
Spanish Government Aims to Roll Out Basic Income ‘Soon’ - perfunctory
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-05/spanish-government-aims-to-roll-out-basic-income-soon
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bwb
Flagged, as the title is super misleading, this isn't about basic income, it
is about rolling out unemployment insurance + economic relief to people.
Nothing long term here, just another gov working to save the economy and
people.

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Glavnokoman
Yep. I had a better opinion on Bloomberg news before.

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renewiltord
That is interesting to me to hear. Bloomberg News has the lovely
characteristic that a lot of people believe them and they're also generally
wrong so you can usually trade on that info. It's the fascinating power of
building an enduring brand through one field (the terminals and Bloomberg
himself) and parlaying it into another.

For instance, the day after the SuperMicro story popped up and I saw that it
was Bloomberg that broke the story, I went long SMCI. A month later, the sweet
smell of victory and +100% gains sat in my eTrade account. Now there's edge,
and I didn't even need 5 ms to the exchange to get it.

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franciscop
A bit of background here since I keep seeing the craziness that is going on in
the US. While jobs in Spain are not great, the social safety net is quite good
in general. With the coronavirus, most jobs were frozen into place with a
government unemployment plan (ERTE).

This administrative tool existed before where the company could put your job
on pause for a specified amount of time. This way you get full unemployment
benefits from the government, and after said period finishes you keep your job
as it was before. In practice it is commonly used to try different jobs
meanwhile or to take some time off after working for a while in a company.

So in the current covid-19 situation, the government has mandated that most
(all?) of the people who cannot work during this time to be on this program.
They have also frozen mortgages and rent payments. This is amazing for the
society at large, since it means most people will be able to not go bankrupt
during this time. The two big worries right now are what will happen to the
companies (and those frozen jobs) and where will the govt get the money if the
situation gets too long.

So a basic income program would not be _such_ a large change here as it would
be e.g. in the US. It's still massive of course, because it'd apply to
students and everyone who didn't have a job before, but I think it's important
to clarify the background.

EDIT: I haven't read anything about a basic income in the Spanish news yet so
I cannot say about the accuracy of these news.

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CannisterFlux
Strange that this is not mentioned at all in the Spanish press. Maybe the
original story has been mistranslated or blown out of proportion.

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arcturus17
This was exactly my reaction when I read it on Reddit - it’s on the frontpage
as a I type. Haven’t read any of this in the Spanish news...

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imartin2k
Finally. Who would have guessed that what was needed to remove the various
ideological and structural obstacles that so far prevented this idea from
breaking through, was a global pandemic. Likely that many more countries will
at least evaluate the introduction of a basic income.

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otherme123
You find appealing to use a global pandemic, or any other disaster for that
matter, to remove "ideological and structural obstacles" to try new ideas
without debate?

I find it totalitarian, and a great way to incentive politicians to declare or
even cause "problems" to remove ideological obstacles that block their ideas.
Just a four days ago the president of Hungary did exactly this to end legal
recognition of trans people.

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imartin2k
Different things, strange comparison. Taking rights away from a specific group
vs providing all people with something. The immediate motivation for Spain’s
UBI appears to be easing people’s financial suffering. And as governments are
spending gigantic sums to bail out industries, what harm can there be in
providing people with direct funds?! If people don’t want it in the long term,
they certainly will be able to use democratic means to get rid of it again.
There really isn’t anything totalitarian here.

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otherme123
It's a dangerous slippery slope. And you are not providing all people. You are
taking from some to give to some others, there's not such thing as a free
lunch. And the most probable course is that you get indebted today to pay in
the future (i.e. our descendants are going to pay our current UBI), and not
that the rich are going to give to the poor.

One thing is to say that in this dire situation you opt to give an UBI to
everyone, and as soon as the emergency is revoked so is the UBI and all
extreme measures. Another thing is to pass the UBI and "if in the long term
the people using democratic means" can get rid of it. Just bind the UBI to the
Alarm state, so that when the last ends, the former is automatically scrapped
(and if anything, approved through democratic means and in a more sane
environment).

I'm tired of things that are passed through the backdoor in difficult times,
and then we can never ever again get rid of it. In Spain, for example, the
"Ley Mordaza" is here to stay or even get worse. By "democratic means" the
people voted PSOE+Podemos that promised to get rid of it, and here we are
debating to make it even worse... ⸮for a good reason, of course⸮

