As a spanish who pays 47% PIT and a ton more taxes including 21% VAT, tax for having a property (only one!) and that I see how much money is wasted on top of a 113% official GDP debt... and I can tell you tjat to pay what I pay you do not need to make even 80,000 eur/year.
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.
Cuando tu salario pasa de 62000 pagas 47% de IRPF a partir de ese tramo. ¿Qué pasa si ganas 110.000? Que se te llevan la mitad a partir de 62000, un auténtico saqueo. Y hay muchos más imopuestos indirectos e IVA, IBI, basuras, matriculación...
Espera, que sé lo que vas a decirme... que gano demasiado. Así nos va, que todo el mundo se va. Yo también me fui. He vuelto por la familia básicamente. Se pagan barbaridades en España. Y luego cualquier funcionario con una oposición de menos de dos años con un trabajo súper cómodo, con plaza en propiedad, vacaciones, jornadas estrictamente de 8 horas, días moscosos, alrededor de 2000 euros... eso es lo que le pagan a muchos ingenieros en España con años de experiencia, o un poco más. Por eso nos vamos. Porque, ¿tú sabes quién paga eso, verdad? Efectivamente. Los saqueados.
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.
La comparación no es justa, si lo haces con EEUU. Debes introducir el estado del bienestar en la ecuación. Ahí cualquier gasto médico de importancia a ti o tu familia puede dejarte arruinado. Aquí es básicamente gratis. Lo mismo con estudios, seguridad ciudadana (mola vivir tranquilo de que no haya tiroteos random)... Si tienes un sueldo de 110K, en españa vives como Dios, tú y tu familia.
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.
Exactly. There’s a lot of danger waiting for you when you grow up and leave home. Money would certainly solve some problems, but if everyone knew every 20 year old had a big check they could go get a piece of, it will cause many more problems.
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.
I wonder if to address this, we could do something slightly different. There is definitely a danger here. Hang out around a military base where a bunch of young men got back from deployment and see how many of them are driving BMWs. When I was in the Navy, my junior sailors would blow all the money they made on deployment on shitty cars and strippers.
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 problem is, many people would just take a 10-year loan at 20 since they know they’ll receive the €20K at 30. There’ll be a whole industry springing up around that.
There's no guarantee you'll be wise enough when you're thirty. Better idea: give them a couple grand at eighteen so they learn an early life lesson about windfalls, then give them the rest at thirty.
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.
I think you're right to an extent, but I think ubi could bridge the gap between necessary services and nice to have services. It could let someone who is on food stamps and housing assistance choose to upgrade one of those or for them to buy the technology needed to get their next job. There are pitfalls, but I think ubi could be a good way of allowing people to position themselves to no longer rely so heavily on other assistance programs or live a better life on their own terms if they can't
The general issue I’ve seen is that dismantling programs to pay for UBI just means spreading the butter really thin so that the basic income is a pittance. The US just doesn’t spend so much on social programs to make a UBI meaningful, and if we were going to raise taxes to do so why not just fund more targeted programs?
> 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.
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.
"Why not 20K every year? Get rid of all government programs ( welfare, healthchare, social security, etc ) and replace it with a universal yearly $20K."
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...
Some people are not equipped to handle that responsibly. They'll promise it to rent-a-center in perpetuity and still be hungry halfway through the month.
Aren’t we currently experiencing inflation at least partially due to government stimulus handouts during Covid? I know there are multiple causes but free money certainly didn’t help.
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.
The problem is most means tested programs end up as poverty traps where people avoid making more money productively so they don't lose their welfare or disability.
Israel introduced a similar concept in 2017 that deposits a small amount of money monthly into a savings or investing account for each child, money can be withdrawn at the age of 18, or later at 21 with a small bonus.
We should be so lucky. But then most of those promises would be frauds since they are most of the time not followed up on once the politician is in power.
Well, if just counting all the billionaires [1], they have a total net worth of ~135 billion, and there's currently ~47MM people in Spain [2], so if you sent out the stormtroopers and forcefully confiscated every last penny of net worth from all the billionaires, and redistributed it equally, each person would get a one-time payment of ~2,800. I'd theorize that the resulting destruction to the economy/country in the process would probably ultimately wipe more wealth from the people than 2,800 per person, but hey, maybe not.
> I'd theorize that the resulting destruction to the economy/country in the process would probably ultimately wipe more wealth from the people than 2,800 per person
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.
Private debt is actually around $90k per inhabitant. But somehow this figure (private debt being more than 200% of GDP) is generally overlooked in favor of discussion about public debt…
When a significant proportion of private debt is housing, it's the entire society's problem. (And the subprimes crisis illustrated the problem in a very obvious fashion).
Ironically, a significant part of public debt we have today still comes from the aftermath of the last private debt crisis we had: first as a (too timid) response to the 2008 banking crisis, then as the result of the economic crisis that ensued.
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.
If govts did not play capturing huge masses of money to do favors and we limited ourselves to court and hearings when needed, people would be way more responsible in their actions and the services would be way more efficient and oriented to waht people want without excuses and make-up.
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.
And let's not forget that Spain is already taxing the rich like crazy. As in: insane crazy. In quite some Spanish regions (not in Madrid, where the tax exists technically but is reduced by 100% so far) there's a yearly tax on wealth that can go as high as 3.5% of your entire net worth. To be paid. Yearly.
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.
It's time to invest in venues offering lavish coming-of-age parties!
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.
And meanwhile everybody from 18 to 30+ that lives paycheck to paycheck, without a possibility of getting into a mortgage, without being financially stable enough to become parents, get nothing.
Also, "everybody" will get 20k? Even people that are rich? What is the reasoning behind that?
Tbh, I'm not against a Basic Income. I'm against the "Universal" part. A basic income should be something handed out to those in need of it and they should be helped so they can stop relying on it.
Thus handing out 20k to everybody no matter their situation seems like a really bad idea to me.
Fun fact: the process will be made artificially slow to last til you are 23 years old, which means voters making 18 this year would have to vote for them, again, in 4.
The landlords will just raise their rents accordingly. Effectively taxpayers will be subsidizing landlords.
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.
That would affect a much smaller percentage of people who are 18 to the same amount. €20k in taxes is how much you would pay if you were earning 65k/yr, or 5 times the average of what Spanish people under 25 earn.
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.
> The minister, who was raised in a staunchly communist household, said she had been unable to follow her own dreams of becoming an employment inspector because there was not enough money for her to spend years studying.
> 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]
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.