It is very common for human beings to live without looking and thinking. we don’t notice some admirable situations that should at least surprise us. Therefore, for example, today, while experiencing a great political turmoil that has to be repeated in a process of instability that has already been problematic since the general elections at the end of 2015 and still continues, attention should be paid to ensuring social peace and tranquility. It has not changed even though we are facing the great health crisis of the pandemic that hit us at the beginning of 2020 after the economic and financial crisis of 2008-2014 and still haunts us with its final blows.
Enrique Dans, a pedagogical expert in innovation and technology, who is a member of a renowned business school and maintains a daily blog on the Internet, recently published an article to highlight this surprise: the surprise that produces. The serenity that Spanish society has faced and assumed, faced with some disturbing imbalances. Unemployment in Spain, which was chronically high during the democratic era, is now 11.7%, a low rate compared to our record, but unimaginable in other European and American countries. For young people, the situation is even worse: in 2022 the unemployment rate for men under 25 (28.9) was the highest of all EU-27 countries and almost double the EU-27 average (14.6). The proportion of women was 30.8, ranking second, below Greece (38.8) and more than double the EU-27 average (14.5). But Spain’s social situation could not have been more peaceful. Our citizen security is at a high level, there are few people who are homeless or in extreme poverty, no one is within the reach of public health and education…The overall impression of the country is a well-educated, prosperous and modern society.
Spain ranks 15th in the world in Gross Domestic Product and 36th in per capita income, but objectively it has a higher degree of well-being than these numbers suggest. dance contributes an element that explains this situation: Spain is a unique case because half of all adults depend on some form of public assistance, pension or public employment. And it was possible, Dans explains, also because most governments in the history of democracy have tried to avoid social conflicts by providing all kinds of subsidies to people in need. This constant attempt to rectify the situation This, with little change, is the only viable model that more and more countries will find themselves facing as the development of technology forces more and more companies to replace machines with workers if they do not want to stop being competitive and eventually shut down.
It is well known that AI will completely empty many employee job niches. tasks will be automated and then required support people affected by this irreversible structural unemployment. In May 2020, the outgoing government in Spain approved the so-called “Minimum Vital Income” whose purpose is to “eliminate poverty and promote the participation of vulnerable people in the labor market”. Help still modest: threshold guaranteed 462 euros per month for a single adultand increases as the family unit grows. The government calculated that the measure would benefit 850,000 households and 2.3 million people, of whom one million were in severe poverty. In reality, there are fewer beneficiaries than expected, but this is the right path that peace and social justice require.
The debate among theorists who study Universal Basic Income is still very open, but there is consensus that the measure will be inevitable and should reach everyone, even though those who work and earn other income will be refunded what they receive through taxes. It is urgent that we have a well-defined theory when there is no choice but to peacefully organize such an egalitarian revolution on which our future will depend.