Reading books from yesterday often throws you back into the present, due to their chilling relevance.
“Government has become ungovernable; that is, it cannot leave off governing”, Chesterton wrote in Eugenics and Other Evils; “law has become lawless; that is, it cannot see where laws should stop. The chief feature of our time is the meekness of the mob and the madness of the government”.
I think he is talking about Spain and Pedro Sánchez’s government. Just when you think they can’t get any more incompetent, any more deceitful, any more dangerous, they outdo themselves. The Spanish government is a case study for science, specifically for criminalistics.
In the midst of an unprecedented immigration crisis, Italy and Spain show two different approaches, with different outcomes: Meloni achieving the best data for containing the illegal invasion and Sánchez achieving the worst and creating unmanageable chaos in the reception centres.
In this situation, the Spanish prime minister announced a visit to Africa at the end of August, with stops in Mauritania, Gambia, and Senegal; in other words, a visit to three of the five countries that export the largest numbers of illegal immigrants to European shores. Innocently, we all thought that his trip would be aimed at somehow curbing a situation that is not just putting Spanish social services, but also public security at risk. We were wrong. Pedro Sánchez went to Africa to promise 250,000 jobs to migrants. It sounds like a joke.
“Immigration is wealth, development, and prosperity,” Sánchez dared to say from Mauritania on the same day we learned that, in the Canary Islands alone, the arrival of illegal immigrants has grown by 123%, with 500 new arrivals every day on the island, which has been on alert for months due to its material inability to cope with them.
It is difficult to know what is more irresponsible, the effect of his words amid a crisis of illegal immigration or the contempt he shows for the two and a half million unemployed Spaniards—a figure that rises to three million if we eliminate the farce of “permanent-discontinuous employees,” a ruse devised by the government to artificially lower the official unemployment figures. They didn’t invent it, but the Left always does the same thing: when it doesn’t know how to solve a problem, it simply changes its name.
Unemployment champions
While Sánchez is soliciting workers from Africa, one out of every four unemployed people in the eurozone lives in Spain, as reflected in the latest data just published by Eurostat: Spain leads the EU in unemployment, doubles the European unemployment rate, and also leads in youth unemployment. Anyone—except Pedro Sánchez—would think that this alarming situation, which has been going on for almost three years now, might have something to do with the fact that the Socialist government is the only one in the eurozone to have a communist admirer of Castro, Chávez, and Maduro as its labour minister. The French philosopher Etienne Gilson once remarked that “History is the only laboratory we have in which to test the consequences of thought.” And Yolanda Díaz’s thoughts have been tested over and over again with the same result: hunger, violence, corruption, and poverty.
In case there was any doubt about the minister’s communist affiliation, not so long ago she prefaced a new edition of the Communist Manifesto, saying that it is an “open letter to humanity and the working classes,” even a “fraternal text,” and a “magical and inexhaustible book.” She is somewhat right that Marxism is magic, because wherever a Marxist comes to power, individuals and classes and private property all disappear, individual wealth disappears, and the wealth, privileges, and belly of the Marxist who has come to power grow.
According to Eurostat, Spain has the highest unemployment rate in the EU with 11.5%, followed by Greece at 9.9% and Finland at 8.4%. According to Spain’s internal data, in August, not only have jobs been destroyed at a rate of 260 jobs per hour and 327 fewer self-employed per day, but the bloodletting of disappearing companies also continues, surpassing the 31,490 companies that closed down in the last four years of socialist government. Brilliant.
As it is impossible to sustain such a large state with these numbers of taxpayers and pensioners, the government has found the solution for the umpteenth time: raising taxes. Sánchez justifies it in his own way, pointing out that he wants Spain to have “more public transport and fewer Lamborghinis”; let’s overlook the fact that the luxury car that bothers Sánchez so much can be afforded by fewer than fifty people a year. Perhaps that’s why Santiago Abascal, leader of VOX, rightly responded: “he’s not against Lamborghinis or Falcons,”—referring to the president’s favourite means of transport—”he’s chasing workers’ diesel vehicles, he’s destroying the middle class”.
Spain lives, in short, in the perfect social-communist storm: it only seems to colour its brutal rise in unemployment a little when the government injects bread for today and hunger for tomorrow by increasing the supply of public sector jobs. In fact, as if following a socialist handbook destined to fail, Spain surpassed the three million mark in public sector employment last July. Given the state of the private sector, the conclusion is simple: too much suckling for so little teat.
Do unemployment benefits work?
Apart from the usual failure of Marxist policies, the ineffectiveness of socialism—or whatever Sánchez preaches—and the economic overburden of supporting thousands of Africans of perfect age and condition to work and earn a living in their countries of origin, another question remains: is the Spanish unemployment system working? Spoiler alert: no.
Let us again compare Sánchez’s model with that of Meloni. The Italian leader decided at the end of 2022 to end unemployment benefits for those who refuse a “reasonable” job: “for those who can work, the solution cannot be the Citizens’ Income.” Result: in the first five months, 127,000 people ceased to be unemployed and today the unemployment rate in Italy has fallen to 6.5%, the lowest figure since 2008.
Everything that is happening with employment, and also with illegal immigration, in Spain and elsewhere in Europe, was prophesied in 1850 by the writer and economist of the French liberal school of thought, Frederic Bastiat:
Man can live and satisfy his wants only by ceaseless labor; by the ceaseless application of his faculties to natural resources. This process is the origin of property, but it is also true that a man may live and satisfy his wants by seizing and consuming the products of the labor of others. This process is the origin of plunder. Now since man is naturally inclined to avoid pain—and since labor is pain in itself—it follows that men will resort to plunder whenever plunder is easier than work. It stops when it becomes more painful and more dangerous than labor,” he concluded.
At least we now know what to do when Sánchez returns to the dark room of history from which he should never have emerged.
Spain Faces Migration Surge, But Government Seeks to Attract More
Photo: POOL MONCLOA/FERNANDO CALVO
Reading books from yesterday often throws you back into the present, due to their chilling relevance.
“Government has become ungovernable; that is, it cannot leave off governing”, Chesterton wrote in Eugenics and Other Evils; “law has become lawless; that is, it cannot see where laws should stop. The chief feature of our time is the meekness of the mob and the madness of the government”.
I think he is talking about Spain and Pedro Sánchez’s government. Just when you think they can’t get any more incompetent, any more deceitful, any more dangerous, they outdo themselves. The Spanish government is a case study for science, specifically for criminalistics.
In the midst of an unprecedented immigration crisis, Italy and Spain show two different approaches, with different outcomes: Meloni achieving the best data for containing the illegal invasion and Sánchez achieving the worst and creating unmanageable chaos in the reception centres.
In this situation, the Spanish prime minister announced a visit to Africa at the end of August, with stops in Mauritania, Gambia, and Senegal; in other words, a visit to three of the five countries that export the largest numbers of illegal immigrants to European shores. Innocently, we all thought that his trip would be aimed at somehow curbing a situation that is not just putting Spanish social services, but also public security at risk. We were wrong. Pedro Sánchez went to Africa to promise 250,000 jobs to migrants. It sounds like a joke.
“Immigration is wealth, development, and prosperity,” Sánchez dared to say from Mauritania on the same day we learned that, in the Canary Islands alone, the arrival of illegal immigrants has grown by 123%, with 500 new arrivals every day on the island, which has been on alert for months due to its material inability to cope with them.
It is difficult to know what is more irresponsible, the effect of his words amid a crisis of illegal immigration or the contempt he shows for the two and a half million unemployed Spaniards—a figure that rises to three million if we eliminate the farce of “permanent-discontinuous employees,” a ruse devised by the government to artificially lower the official unemployment figures. They didn’t invent it, but the Left always does the same thing: when it doesn’t know how to solve a problem, it simply changes its name.
Unemployment champions
While Sánchez is soliciting workers from Africa, one out of every four unemployed people in the eurozone lives in Spain, as reflected in the latest data just published by Eurostat: Spain leads the EU in unemployment, doubles the European unemployment rate, and also leads in youth unemployment. Anyone—except Pedro Sánchez—would think that this alarming situation, which has been going on for almost three years now, might have something to do with the fact that the Socialist government is the only one in the eurozone to have a communist admirer of Castro, Chávez, and Maduro as its labour minister. The French philosopher Etienne Gilson once remarked that “History is the only laboratory we have in which to test the consequences of thought.” And Yolanda Díaz’s thoughts have been tested over and over again with the same result: hunger, violence, corruption, and poverty.
In case there was any doubt about the minister’s communist affiliation, not so long ago she prefaced a new edition of the Communist Manifesto, saying that it is an “open letter to humanity and the working classes,” even a “fraternal text,” and a “magical and inexhaustible book.” She is somewhat right that Marxism is magic, because wherever a Marxist comes to power, individuals and classes and private property all disappear, individual wealth disappears, and the wealth, privileges, and belly of the Marxist who has come to power grow.
According to Eurostat, Spain has the highest unemployment rate in the EU with 11.5%, followed by Greece at 9.9% and Finland at 8.4%. According to Spain’s internal data, in August, not only have jobs been destroyed at a rate of 260 jobs per hour and 327 fewer self-employed per day, but the bloodletting of disappearing companies also continues, surpassing the 31,490 companies that closed down in the last four years of socialist government. Brilliant.
As it is impossible to sustain such a large state with these numbers of taxpayers and pensioners, the government has found the solution for the umpteenth time: raising taxes. Sánchez justifies it in his own way, pointing out that he wants Spain to have “more public transport and fewer Lamborghinis”; let’s overlook the fact that the luxury car that bothers Sánchez so much can be afforded by fewer than fifty people a year. Perhaps that’s why Santiago Abascal, leader of VOX, rightly responded: “he’s not against Lamborghinis or Falcons,”—referring to the president’s favourite means of transport—”he’s chasing workers’ diesel vehicles, he’s destroying the middle class”.
Spain lives, in short, in the perfect social-communist storm: it only seems to colour its brutal rise in unemployment a little when the government injects bread for today and hunger for tomorrow by increasing the supply of public sector jobs. In fact, as if following a socialist handbook destined to fail, Spain surpassed the three million mark in public sector employment last July. Given the state of the private sector, the conclusion is simple: too much suckling for so little teat.
Do unemployment benefits work?
Apart from the usual failure of Marxist policies, the ineffectiveness of socialism—or whatever Sánchez preaches—and the economic overburden of supporting thousands of Africans of perfect age and condition to work and earn a living in their countries of origin, another question remains: is the Spanish unemployment system working? Spoiler alert: no.
Let us again compare Sánchez’s model with that of Meloni. The Italian leader decided at the end of 2022 to end unemployment benefits for those who refuse a “reasonable” job: “for those who can work, the solution cannot be the Citizens’ Income.” Result: in the first five months, 127,000 people ceased to be unemployed and today the unemployment rate in Italy has fallen to 6.5%, the lowest figure since 2008.
Everything that is happening with employment, and also with illegal immigration, in Spain and elsewhere in Europe, was prophesied in 1850 by the writer and economist of the French liberal school of thought, Frederic Bastiat:
At least we now know what to do when Sánchez returns to the dark room of history from which he should never have emerged.
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