5 ms·

Spaniard here since this article[1] about Spain was prominently noted in the linked article, there isn't a basic income plan here and nothing like that has happ

Spaniard here since this article[1] about Spain was prominently noted in the linked article, there isn't a basic income plan here and nothing like that has happened, please stop with making up this kind of stuff about other countries. There is regular unemployment insurance and an unemployment plan targeted to temporary job freezes (ERTE) that has always existed, nothing to do with basic income. I would also like to see BI even if it's just a test, but what we have here has nothing to do with it. The government has just made the rules for these pre-existing unemployment plans a bit more flexible (or arguably not). Also the rent situation has become a lot better. [1] https://www.businessinsider.nl/spain-universal-basic-income-coronavirus-yang-ubi-permanent-first-europe-2020-4?international=true&r=US https://www.businessinsider.nl/spain-universal-basic-income-... Edit: removed references to the future since I cannot predict it and moved those to the present. Edit 2: it's also interesting to see the original headline was "Spain is moving to" (already false, there's no specific plan now) but in this article the mention was "Spain decided to institute the program" (ridiculous).

SlowRobotAhead 7y ago
Seen similar misinformation about Nordic countries and their UBI testing/experiments. There is definitely a component to how much someone wants to believe something to clickbait/fakenews.
- craigsmansion 7y ago
  I'm about as "red as they get" and there's something really grating about US citizens talking about "UBI", and pointing to a variety of social policies in various European countries. These policies are hard-fought and need to be well balanced to be effective in the long term. You can't just implement them without thinking about repercussions and side-effects. I'd say, if you're a US citizen, forget about "UBI" as a simple answer to the various social wrongs within your country, and focus on your healthcare; that's where various European models could be used as a partial model, and it's a very good and achievable first step towards a fairer and healthier society.
  - daenz 7y ago
    We never hear about the downsides of other countries models either. It's always a cherry-picking of the best policies and pretending there's never any trade offs. That kind of disingenuous promotion doesn't do any favors when it comes to convincing people.
    - voldacar 7y ago
      > It's always a cherry-picking of the best policies and pretending there's never any trade offs. Well it's not like UBI is the exception here. This is normal in all forms of political discourse.
    - franciscop 7y ago
      Interestingly enough, 5-10 years ago in Spain you could hear some proponents of private healthcare to compare it with the US. Now I think there's enough understanding that the US model doesn't work that the proponents instead talk about Singapore or other private models, no one compares them to the US anymore. Some arguments against universal health care I have heard in Spain: • Not enough choice, since you cannot e.g. pay more to get better treatment. • It's more expensive, since there's no free market to move prices down. • It's more efficient, since people are not paid to do nothing and impossible to fire (common complain about gvmt jobs here). No beef here, just relaying what I've commonly heard
      - mcv 7y ago
        My impression is, if you compare health care costs across various wealthy countries, it's pretty clear that socialised health care is cheaper than privatised health care. Netherland has universal but privatised healthcare, and has one of the most expensive health care systems in Europe, costing more than half that of the American health care system. And it's not particularly better than the more socialised healthcare systems of the surrounding countries, as far as I can tell. And the only place in health care where you can have a free market at all, is in elective treatments. Treatments that you can choose not to use when they are too expensive. For everything else, it's your health and possibly your life at stake; you can't really say no to treatment, so you pay whatever it takes, and that's a situation that's easily abused by profit-seeking companies.

SlowRobotAhead 7y ago

Seen similar misinformation about Nordic countries and their UBI testing/experiments. There is definitely a component to how much someone wants to believe something to clickbait/fakenews.

craigsmansion 7y ago
I'm about as "red as they get" and there's something really grating about US citizens talking about "UBI", and pointing to a variety of social policies in various European countries. These policies are hard-fought and need to be well balanced to be effective in the long term. You can't just implement them without thinking about repercussions and side-effects. I'd say, if you're a US citizen, forget about "UBI" as a simple answer to the various social wrongs within your country, and focus on your healthcare; that's where various European models could be used as a partial model, and it's a very good and achievable first step towards a fairer and healthier society.
- daenz 7y ago
  We never hear about the downsides of other countries models either. It's always a cherry-picking of the best policies and pretending there's never any trade offs. That kind of disingenuous promotion doesn't do any favors when it comes to convincing people.
  - voldacar 7y ago
    > It's always a cherry-picking of the best policies and pretending there's never any trade offs. Well it's not like UBI is the exception here. This is normal in all forms of political discourse.
  - franciscop 7y ago
    Interestingly enough, 5-10 years ago in Spain you could hear some proponents of private healthcare to compare it with the US. Now I think there's enough understanding that the US model doesn't work that the proponents instead talk about Singapore or other private models, no one compares them to the US anymore. Some arguments against universal health care I have heard in Spain: • Not enough choice, since you cannot e.g. pay more to get better treatment. • It's more expensive, since there's no free market to move prices down. • It's more efficient, since people are not paid to do nothing and impossible to fire (common complain about gvmt jobs here). No beef here, just relaying what I've commonly heard
    - mcv 7y ago
      My impression is, if you compare health care costs across various wealthy countries, it's pretty clear that socialised health care is cheaper than privatised health care. Netherland has universal but privatised healthcare, and has one of the most expensive health care systems in Europe, costing more than half that of the American health care system. And it's not particularly better than the more socialised healthcare systems of the surrounding countries, as far as I can tell. And the only place in health care where you can have a free market at all, is in elective treatments. Treatments that you can choose not to use when they are too expensive. For everything else, it's your health and possibly your life at stake; you can't really say no to treatment, so you pay whatever it takes, and that's a situation that's easily abused by profit-seeking companies.