Spain is about to try out a version of the Universal Basic Income.
From the EUobserver:
The coronavirus has made things even more difficult for the one-quarter of all Spaniards (12.3 million people) at risk of poverty or social exclusion by pummelling a country not fully recovered from the previous economic crisis.
However, the pandemic has also sped up the implementation of the much-awaited minimum income guarantee.
Spain's Socialist-led coalition government approved on Friday (29 May) the measure to help 850,000 vulnerable families - accounting for about 2.3 million people.
Read it here. (Broken link fixed.)
A Universal Basic Income is inevitable; it’s only a matter of how long conservatives will be able to hold out against it. Now we have a laboratory demonstration; many will be watching closely, confidently expecting (and desperately hoping for) it to fail, but I don’t think it will. And I won’t give up on the idea even if this particular trial does fail. Whether it takes four more years or forty to take root in the United States, the concept is inevitable as more and more jobs disappear forever to automation.