SPAIN: Yolanda Díaz, the left-wing labour minister of Spain, has put forth a plan aimed at addressing social inequality by providing every young person in the nation with €20,000 (£17,000) to be spent on education, training, or establishing a business once they turn 18.
Díaz’s Sumar platform, which revealed the policy ahead of Spain’s upcoming snap general election on July 23, states that the initiative would require €10 billion in funding, which would be generated through the taxation of wealthy individuals.
Sumar said the goal was to ensure “equal opportunities” regardless of individuals’ family backgrounds or income. The proposed payments, starting at age 18 and lasting until age 23, would be accompanied by administrative assistance to support education, training, or entrepreneurship.
“It’s about letting young people have a future and giving them the chance to study or start a business without having to depend on their surnames or the family they are from,” Díaz said to a gathering of foreign journalists in Madrid on Wednesday noon.
“That’s why we’re proposing that people will be given €20,000 when they turn 18 so that they can develop, whether that’s by studying or by setting up a business. That’s what’s at stake on July 23,” she added.
Díaz has confirmed that a policy known as “universal inheritance” will be accessible to all young Spaniards, irrespective of their financial situations. The funding for this policy will come from taxing individuals earning over €3 million per year. Sumar has estimated that it would amount to approximately 0.8% of Spain’s GDP.
The minister, who was born and reared in a firmly communist family, said that because of a lack of funding, she had been unable to pursue her own ambition of becoming an employment inspector.
She stated that becoming an employment inspector in Spain would have required around five years.
However, due to her working-class background and the financial constraints she faced, she never had the opportunity to pursue that path. She emphasised that this initiative is a form of redistribution, aiming to provide a promising future for the youth in our nation, irrespective of their family name.
Sumar’s proposal has caused concern among politicians from both sides of Spain’s political spectrum. Nadia Calviño, the economy minister in the socialist-led coalition government, expressed doubts about the feasibility of the policy.
Calviño stated in an interview with Onda Cero radio on Monday, “Anyone who proposes giving subsidies or grants without any kind of restrictions when it comes to income levels or aims needs to explain how it would be financed because we’re going to have to carry on with a responsible fiscal policy over the coming years.”
The opposition conservative People’s Party (PP), currently leading the socialists in the polls but anticipating relying on the far-right Vox party for government formation if it wins the election, was even more straightforward in its criticism.
A PP spokesperson criticised Sumar for getting her priorities terribly wrong and suggested the administration focus on other issues in a nation where they said “27% of the population is at risk of social exclusion, where the unemployment rate is the highest in Europe, where families can’t make it to the end of the month, and where self-employed people are struggling to stay afloat”.
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