will have severe problems. However, the reason why it collapsed is the same reason it collapsed everywhere else in Europe - there was no financing. Your point simply doesn't contradict mine, except for your assertion that the private sector is the only way out.

The private sector cannot currently be the solution because the money it depends on are in banks as I pointed out before. Banks aren't lending because of the problems on their balance sheets. The government, on the other hand, can print money and is the only institution that can do so, so it is your only option.

My evidence in support of what I'm arguing is Germany, whose government intervened to stimulate the economy and currently has had less of a drop in employment than the US even though its GDP fell more. Work-sharing is the most prominent, and probably most successful, program in that regard.

NOTE: I'm not arguing this is sustainable forever. What I'm arguing only applies to the current situation, which is anything but normal.

I left Spain many years ago, seems that nothing has changed (except except for the predictable and spectacular bust of the bubble).

Often people ask me if I plan to go back to Spain, my answer has always been invariable "No way, are you mad? Why on earth would I want to go back?".

Oh but it's so sunny! I feel you paisano. I'm 24, finishing my second BSc and will probably flee soon.

Still it hurts so much to witness all this.

Sunny? One of the reasons I left is because I could not stand Summer at >45C.

It's one of the most known cliches about Spain, isn't it? I find it funny since I'm from up north and we don't get that much of Canary Island-ish weather foreigners think of when they mention Spain. But yup summer in the south or the plains sucks sometimes.

Sure if you live on the coast in a bigger city it can be quite hot (I like it but I appear to be an exception; most people just whine about it, native or import alike), but if you just move to the mountains above the coastal cities the temp is just fine. Or the Sierra Nevada; fine there too. It's much greener too there. Of course then people whine they cannot see the sea and they came for the sea and the beach (but that's just import :)

"I have several degrees and speak many languages and still can't find a high-paying job" - well, maybe you should turn to whoever told you several (very likely liberal arts) degrees are in causal relation with a high-paying job?

Exactly; for some reason people (and at least in western EU, more women than men) believe that they can just study something that has no economical value whatsoever but they 'like it so much' and then cry foul when there are no or badly paid jobs in those fields.

It is bad in Spain for sure, but I'm not seeing the youth (or older actually) getting more creative unfortunately; the weird will to cling to what was (and doesn't work anymore) like 'the siesta' is painful to see.

The mistake is to think having any degree and nothing else will give you a high paid job. In Spain there is too much "titulitis"

Or a job at all. Not so hard to teach people at university some quite simple numbers and statistics right? 'Ok, so you are going to specialize in Basque history; you do know that there are 4 jobs in need of that subject in whole of Spain right? And you'll earn nothing, your whole life?'.

Well, your assumption is wrong. There is actually such a high degree of unemployment that affects professionals like: biologists, doctors, architects and even engineers. I do have friends in that situation. I'm living in Madrid, just 10 minutes away from where everything is happening.

I live in Bulgaria, and we have many people in the construction business - starting from architects all the way to hard-hat workers - out of job - but I attribute it to the construction boom that pulled way too many people towards that area; we don't actually need all that concrete crap built. But doctors? This is surprising. The "common wisdom" around here is that the EU needs all the doctors it can get, as virtually all the medical graduates emigrate quickly.

But if they are good at what they do, they really cannot find the creativity to fix their situation? Like move to another city where there is work? Start your own company (there is subsidizing for that, at least in Andalusia)? Do your own marketing better? Why are people sitting in Madrid '10 minutes away from where everything is happening' and then just wait until 'something' happens??

> architects and even engineers

How is this surprising after one of the greatest housing bubbles in history burst?

They won't solve any problem by protesting. Moreover, they're probably protesting for the wrong reasons. Spaniards are asking the government for jobs and decent salaries as if bureaucracy could solve these problems; and the more the government does, the worse it gets, because what the government should do is "nothing" but just get out of the way and let the free market take its course.

I believe what people are protesting is that austerity measures, more often than not, are enforced upon services that benefit the middle to low income working class, rather than on the corporations that were complicit in creating the problem in the first place.

They are protesting for a more balanced approach.

I'm sorry, but it was the middle class that went along with the insane bubble.

The big Spanish banks, unlike banks in most other places, acted relatively responsibly and have not needed to be bailed out (the 'cajas', which are local banks controlled in part by politicians on the other hand are totally bust).

agree with @alienfluid. Bureaucracy cannot create economic value out of nothing but a transparent bureaucracy and accountability can prevent the need for austerity measures by preventing socialised losses and privatised gains by corporations

Well the weird thing is that in this particular situation, bureaucracy could indeed create some economic value.

The current situation is this - we have a financial crisis set off by the collapse of the US housing market (the biggest single market in the world). Because of the financial instruments involved in financing US mortgages from 2002 - 2008 it's difficult for banks to tell how much any of their investments are indeed toxic debt, which means they don't know if they are solvent or not. Furthermore, they know all other banks are in the same situation, which means they are hesitant to lend to other banks, let alone consumers.

So, we have a stagnant world economy even though we have production capacity and we have people in need of goods and services, because the money supply is essentially being hoarded by the financial institutions. In this situation the government is the only source of demand left. It could create this demand by investing smartly into infrastructure or paying someone to dig a whole and another person to fill it up. One is clearly better than the other, but in the short term they're both better than austerity.

I hope I wasn't unclear. I think it's important that everybody realize this. These people might not have sophisticated reasons to protest austerity, but they are actually correct.

EDIT: I hate to bitch about being down-voted. Please don't think this is about the karma, but it is disappointing. I think what I wrote clearly adds to the discussion. I suppose it's okay to vote down if you simply disagree, but I spent time constructing a thought-out response and I think at least a discussion of where I got it wrong is in order...

Lyudmil, I disagree with you, yet I voted your posting up just to counteract those that wanted to silence you.

Thanks. I'd love to know how you disagree, though.

Most protests are actually about government's spending, corruption and overall blatant plutocracy:

City councils not paying gardeners while the mayor says he's won the lotto for the 4th time in 5 years (obvious shameless money laundering that leaves the council with millions of debt).

Banks pay-rolling whole parties to gain favor which is showed later on with no hint of shame.

In some autonomous communities (Länder), a third of the politicians running for office have ongoing lawsuits about corruption.

They just spend their entire hours wheeling and dealing while the countries becomes the next Argentina.

You can't protest your way out of being broke, which is the ultimate truth of this situation.

On a material level, no, protest cannot create any new goods. But on a sociopolitical level, protest can force change that can lead to different allocations of resources (or human rights, a la the Civil Rights era in the US).

I wonder what had happened if the the government were the PP...

To those that degraded my comment: what I said is what I believe. Disagreeing is not a valid reason to put down the other person's opinion. If you want a debate, let's have it, but you have to respect what I say unless you prove that I'm wrong.

>you have to respect what I say unless you prove that I'm wrong

the ideology is like a religion, both are outside of the realm of reason, any attempts to prove something in that realm is stupid and futile.

Respect it? What for?

Respect if you don't have a better argument. Better in terms of logic, facts, and science. Respect if the other person is following logical implications. Religion is very easy to prove wrong, using logic, facts, and science. Disregarding another person's opinion just because you disagree, without explaining by way of logic why you're right and the other person is wrong, is axiomatically wrong.

By the way, and this is just a suggestion to HN, those that down-vote based on whims or disagreements should be heavily penalized. It's correct to down-vote spam, trolls, offensive postings, or comments that add nothing, but it's very wrong to discard what others say simply because it's not the music that the powerful button clickers want to hear.

VladRussian, I welcome your comment and your questions, and I responded. A question for you: Did you down-vote my comment?

Of course, and i explained why. You posted an ideology bit, a propaganda, and it litters discussion. Hundreds years ago, considering the body of knowledge back then, the ideas of the flat Earth or the ability of free market to exist on its own magic without necessary role of government were a reasonable theories. Today these ideas exist only as components of religious or ideological platforms, well outside of the body of scientific knowledge.

>Religion is very easy to prove wrong, using logic, facts, and science.

No. Check any good book or university course on the philosophy of science. Religion and "logic, facts, and science" are completely disjoint realms, and have no connection, intersection or whatsoever relation. Just for illustration : any of the following 5 ideas for example - "God created evolution", "God doesn't exist", "The Earth is flat as created by God", "There is only one God", "There are five Gods" - aren't in logical contradiction with each other as they belong to the realm of religion which is outside of the world of logic and science where notion of logical contradiction exists and limited to. The same way, any and all the 5 together of these ideas have no relation to or any effect on or affected in any way by any of the established scientific facts, like for example, evolution, pie=3.14... or "the Earth is round and flies around Sun" - as the facts belong to the realm of science which is disjoint with the realm of religion where the above mentioned ideas belong to.

>Respect if you don't have a better argument. Better in terms of logic, facts, and science. Respect if the other person is following logical implications.

once you have it and do it, i guess you'll see the respect you want.

We can't talk if you have a magic button that fades my comments away and I don't. Thanks for your honesty though.

As a way to balance our powers, I left you a blackspot for everyone to read at http://www.spottiness.com/spots/JEM5U01L

If you had your email address in your HN profile, I would have sent you a code that allows you to respond.

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