Aygo
Rock n' Roll Doggie
I tell you what I think, I think it is false that Spain has a 20% of unemployment, I spend about 6-8 months a year in Spain and when I came back last September I expected to see a really difficult situation, but it's not so, I think that about 8% of labour are working without getting the National Health Insurance, so they report to be unemployed and they can continue using the system without paying, they may be also accepting lower sallaries, it is a big deal for emplyers who are getting cheap labour, saving lots of Euros and having employees who can't defend their rights, there is a great amount of corruption and people, especially inmigrants are accepting these conditions because they have to pay the astronomical mortages the signed a few years ago, I work with lots of people, and I don't know but a few unemployed, but there are quite a few that have a "creative" new way of working, of course the government is doing nothing about it. I'm not saying there isn't unemployment in Spain, but not to the level official figures show, if it were so high we'd be about a revolution.
Well, I have many many friends from Spain, I often go to Spain for years and I can confirm that Spain has a chronical problem of unemployment (unlike Portugal: 11% now, 5% in the late 1990's). All these people confirm me, depending on the region, that it's pretty accurate to affirm that 1 in 5 people is unemployed in Spain. If Spain always had more than 10% of unemployment (I remember those numbers already being around 15% before the crisis), why wouldn't it reach 20%, specially when Spain had the explosion of a financial bubble like Ireland too? Why would those numbers be fake, when many people confirm it (even their Government, the EU and the OECD reports)?
Plus, maybe this idea is hard to accept across the ocean, but for us, Europeans, health is not a business and, since it's a vital issue for any human being, it's the responsability of any member that composes the State. So, we believe that health should be free (should... in Portugal, for example, the legislations contours the Constitution and imposes unconstitutional laws that make patients pay an appointment or a surgery... something that we already pay in taxes). That's why we pay taxes: to guarantee that no one (without exception) will be treated differently in a public hospital depending on its annual/monthly income, to guarantee that everyone can have access to something that is basic need for life... for free (in theory).
Since Ireland's Government is imposing politics that will bring even more decrease in quality of life, that's another reason for unemployees not needing to pay it.