Spanish minister proposes €20k ‘universal inheritance’ from age of 18
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
It's one of the ironies of life that when you are young you have time but no money, and when you are old you have money and no time.
Think how great it would be if you got that money while you were still young enough to use it, and old enough to use it wisely.
30 year olds will also have the same bullseye painted on their backs, but will at least have experience.
This will create an industry that is centered solely around milking 30 year-olds for every penny they're worth as soon as they turn 30 and then drop them like a hot potato.
This will drive up prices immensely because there's a continuous stream of people turning thirty and your hard-earned 20k is worth the same as their 20k that just fell from the sky.
It's a completely insane idea, and it doesn't solve any problems. When the 20k is gone, it's gone. It's precisely the people who need it the most that are the least likely to stuff it in the bank.
Economic problems are people problems.
Maybe instead of just cutting a $20K check, perhaps an account that allows certain purchases. Like here is $20K, it is pre-authorized to use it to pay for tuition for a college or trade school. Pre-authorized for medical expenses. And perhaps other things, but you can't exactly go out and blow it on cars and strippers. Then perhaps with a, if you don't use it by 25, you can roll it into your 401K?
The only downside is that it would collapse the war machine since no 18 year old will sign up for the military.
Also, I think it is a good idea to keep government programs means tested and separate. If you give people 20k, the number of people who should be feeding their kids with the money but instead bought “new rims” for their 2007 Honda Civic is going to be much greater than zero.
Because next election cycle, some politician will set themselves apart by promising the 20k, plus a supplement for healthcare...and the whole circus begins again...
Healthcare: Some people get unlucky with genetic lottery and will require far more cost in care than others. Some type of universal coverage still needs to exist imho.
Social security: Unfortunately, not everyone is good with money. Social security is a mechanism for balancing out and restributing wealth, but it's also an investing service for those who don't know how to.
I'm not against some type of UBI, but there are some downsides with getting rid of existing programs. imho.
You can buy healthcare with 20K.
> Social security: Unfortunately, not everyone is good with money.
That's why it's 20K per year. Not a one time $2 million payment for the rest of your life. $20k more than the average social security payout.
Who do you propose it should pay those 20,000? This woman, who talks to people as if they were 10 yo or less, said "the rich people". Do you know how much of that proposal you can pay with "the rich" in Spain? Very little. And by very little I mean not even 5% of that, probably less (I did not make the exact numbers but I am pretty sure it won't go beyond that).
If you knew politicians, especially spanish politicians, you should know that the only thing they want is more money controlled through their hands. You know why, right? We all know it...
Every spanish has 35,000 eur debt right now. A great idea, yes... to charge pwople that did not ask you with more debt til services collapse.
Basically - spanish isn't a noun it's an adjective, it describes a property of a noun (ex: Spanish language, Spanish Car, Spanish food, Spanish person etc...).
The oddity is that we also treat "spanish" as the proper name of a language. So "Speaking spanish" and "Speaking the spanish language" are interchangeable.
But no disagreement at all that english isn't rational.
As an aside, it's a perfectly understandable comment, it just identifies the person as non-native english speaking.
Luego se dirá por ahí que se está por el progreso y alguna que otra cosa. Si le pagas lo mismo al chófer del autobús o a los de movilidad urbana que a uno con una carrera técnica que cuesta de sacar y es altamente útil, pues se te van. Y esto lo digo con todo mi respeto para los chóferes o quien sea, pero lo que pasa es lo lógico.
Broke people immediately spending the money they got from the government... That's everyone else's money.
https://www.btl.gov.il/English%20Homepage/Benefits/Children/...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Spanish_billionaires_b... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Spain
I know the OP asked that but isn’t this really about future people turning 18 which would be massively fewer people and roll along every year?
I wonder if you wouldn't mind expanding on this idea more.
While I'm not saying I agree with the notion of redistributing wealth in the way you describe, I am skeptical of the "destruction" part. What does that look like to you, and why would it lead to that?
you only need to look in the past to see how collectivization in communist countries have fared to see what sort of results could be expected when you confiscate wealth from people.
The public debt is the fact that someone decided that you will pay for something and get in debt through taxes. Out of control and totally unfair.
When an entire society is built on private debt, it doesn't matter if you don't own debt by yourself, this is a society problem, and thus it becomes your problem.
Also, unless you are super wealthy (and should be taxed more) it's unlikely that you'll stay debt-free for your entire life.
This is not how states operate, unfortunately, and they are not interested at all in making things change. People in the state live to a big extent from selling favors, whether we like it or not, via regulations and capturing money to make others happy. All, with our taxes.
I know many people do not think this way but if you took the time to read and understand the inner workings of politics and power you would almost never think well of a person whose job is professional politics.
You're worth more than 1.3m? Anything above that is already taxed at 1.3 to 1.6% yearly. You're really rich? Be ready to gift 3.5% of your wealth yearly to the spanish state.
There's one million millionaire in Spain, already taxed like mad. I don't know if they could be taxed even more to give that 20K bonus.
One million millionaire to give 20 K to how many million of people? There are, what, about one million people turning 18 each year in Spain? (quick ballpark computation, one official source seems to say its closer to 500 K people turning 18 each year).
So let's take 500 K people turning 18 each year and one million millionaire. This means taking 10 K EUR, yearly, from each millionaire, to hand over to the 18 years old.
Sounds a bit unrealistic to me but then I'm not a politician begging for votes in the upcoming spanish elections.
This is middle class taxing. There's never enough rich people to fund these kind of initiatives, and specially not in Spain.
Seriously, giving 18yo a lump sum in cash is maybe not the best idea, they should give this out as a non-transferable share in a state wealth fund (backed by some percentage ownership of the nation's companies), rather than cash.
ie a universal basic equity.
Rules could allow people who want to start a business etc to borrow against it.
Also, "everybody" will get 20k? Even people that are rich? What is the reasoning behind that?
Too many edges to sand down in this proposal.
Thus handing out 20k to everybody no matter their situation seems like a really bad idea to me.
Total corruption.
This is effectively what happened in the UK where those on low income get their rents topped up by the government. Hence why so many MPs are landlords.
Cutting taxes for this age bracket would effectively only help those who are already well off, which isn't the purpose of this proposal. Regardless of the discussion of whether or not you should give out 20k, your proposal doesn't address the same issue.
> Díaz graduated with a licentiate degree in Law from the University of Santiago de Compostela (USC),[5][6] and later earned three post-graduate degrees. Upon concluding her studies, she commenced working as a paralegal for a law firm. Later, she registered as an attorney at law and opened her own law firm, which specialised in labour law.[5]