“We need worthy and decent unemployments”… and a Universal Basic Income could be useful for that.

Sir, Tobias Buck quotes Marcel Jansen, a professor of economy at Madrid’s Autónoma university with “More than a quarter of unemployed workers in Spain have been out of a job for more than four years. Their chances of getting back into the labour market are very dire” “Spain’s first quarter job losses less severe than usual” April 29.

It relates directly to an Op-Ed I wrote in Venezuela (before I was censored there) titled “We need worthy and decent unemployments”. I quote the following from it:

“What politician does not speak up for the need to create decent and well paid jobs for young people? But, if that's not possible, and the economy is not able to deliver that on its own ... What on earth do we do?

Society must of course do its utmost seeking to solve the problem of youth unemployment ... including taking leisure to levels never thought of… six months vacations! But it also needs to prepare itself to handle a growing number of unemployed, not cyclical but structural, that is, those who never ever in their life will have a chance to get an economically productive job.

The power of a nation, and the productivity of its economy, which so far has depended primarily on the quality of its employees may, in the future, also depend on the quality of its unemployed, at least in the sense of these not interrupting those working.”

And recently I have reflected on that a Universal Basic Income, as that is not-having-a-job-or-not related social contribution, could be a significant part of the efforts needed.

@PerKurowski ©