Spain’s Third Option

Published by

Clarissa

November 29, 2014

As a response to the crisis, Spain attempted to abandon its two-party system. Both major parties, the conservative Popular Party and the liberal Socialist Party, showed themselves incapable of doing anything of value about the crisis. So finally, Spaniards moved ahead on introducing a third option.

Of course, there were always other parties on the scene. But they never had enough support to turn into major players in the political arena.

The new third option in Spain is a young leftist party called “Podemos” (translated as “We Can.”) At first, the party sounded quite radical, proposing, among other things, to lower the retirement age to 60 and to refuse to pay Spain’s foreign debt. The wave of enthusiasm for these ideas made the party unexpectedly and massively successful at the European elections of 2014.

However, now that the specter of Spain’s internal elections has appeared on the horizon, the new party has significantly toned down its dramatic proposals. Now it’s all about restructuring the debt, rather than refusing to repay it, and holding on to the retirement age of 65 is presented as a major, if unlikely, achievement. The idea of the basic income (which many people, as weird as it sounds, consider a progressive measure) is being abandoned, as well.

This means that Spain’s new progressive party has moved to the center before it has even had a chance to try itself out in internal elections. Even though the party’s early success was predicated precisely on not being like the boring old center-left Socialist Party, Podemos is turning itself into a copy of the establishment party.

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15 responses to “Spain’s Third Option”

cliff arroyo

November 29, 2014

“The idea of the basic income (which many people, as weird as it sounds, consider a progressive measure)”

Well…. I assume you think it’s weird because of your upbringing.

But, probably something like a guaranteed basic income will have to implemented at some point. The transition to a post nation state reality is small compared to the dislocations caused by a post labor-scarcity economy. There will have to be either some kind of guaranteed minimum income (a new word for universal scarcity) or Brazilian or Indian levels of inequality.

Do you know the British anthology tv show Black Mirror? The second episode (15 million merits) is about a possible kind of post-labor economy.

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1. Clarissa
  
  November 29, 2014
  
  Yes, it will be implemented. And then the lumpenization of up to 60% of the population of developed countries will become an inevitable fact. Basic income will make the Brazilian-style inequality inescapable. What bugs me is the earnestness of the people who think this is a progressive measure.
  
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  1. cliff arroyo
    
    November 29, 2014
    
    “the lumpenization of up to 60% of the population of developed countries will become an inevitable fact”
    
    And what would make this lumpenization not inevitable (or evitable, if you prefer)?
    
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    1. Clarissa
      
      November 29, 2014
      
      “And what would make this lumpenization not inevitable (or evitable, if you prefer)?”
      
      – A wide-spread realization that there is a problem guarantees its solution. We all need to stop and look at these transformations without panic, hysteria, hand-wringing, and self-aggrandizing rants. We need to stop finding it acceptable when a president lies to the young people, telling them, “It’s OK not to get educated, there will be blue-collar jobs for you.” There should be a massive emphasis placed on education.
      
      I also believe that a massive reduction of the state apparatus in the developed countries is needed.
      
      I can say a lot more about this but maybe this should better go into a separate post.
      
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  2. el
    
    November 29, 2014
    
    \\ I can say a lot more about this but maybe this should better go into a separate post.
    
    Yes!!!
    
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cliff arroyo

November 29, 2014

Since you’ve said you don’t like video links (as in my previous comment on this page) I’ll use a quote from the script instead

“Imagine a pair of horses in the early 1900s talking about technology. One worries all these new mechanical muscles will make horses unnecessary.

The other reminds him that everything so far has made their lives easier — remember all that farm work? Remember running coast-to-coast delivering mail? Remember riding into battle? All terrible. These city jobs are pretty cushy — and with so many humans in the cities there are more jobs for horses than ever.

Even if this car thingy takes off you might say, there will be new jobs for horses we can’t imagine.

But you, dear viewer, from beyond 2000 know what happened — there are still working horses, but nothing like before. The horse population peaked in 1915 — from that point on it was nothing but down.

There isn’t a rule of economics that says better technology makes more, better jobs for horses. It sounds shockingly dumb to even say that out loud, but swap horses for humans and suddenly people think it sounds about right.

As mechanical muscles pushed horses out of the economy, mechanical minds will do the same to humans. Not immediately, not everywhere, but in large enough numbers and soon enough that it’s going to be a huge problem if we are not prepared. And we are not prepared.”

whole thing:

http://www.cgpgrey.com/blog/humans-need-not-apply

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1. el
  
  November 29, 2014
  
  What I found most interesting and unpleasant in the cliff’s link is:
  
  // But if you still think new jobs will save us: here is one final point to consider. The US census in 1776 tracked only a few kinds of jobs. Now there are hundreds of kinds of jobs, but the new ones are not a significant part of the labor force.
  
  Here’s the list of jobs ranked by the number of people that perform them – it’s a sobering list with the transportation industry at the top. Going down the list all this work existed in some form a hundred years ago and almost all of them are targets for automation. Only when we get to number 33 on the list is there finally something new.
  
  Don’t that every barista and officer worker lose their job before things are a problem. The unemployment rate during the great depression was 25%.
  
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  1. Clarissa
    
    November 29, 2014
    
    “The unemployment rate during the great depression was 25%.”
    
    – I really REALLY really detest these analogies. What does the Great Depression have to do with any of this? In Spain, the unemployment went up to 29% at the peak of the crisis. And as painful as it was, the situation was nothing like the Great Depression. Because time has passed, everything has changed. Let’s look to the future, not to the past.
    
    “Now there are hundreds of kinds of jobs, but the new ones are not a significant part of the labor force.”
    
    – Exactly. The need for skilled workers is ENORMOUS. There is an explosion in the area of job recruitment and talent management right now. People just need a little shove in the direction of getting qualified for these jobs. It’s as simple as: somebody needs to tell them.
    
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  2. n8chz
    
    November 30, 2014
    
    Tell them what? If they’d simply publish the names and addresses of those employers which claim to be experiencing a labor shortage, I’m certain they would be inundated with applicants.
    
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    1. Clarissa
      
      December 1, 2014
      
      Jobs are posted online these days. Of course, qualified personnel doesn’t apply. It gets headhunted. It is also a good idea to contact the company that interests you directly, even if no position is announced. And most importantly, set up a LinkedIn page and start making yourself known.
      
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2. Clarissa
  
  November 29, 2014
  
  “As mechanical muscles pushed horses out of the economy, mechanical minds will do the same to humans. Not immediately, not everywhere, but in large enough numbers and soon enough that it’s going to be a huge problem if we are not prepared. And we are not prepared.”
  
  – That’s precisely what I keep saying. There is an enormous need to prepare. And instead, the so-called progressives are only chattering about how to make this process faster so that it can more easily exclude more people. This guaranteed basic income is a road to immediate and irreversible exclusions of an enormous group of people. These tiny handouts will not integrate anybody into anything.
  
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  1. el
    
    November 29, 2014
    
    \\ That’s precisely what I keep saying. There is an enormous need to prepare.
    
    To prepare how? To what? Which jobs will those people do, if mechanical minds push humans out? I am very interested in the issue, but fail to understand your pov.
    
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N G

November 29, 2014

“The unemployment rate during the great depression was 25%.”

The current youth unemployment rate in Spain is 54%. So what’s the government’s solution?

“The Spanish policy of reducing costs and prices of exports by reducing wages is sometimes referred to as ‘internal devaluation’. With the Euro as its currency, Spain cannot formally devalue its currency by itself to get a cost-price advantage to boost exports. But it can ‘internally devalue’ and boost exports by labor cost reduction, which it has.”

Europe’s New Model for Austerity

Plus those old economic remedies of labor market flexibility i.e. removing collective bargaining rights, fewer benefits and job security. Add to this the Spanish Minister of Finances, Cristobal Montoro’s decision to not renew the Catalan Funding Model, the prosecution for conducting an independence poll against the President of the Catalan Government, Artur Mas; the Vice-President and Minister of Governance and Institutional Relations, Joana Ortega; and Minister of Education, Irene Rigau and the comment by the Spanish army’s chief that Catalonia is a colony, the “we can” party is looking like another lost cause.

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1. cliff arroyo
  
  November 29, 2014
  
  “internal devaluation” reminds me of the “internal export” (or ‘domestic export’) stores in the old East Bloc where the communist government sold western and (domestic) goodies not available in the perpetually understocked state run stores in exchange for western currency.
  
  When Eurozone policy is reminiscent of old Warsaw pact economies it’s probably a sign that something is really wrong.
  
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2. Clarissa
  
  November 29, 2014
  
  “The current youth unemployment rate in Spain is 54%. So what’s the government’s solution?”
  
  – Let’s remember that even at the best of times, Spain’s adult unemployment was never lower than 18% and the youth unemployment was rarely lower that 27%. The reason for these strange (to us in North America) numbers is that the labor policies in Spain made long-term hiring extremely rare and promoted short-term contractual hiring. “Job security” has not been a feature of life in Spain for almost 20 years. And there has been no job security precisely because of the measures taken by the Socialist government to ensure greater job security.
  
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