
Spain to Roll Out Permanent Universal Basic Income ‘Soon’ - yboris
https://www.forbes.com/sites/isabeltogoh/2020/04/06/spain-to-roll-out-permanent-universal-basic-income-soon/#707afb2b316f
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ThrowawayR2
Seems to be called out as misleading clickbait by Spanish HN readers in a
different post?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22791458](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22791458)

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victornomad
I'm spaniard, and havent read anything alike on the Spanish news.

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.

~~~
Audiophilip
>I'm spaniard, and havent read anything alike on the Spanish news.

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...](https://www.lasexta.com/programas/el-
objetivo/noticias/nadia-calvino-vamos-a-implementar-lo-antes-posible-el-
ingreso-minimo-vital_202004055e8a498a237979000147f3f7.html)

~~~
capableweb
Not really, but imagine that one senator in the US says they like to support
UBI, there is still a lot of work that has to go through to actually make it
work and has to have support behind it.

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.

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save_ferris
This seems inevitable given the widespread economic devastation that COVID-19
has wrought. Nobody really knows what the long-term economic outlook is, or
effective the recovery is going to be, but it's going to have to be orders of
magnitude more effective than the early coronavirus response was in order to
get us anywhere close to what "normal" looked like before the virus.

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?...](https://twitter.com/SteveStuWill/status/1246577148220989440?s=20)

~~~
Someone
I would think neither the “universal” nor the “permanent” parts would be
inevitable.

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.

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tomerico
Can someone enlighten me on where would the money come from? Spain annual
revenue from taxes seems was $320B in 2019. If they spent all of it on UBI, it
would translate to just $500 a month a person.

~~~
banads
Are you sure?

320,000,000,000 / 47,000,000 = 6808.51

~~~
nathell
Now divide by 12, and it's in the $500pm ballpark.

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jalk
Will be interesting to see what ‘universal’ means, mainly in relation to other
EU citizens. The debate boils down: “Are those migrant workers from eastern
member states really entitled to those benefits?”

~~~
mytailorisrich
There is not much discussion on this because EU law is very clear on EU
citizens' rights and this is something taken very seriously.

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serpix
I fully expect this to spread quickly to other European countries as well.

~~~
StartupTree
No country in Europe is implementing or planning to implement UBI. You have
been consuming propaganda.

~~~
willyt
SNP and Greens in Scotland are considering it. Its unlikely to pass the
'study' stage though until Scotland gains full control of taxation and
benefits.

~~~
StartupTree
Many left-wing parties in Europe are considering it, to gain support from
progressive wings. However none of these parties have the political power to
implement such a thing.

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tomerico
Can someone enlighten me on where would the money come from? Spain annual
revenue from taxes seems to be $320B a. If they spent all of it on UBI, it
would translate to just $500 a month a person.

~~~
kolinko
Average net monthly salary in spain is €1200. €500, assuming access to a house
and free healthcare would allow for an extremely frugal life - also, keep in
mind that many people would still work, so there would be money on top of
that.

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...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/275333/government-revenue-and-
spending-in-spain/)).

I’m not sure it’s feasible, but it’s not totally crazy either.

~~~
onlyrealcuzzo
If average monthly salary is €1200, that would mean the Spanish Government
would need to tax close to 41% of your income to give everyone a €500
distribution. Considering that not everyone works -- the percentage is
probably closer to 55%+. But let's be optimistic...

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?

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hkai
If that news is true, they may probably put this plan on hold for a few years
until the financial damage from the stay at home thing is over. Or perhaps I
misunderstand where that heap of money will come from at the height of the
financial crisis.

~~~
StartupTree
It was a fake news story.

~~~
hkai
Wow. The credibility of Forbes...

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rhacker
UBI seems to be taking off. I don't think they will ever call the US stimulus
check "UBI" due to the political climate, but wow.

I think the scariest thing is not doing anything right now.

~~~
StartupTree
UBI isn't being implemented anywhere. And there are no plans to. Saying it is
"taking off" does not appear to be accurate.

~~~
kolinko
In Poland we have a partial UBI - each family gets €150/month per every child,
regardless of their income. Average salary is €900.

~~~
StartupTree
Child Welfare Benefit is completely different to UBI.

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eanzenberg
Never waste a good catastrophe, I guess

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fartcannon
Finally, ideas that don't just generate money can be explored.

~~~
jerzyt
This is going to be a social experiment on an unprecedented scale. And it will
be impossible to roll back, after we learn all the unintended consequences.

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api
Maybe we'll realize through this pandemic that a huge number of existing jobs
are bullshit and totally unnecessary and finally start transitioning to a
basic income.

~~~
QuesnayJr
Maybe when this proposal meets with disaster, we'll then realize that most
jobs exist for a reason, and that society is an incredibly complex system that
can't be rationalized on the basis of five minutes' thought.

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grecy
This is fantastic, finally we'll get some real-world results so we can see the
consequences (good and bad) of UBI at a very large scale and we can put an end
to all the speculation about what it might (or might not) do.

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.

~~~
jimmaswell
I'm still not convinced 90% of jobs won't go unfilled while everyone sits
around and watches Netflix all day. I guess we'll see.

~~~
fzingle
This kind of concern crops up in UBI discussions all the time, but I think it
gets things backwards.

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.

~~~
notahacker
> 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

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.

~~~
fzingle
Sure you can find an edge case in my general statement.

> 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.

~~~
notahacker
It's hardly an 'edge case' to point out that in the real world, 90% of people
guaranteed to receive a low income for the rest of their life in the form of a
pension no longer work. This pretty much unequivocally falsifies the claim
that only people on very low incomes would consider accepting a large drop in
income in order to cease working.

