>> From: joand315 <joand315 at yahoo.com>
>>> Urgh... ugh... would like to point out that the Soviet Union did. It
>>> was illegal to be unemployed for more than three months in the USSR.
>>> Is memory that short?
>> It was also illegal to be unemployed in Spain, at one time.
>> -joan
> Really? When? Was this a Franco thing? Pardon my utter ignorance.
Well, I lived there post-Franco but pre true democracy, and it was still the law. I assumed it became law while Franco was in power, and that it held true for all of Spain and not just where I was living. If you didn't have a job, you reported to the city hall and they gave you a job, like street sweeper, or park cleaner. It was a form of workfare, I suppose. I used to see the same old fellow sweeping the same piece of sidewalk in front of the same bar all day long. He would stop sweeping and visit with everyone as they went by. (This was a small fishing village with a socialist mayor.) Someone explained to me, when I asked, that sweeping was his job. They did have absolutely free medicine for everyone in Spain, but a grammar school education had to be paid for, while University was free. Anyway that was in the late 70's and it has all changed now.
-joan
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