Gets spent on rockets and their armed forces, do you think they are stupid enough to spend aid on helping the poor ??

OK i'm not going to waste much more time on this, but I will leave it that I am not suggesting that welfare should be abandoned. That's not the point.

The point is that we collectively tend to believe that welfare is our saviour. We have a welfare mindset. Now that we can't afford welfare anymore and it's necessarily being summarily dismantled, the natural reaction is to believe we need more welfare. And by the way, since we regular people don't have much to contribute anymore, let's get it from anybody who does, because it's unfair to anyone who doesn't.

But that is demonstrably what will drive us further into poverty, not prosperity. If we go too far down that road, nobody will have anything (except of course, for the ruling class). That's already beginning to happen.

Instead of increasing taxes, we should be cutting them. Instead of handouts, we should be providing more resources and opportunities for people to help themselves. Instead of penalising prosperity, we should be encouraging it in every way we can. That's the only thing that will enable people to pull themselves out of this mess. Welfare simply won't ever do that. It is self-defeating.

Relying on a dinosaur government, now so desperate that is has no choice but to shortsightedly seek as much revenue as it can get from anywhere it can, is a complete waste of time, resources, talent, and only results in discouraging enthusiastic souls who could otherwise be making great contributions. WE as individuals are far smarter, and far more nimble than any government bureaucracy, yet we are to a large degree, shackled by it, and have resigned ourselves to rely on it for much of our well-being. So, we just don't have much enthusiasm anymore. It's not in our hands, is it? Not my responsibility. And anyone with any enthusiasm is just silly and naive.

Changing all that would require a very reverse mentality from the way we collectively think right now, and I really don't see that coming either. It will probably require a full-out, long-lasting depression to change our mindset.

/rant.

So you think that public health and education should be dismantled, after all they are part of the underpins of a welfare state. There were 4 things that Britian and Europe believed in after WWII

1. Free education for all
2. Free healthcare for all
3. A dignified state pension upon retirement
4. That people should not go hungry or cold whatever their circumstances

They are the things I believe in, in Spain as much as the UK

Spain never got round to addressing point 4 - and they didnt quite manage 1 and 2. So in that case, yes we do need more welfare state, not less

As a sidepoint, do you know that only the poorest families are guarenteed a state school place in Spain? I have just learnt that and I am in shock. My child may not get in the local school because we earn too much so we may be made to send him to a private school instead. Incredible!

I can think of a much easier solution than some of the convoluted ideas posted above, which have all been tried before and failed, and I'll stick with Spain without unfair comparisons.

Pure austerity measures can't work, the country needs growth, it needs to increase its exports. It can't do that from within, it needs to borrow more from outside. The extra 'borrowing' needs quantitative easing, it needs to print its own money, and finally, debt needs to be restructured.

It needs to leave the Euro to do any of that. Preferably along with Germany.

Yes sure, but Andalucia cannot not make those decisions. They can only do what they are indeed doing

The central government could leave the Euro, but then there is a danger that the post-war years would come back to Spain, when the country was effectively a 3rd world country with nobody willing to trade with it

Most countries are willing to trade with those that can produce the goods at the right price and quality.

Not if that country has been ostrocised by the rest of the international market e.g. Cuba

erm, you seem to have missed first line of my post.

All very noble - no argument. But somebody's gotta pay for it.

History demonstrates that after a few decades of such generous entitlements, the "need" to prosper diminishes, and people start to exhibit less personal responsibility for their own well-being, begin to blame everyone else for what they don't have, and ultimately discover it's a hell of a lot easier to consume entitlements than to pay for them. They are actually increasingly rewarded for that behaviour, and ironically, the ones who take responsibility and contribute the most are the least rewarded -even penalised.

So, the entire model inevitably starts to go lopsided. Tax revenues go down, whilst public spending goes up. Taxation necessarily becomes increasingly oppressive on anyone who manages to have a taxable income. Those that contribute less are rewarded with entitlements and zero tax burden.

So, what effect might such an environment have on society in general? Increasing class-envy? Class disparity? Diminishing middle class? Greed? Vindictiveness? Motivation to squander money away from public view? Tax evasion?

Sound familiar?

Precisely.

Unfortunately we've driven far too far down the wrong road for far too long, especially in the UK.

Very difficult now to turn around, go back and then proceed in the right direction.

Again you are talking about the UK, not Spain. People do not get handed 1000s every month by the state here, a couple of hundred if they are lucky

All this nonsense that right-wingers are spouting out about not being able to afford a welfare state is nonsense. It is convenient for them to say this as it means more public services will be privatized and so GDP and shareprices will increase and threfore more money for them

It is the very capitalist model that is broken, not the welfare state. These 2 arguments is what we are fighting about in Spain, and within Europe at the moment. It is essentially another war between the fascists (the bankers and politicians) and the socialists/republicans (the educators/doctors/industrialists)

I don't agree with your analysis of the post war years for Spain, if you mean WW2 then Spain was relatively unscathed compared to the rest of Europe, if you mean its Civil War then I can't see the years that followed affecting its trade with the rest of the world (too much).

Spain didn't get aid from the American Marshall plan after WW2, and that would have had a serious effect on its fortunes, because the plan saved the economies of the main combatants, mainly Germany.

I would blame Spain's far too slow industrialisation and lack of reform on the long lasting dictatorship, didn't it go on until 1975? That's a relatively short time for a democracy to establish itself.

So I find myself blaming Franco for the perilous state of the country? I'm not too sure I'm right about that.

Sounds reasonable. Generally, multinational companies won't invest in dictatorships (the risk of asset seizure is just too great - and the shareholders don't like links to totalitarian regimes). Also, dictatorships have trouble raising capital on the international markets for the same reason and they tend to concentrate the internally generated wealth of a country in the hands of the people at the top.
Consequently, most dictatorships are either poor, pre-industrial countries or have natural resources (such as oil) that they exploit.

So really we can say that "modern Spain" only started 40 years ago and only got it's head in the trough in 1986 when it joined the EU. It's a tenet of economics that for a country to be wealthy it needs strong and fair laws, stable government and mature institutions (police, courts, regulators, oversight to remove corruption, processes to uphold citizens' rights). How many of those Spain currently has is something that could be debated all night.

After the civil war. Yes the lack of a Marshall plan was a hugh hinderence, Spain's economy was destroyed just like other European countries were

Franco did plenty of economic reforms in his latest years - in the 60s and 70s - and they were very successful. Most of the expats are here as a result of them

Not everything Dictatorships do are bad, just like not everything Democratic countries do are good. China has managed lots of economic growth in a 1 party state. Depends what your goal is of course

Why should Spain receive anything from the Marshall plan - as you say the help was offered to combatants. All Franco did was be a Nazi sympathiser and help transport Jews to their deaths.

Spain has all those things. Spanish history runs very deep you know. Franco didnt abolish everything overnight, and neither did the transition.