Earning €1,350 while a benefit brings home €1,650

When the benefit for not working matches a €1,350 salary

How much does a government have to pay for staying at home to be worthwhile? The question stopped being rhetorical with a message attributed to writer Lucía Etxebarria: "my partner doesn't work, but receives €1,350 under the minimum vital income scheme." From there comes the comparison that stings: a salary of €1,350 versus a benefit that, in the most widely shared version of the case, reaches €1,650 without clocking in. The story comes with no attached document —just a tweet and a figure doing the rounds— but it works as a trigger because it hits the exact nerve: the gap between what the labour market pays and what the State pays for staying out of it.

The IMV doesn't look at the home you live in

The design of Spain's minimum vital income (ingreso mínimo vital, a means-tested benefit) has a antiestéticature that surprises anyone looking at it for the first time: your main residence doesn't count as wealth. The home you live in —a €50,000 flat or a one-million-euro property, at the extreme cited— doesn't reduce your entitlement. What is looked at is cash, shares and other assets: from around €22,000, the approximate figure used in this discussion, the door closes.

From that asymmetry comes the most repeated reproach: the system treats better those who run down their savings than those who save. The practical consequence, according to that account, is that the benefit stops being a safety net and becomes a subsidy for bad management. The example given is of an acquaintance, 57, with a flat in Chamberí who would keep the over-52s payment (a benefit for long-term unemployed people over 52) because the calculation looks at income and contributions: €500,000 in a deposit at 1% wouldn't reach the required minimum. Whether the case is accurate or not, it comes with no documentation whatsoever. The suspicion, however, is already circulating without needing proof.

Is the problem solved by raising the minimum wage to €2,500?

The most widespread answer is that the shame lies not in the benefit but in the wage: €2,500 as the minimum wage in a country where renting a flat "is above €1,000." The objection comes immediately and undeveloped: what would happen the day after imposing that figure? It's left hanging, which is where good intentions usually stay.

The counterpoint comes from the other side: raising the wage floor levels downwards, makes everything more expensive under the excuse of funding benefits, and leaves the worker with the same purchasing power as before. And then there's the small-scale evidence, the kind that doesn't make it into reports: someone quit rowing for €1,290 with Sundays and public holidays included and days off on Mondays or Tuesdays. That calculation —hours, weekends, rent prices— is what really drives decisions, not headline incentives.

Rent, the factor almost nobody disputes

With rent above a thousand euros in the areas where there are jobs, the debate shifts on its own. One camp argues that prices rise because of scarcity and that the demographic pressure of the last decade —five million people arriving in six years, it is said— explains why no more tenants fit in the same housing stock. Another responds that what was built during the bubble and tourist rentals weigh more, and that blaming the latest arrival is convenient and probably false. Neither thesis is quantified here. Both, however, agree on the essentials: housing has swallowed the wage debate.

Against that backdrop, public debt approaching two trillion euros stops being a distant headline and becomes the fine print of every proposal. The benefit, the minimum wage, rent and the fraud suspected without proof always end up in the same ledger.

With €1,350 you clock in; with €1,650, you don't. If that no longer grates on anyone, the problem isn't the incentive: it's that we've normalised the salary being the worst offer on the market.