
Spain approves national minimum income scheme - praveenweb
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/spain-national-minimum-income-universal-basic-coronavirus-ubi-economy-a9538606.html
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pedrogpimenta
A warning: this is not a Universal Income for everyone type of thing. This is
a monetary help for the poorest people to be able to live with some dignity.

I'm not criticising, just clearing things up because the headlines (here and
elsewhere) make it sound like something that it isn't.

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p1anecrazy
I don’t understand why they wouldn’t just call it an unemployment benefit.

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tom_mellior
It also applies to the underemployed or underpaid, they will top up earnings
you might already have.

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ac29
I wonder how many people will see their employers cut their wages since "the
government will make up the rest".

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tom_mellior
Anyone with such an employer would hopefully quit, now that they have the
security of the guaranteed minimal income. Which means that this is to some
extent a worker protection scheme: Employers will have to make menial, badly
paid jobs more attractive since they will now be competing against "no work
for the same money". In theory, at least. In practice things might devolve
into more unreported employment, so workers could get both the full state
minimum income and an unreported income on top of it.

This is one of the crucial differences to a proper universal basic income: The
UBI does not discourage taking a job that _adds_ income to the UBI. This kind
of minimal income scheme _does_ discourage taking badly paid jobs, since the
total money you receive remains the same whether you work or not.

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toomuchtodo
I'm reminded of the quote, "It always seems impossible until it's done." \-
Nelson Mandela

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fallingfrog
They will likely face consequences from the United States and other places for
this, both from international finance (They will withdraw capital) and maybe
other avenues, (covert funding of opposition parties, threats of sanctions)
but they’re not in Latin America so at least there won’t be a coup.

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OceanKing
Why do you think so? Why does the US care about essentially poor-people
benefits in Spain?

