The middle class is essential for a country, any country, can enjoy stability and progress. That is why the recent study of the Social Observatory of the la Caixa Foundation which warns of the progressive weakening of the middle class in Spain, a deterioration that, if it continues to occur, could have serious and very negative consequences. In the last 30 years, the population group with average incomes has been losing weight on the whole. Likewise, the Spanish middle class is proportionally smaller than that of the higher-income European countries.
One of the causes of the thinning of the middle class must be sought in insufficient generational change. Young people who have entered the labor market in the last 20 years have had fewer opportunities than in the past to find stable employment with a sufficient salary. To the young Spanish find it very difficult to find jobs that allow them to look to the future with confidence and turn their vital projects into reality.
The middle class has been losing weight and economic inequalities have increased. Despite not being the EU country in which the middle class decreases the most, in Spain it is where the poorest 10% have fallen the most in relation to the richest 10%. The Spanish labor market also drags a serious problem of duality: A part of the workers have permanent and well-paid jobs, while the rest must settle for temporary and poorly paid jobs. The figures provided by the study, whose authors are professors Olga Cantó and Luis Ayala, reflect that inequality in the distribution of labor income. Thus, 20% of employees account for more than 43% of total income from paid employment.
middle class is the one that contributes the most to financing the services linked to the welfare state, such as health, education, pensions and the rest of the social policies. These maintain cohesion and prevent society from becoming polarized between rich and poor, as we have seen It has happened in several Latin American countries. This disparity translates into a society with quality private services for the rich and poor public services for the poor.
Of course, this fracture in society, with lack of cohesion and co-responsibility associated with it, has dire consequences, including the erosion of democracy and political instability, fueled by extreme positions and for the lack of a vision and shared purposes.
One of the underlying problems of the Spanish economy is that when a crisis occurs, such as the terrible financial crisis of 2008, quickly causes an increase in inequality, an inequality that later, in times of economic boom, It is very difficult to mend.
The chronic problems of the Spanish economy are not easy to solve, since they have structural causes. However, the labor reform of the Government of the PSOE and United We Can should serve, at least, to significantly reduce the number of temporary contracts and partially correct the existing duality in our labor market, split between ‘first class’ workers and ‘second class’ workers.
Reference-www.elperiodico.com