We have direct democracy here in Switzerland. Anybody can propose a federal law: just collect 20,000 signatures for it (100,000 for some radical changes). Iron a few wrinkles, and it can be put to vote in one of the next federal referendums (we have one about every two months).
So far, there were about 2 or 3 unconditional income law proposals in the last 10 years, and they were all voted "no". Thankfully. Because "unconditional income" will not magically appear from nowhere, it will be provided from my salary. And my company's income (at this point, I have to pay around 18,000 francs per year even if my company doesn't do anything to finance all social programs already there — so much for "unconditional income"). And I have to pay another 6,000 francs per year for obligatory medical insurance in Switzerland. And I won't be able to receive this "income" anyway, as I am not a Swiss citizen — I just live here and have a company here, and I have to pay _a lot_ for this.
Money don't grow on trees. It always have to be sourced from somewhere. And not from some nameless "rich corporation" — it will be sourced from my already struggling business. And from yours. And from your salary.
> Money don't grow on trees. It always have to be sourced from somewhere. And not from some nameless "rich corporation" — it will be sourced from my already struggling business. And from yours. And from your salary.
Productivity, gained through software and automation, can be used to deliver quality of life improving services at zero marginal cost.
I'm not going to spend this entire comment rehashing the ongoing debate over how much of the world's economy is going to get eaten by this, but suffice it to say I roll my eyes _hard_ now when someone says money doesn't grow on trees.
With enough effort, you can automate every job out of existence. Its just a) how much effort you choose to exert and b) the order in which you do so. Can't these productivity benefits be distributed through consumer excess, and in a roundabout way, be used to deliver a basic income? And if someone complains about their hard earned $fiats, what's to say their job isn't next to be obsoleted?
Unless Switzerland has no form of welfare already - then you're already paying for it, just through a far less efficient means. This may cost more, definitely - or it may cost less when you're no longer making people jump through the welfare hoops to get what they need (food/shelter/whatever). In the US, the amount of paperwork overhead for things like section 8 housing, food stamps, etc, would probably cover soemthing like this. Or at least start to.
As a non Citizen, can you propose a law or vote on them? Cause as much as I value your opinion, you don't speak for Swiss if you're not a Citizen. Most form of socialism is generally problematic for external capital, which seems to be the business you're in, having a company in another country. So it's really unsurprising to me to hear you critique this.
Though, external capital is actually a good point to consider. Whatever social program I think a country decides to adopt, it need to consider a structure where it will remain attractive for capital investment. So as long as there is still a win/win situation between investor and the country's Citizens, I think it's fine, but if that's broken, like in full communism, it's generally a bad outcome for the long term prospect of a country.
As possibly a supporting point, many Americans are unnecessarily on disability(for those outside the US, if you can prove a permanent disability that prohibits you from working, the US government will send you a check every month). They live in low income areas and buy groceries with food stamps. They faked an injury, scammed the system, and now I'm paying for their rent and food. Most people on disability are legitimately disabled, but some are not.
These people are discouraged from working, because, if they are caught working in a manner that is inconsistent with their 'disability', they get in trouble, forfeit their benefits, and possibly jail/prison time for their fraud. But, I see these people routinely trying to work in any way they can get away with. True, some do not, either out of laziness or fear of discovery, but, as a whole, most still try to work.
If that income were replaced with a legal, basic income, I have no doubt more of these people would continue to work and seek work, probably more so since it would not be a risk to their freedom or basic income, and they are the ones currently trying to scam the system. These people are probably at least a subset(or superset) of the demographic that the non-supporters fear most will just leech off the system.
In theory we also would save on the cost of the bureaucracy required to determine who is actually eligible for a particular entitlement. If everyone was getting basic income and we eliminated a bunch of entitlements such as disability and unemployment insurance, then there would be no need for those entire sections of the government payroll.
Of course in order to actually achieve any savings we would need to truly eliminate those other entitlements and fire all of the people that work in the departments that currently oversee them. That is the heavy lift politically.
The same is true for a lot of policies that make sense economically but may not survive contact with the political system. Major tax reform is another obvious example. Everyone knows we could have a variety of different tax systems that are economically better than the one we have today, but in order to get there we need to eliminate some tax carveouts that people love.
The pathway from today to the desired state can't just be hand waved away. If we added universal basic income, what entitlements are we eliminating? How much would that save? What parts of the government are getting shut down, and how much does that save? Who are the winners and losers in the new system?
Some of those people also may have had a disability they recovered from, but no real opportunity to return to the workforce (or no incentive to work towards their recovery). I believe the Social Security office even includes the criteria "could this person get a job?" based on age, skill, and location, and you could remain on disability even though in some theoretical sense you are physically able to work. Such as, you might consider a miner who has some physical reason he is unable to continue in mining; theoretically he might be physically capable of working in some other job, but those jobs don't exist in the community, or he doesn't have the skills and doesn't have enough time left in the workforce to justify retraining.
Which is to say, there are situations where no one is really defrauding the system, but because the rules don't offer any soft landing people have to stay inside a system and can't explore the marginal contributions they are capable of making.
(Still this wouldn't remove the purpose and need for disability insurance, just remove some of the strange structures in it that have developed.)
Maybe I am jaded, living in Santa Cruz, I had a housemate years back on disability and getting money because she couldn't handle scents and some other stuff. She had a handicap placard in her car yet still was able to bike around town for some miles including some slight (50-100') hills. I don't think things are as out of whack as the "Cadillac Welfare Queens" trumpeted up during the years of Reagan, but there are people, maybe only in certain communities, that play up the whole I'm a victim, I'm can't work, you owe me mentality.
Hell, one of the ones locally, managed to get a PhD from the local university some years back but has not had a steady job in over two decades.
The idea of a basic income is interesting, but it would need to be couples with cleaning up some of the able bodied "self proclaimed" victims.
I recently stumbled on the back story of the 1848 revolution in Paris and realized this idea has been already tried out, even if it was a kind of side effect :)
In short:
1. Implemented a "right to work", everybody should have a work at a 2 francs a day
2. Parisian flocked to the state company so they paid anybody they could not give work to 1.5 francs a day for the "right to idle". Something like half the Parisians got paid like this.
3. People started to hear about this from outside the city and started to move to Paris.
4. As you can predict, it ended up as a collapse and one of the cause of this revolution.
That's actually likely to happen in any country that offers it; it could only work if they exclude immigrants from either the program or the country itself, else half of the world will flock to Switzerland to live there. Although IIRC Switzerland already has a very restrictive immigration policy as it is.
"Just because an initiative - such as a basic income - gathers enough signatures to trigger a popular referendum in Switzerland, it doesn't mean it will be passed (indeed the national minimum wage initiative was similar - and was heavily defeated). So far it is firmly opposed by the Swiss Federal Government:"
This would cost Switerland about $168B annually, which is equivalent to their total tax receipts today. I assume that they could get rid of a number of governmental services, but seemingly you'd need to increased taxes above the current 40% income tax level. it's hard to see how the economics could work.
That said, it would be interesting to see how basic income might affect entrepreneurship in the US. Entrepreneurs might not have to move to high cost cities like San Francisco and maybe this would encourage more remote work.
Nobody ever factors in the BI in that tax equation. For some (many?) people, they'd just get their additional tax money back again as their BI payment - net zero.
As a Swiss I second that. I will vote for it, but I expect it to get less than 10% of yes's. It's 10 years too early. Switzerland is progressive in many ways but it is also conservative in many ways - this sort of risky experiment is the kind of thing that will almost certainly not pass for now.
It might sound like a lot, but in the Swiss context, it's not that much. It's a really expensive country to live in, especially in the main cities like Zurich and Geneva. For you 2,256€ is great, but in Switzerland, it's considered good income for a student/intern, that's how expensive it is. (compare that to Portugal where they can pay a intern 150€/month).
I lived in Zürich for a year and remember seeing an ad on the train for work at a grocery store that paid 4k CHF ($3910) per month. The college I was attending paid 35CHF ($34) an hour to students who did work for their department. Just to put it in some perspective. The cost of living is also ridiculously high.
I don't think that's a high number at all for Switzerland - infact it would be quite a struggle to live on that amount after paying for rent, health insurance, utilities and food. I think the amount being proposed would still give quite a high incentive to people to work, as the standard of living on the minimum would be basic to say the least.
I live close to switzerland's borders, and it's incredible the disparity in terms of salary/cost of living between switzerland and all it's neighbors.
I do not consider myself poor, but there's no way I can afford any sort of holiday in switzerland.
I have friends and some colleagues in switzerland: for them, a year's rent of my house would equal for roughly a single month of their salary. For those living close to Geneve, sometimes less.
Switzerland is brutally expensive. If you go to a restaurant for a steak you'll pay like 100 USD just for the steak. If you aren't rich you'll probably become almost vegetarian just from the prices of meat. People often go to France to buy groceries if they live close enough to the border.
Think of the Children! In this case, actually do. Poverty is often exhibited as a cycle. Poor parents, parents with disability, lack of education, or whatever reason someone is poor, will not be able to give it's children a fair opportunity. Chances are the cycle will repeat, the child will be poor too. With a basic reasonable minimum income, I believe that the next generation could turn out better. Hopefully, this could help steer a country away from the cycle of poverty, and benefit society as a whole. Obviously, you'd need to wait 30 years to see such benefit, and you might not care enough to want you wallet to pay for other people's future children and the society you leave behind, but if you do care, I think it's an argument to consider.
Either way, I'm not gonna go ahead and proclaim it's a good idea or not, but I think it's a valid idea that demands thought, and experimentation.
I hope Switzerland has the capacity to both pass this law, and retract it if it doesn't pan out as expected.
Somewhat off topic, but switzerland is ludicrously expensive. I recently visited for a week in Zurich/Bern and the best way to describe the prices is like you are permanently stuck in a theme park or airport. Starbuck Coffee? $7. Can of soda at a convenience store? $3. Any fine dining for two? $300-400
I asked one of the taxi drivers what a cashier makes and he said $80k. With prices that high, It almost feels like a house of cards. I dont understand why exchange rates dont drastically bring these prices into alignment. Seems like importing goods from other countries would completely destroy this ecosystem.
I don't think it's Swiss manufacturing (high value add, high skill) which is the problem -- it's services. And a lot of that isn't exposed to import substitution.
It absolutely does make sense to import high-end high value add products which reduce labor, if you're in an artificially high labor cost environment.
That is a lot of money actually. I think if this happens, Swiss house prices would go up and people would go on 6-month holidays to foreign countries where the cost of living is lower - That's what I would do; though for me it would be a 'working holiday'.
What would that do to the Swiss tax system if people left Switzerland and started paying most of their tax in other countries?
That said, I like the idea of basic income. I just think that the laws around it should be designed very carefully.
The real problem with a proposal by the government to guarantee income is that governments cannot guarantee that they will always have enough money.
What happens if a recession hits and there's 25% unemployment What happens if 25% of the people really decide to stay home and not work? What if unemployment is only 10% but the other 90% become less productive?
Yes, capitalism and "every man for himself" has it's own drawbacks but the positives outweigh the negatives.
How does campaigning for these things work? Are there resources allocated from the state to make sure it is an informed decision, or is it entirely up to private interests to do that?
Both. The voting material everyone gets includes a booklet which informs about the proposed changes and where statements by opposing and approving parties are to be found (this is prepared by the Federal Chancellery as far as I know). This includes a recommandation on each proposal by the respective governement and parlament (respective, because it depends on which organisational level the vote happens, national, cantonal or communal). Which way the recommandation goes is decided by a vote in parliament and the numbers (how many against/in favour) is printed too.
Before that, there is the usual lobbying by different political parties and it depends on the perceived gravitiy of the changes how much you see. There are billboards, discussions in radio, TV and newspapers. Sometimes there are also other groups coming into the public light as happening now eg. with law professors campaigning against the 'Durchsetzungsinitiative' (the discussion about that one is getting more and more heated).
The Law defines the existence of a basic income for all citizens and the conditions it should meet, literally, "to allow any citizen to live with dignity and participate in the social life".
The exact amount of the income is unknown and not part of the Law and any press article is basically reporting based on speculations.
The source of the income is also not part of the initiative. It is the Government's duty to find a way to finance it once the Swiss citizens have decided there should be one.
There are two major suspected targets for collecting the necessary money. First source would be the VAT, through an increase of the current VAT. It is currently set at 8% and it's among the lowest in the world (the Swiss public administration workers are very efficient and working in a public office is not typically the kind of job given to people with personal issues as in many other countries).
The second potential source is a taxation on trading operations. Even the slightest taxation rate on trading operations (aka 0.00001% capped at 0.01$) would immediately solve the issue of funding the revenue.
No it does not. I don't understand why people beliefe this to be true.
If you shift consumtion from some luxery goods to more low end goods there might be a slight increase in the price of some of the lower end goods but because of the price elasticity it will only be a very small amount.
The avg price level should remain about the same, some relativ price would be effected but not to any overly large degree.
We have to remember that this is not a overly radical proposal most people will still have about the same amount that they have now. Some people on the lower end will somewhat increase their income but not enougth to change prices significantly.
The title of the article is "Switzerland will be the first country in the world to vote on having a national wage of £1,700 a month", and the omission of the word "on" led me to believe that they had actually voted for the proposal, rather than that they will vote on the proposal, which is what the article actually says. It is a minor point, but I think the title as it is is slightly misleading.
[+] [-] atemerev|10 years ago|reply
So far, there were about 2 or 3 unconditional income law proposals in the last 10 years, and they were all voted "no". Thankfully. Because "unconditional income" will not magically appear from nowhere, it will be provided from my salary. And my company's income (at this point, I have to pay around 18,000 francs per year even if my company doesn't do anything to finance all social programs already there — so much for "unconditional income"). And I have to pay another 6,000 francs per year for obligatory medical insurance in Switzerland. And I won't be able to receive this "income" anyway, as I am not a Swiss citizen — I just live here and have a company here, and I have to pay _a lot_ for this.
Money don't grow on trees. It always have to be sourced from somewhere. And not from some nameless "rich corporation" — it will be sourced from my already struggling business. And from yours. And from your salary.
[+] [-] toomuchtodo|10 years ago|reply
Productivity, gained through software and automation, can be used to deliver quality of life improving services at zero marginal cost.
I'm not going to spend this entire comment rehashing the ongoing debate over how much of the world's economy is going to get eaten by this, but suffice it to say I roll my eyes _hard_ now when someone says money doesn't grow on trees.
With enough effort, you can automate every job out of existence. Its just a) how much effort you choose to exert and b) the order in which you do so. Can't these productivity benefits be distributed through consumer excess, and in a roundabout way, be used to deliver a basic income? And if someone complains about their hard earned $fiats, what's to say their job isn't next to be obsoleted?
[+] [-] tw04|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] didibus|10 years ago|reply
Though, external capital is actually a good point to consider. Whatever social program I think a country decides to adopt, it need to consider a structure where it will remain attractive for capital investment. So as long as there is still a win/win situation between investor and the country's Citizens, I think it's fine, but if that's broken, like in full communism, it's generally a bad outcome for the long term prospect of a country.
[+] [-] skybrian|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] specialist|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sathackr|10 years ago|reply
These people are discouraged from working, because, if they are caught working in a manner that is inconsistent with their 'disability', they get in trouble, forfeit their benefits, and possibly jail/prison time for their fraud. But, I see these people routinely trying to work in any way they can get away with. True, some do not, either out of laziness or fear of discovery, but, as a whole, most still try to work.
If that income were replaced with a legal, basic income, I have no doubt more of these people would continue to work and seek work, probably more so since it would not be a risk to their freedom or basic income, and they are the ones currently trying to scam the system. These people are probably at least a subset(or superset) of the demographic that the non-supporters fear most will just leech off the system.
[+] [-] krschultz|10 years ago|reply
Of course in order to actually achieve any savings we would need to truly eliminate those other entitlements and fire all of the people that work in the departments that currently oversee them. That is the heavy lift politically.
The same is true for a lot of policies that make sense economically but may not survive contact with the political system. Major tax reform is another obvious example. Everyone knows we could have a variety of different tax systems that are economically better than the one we have today, but in order to get there we need to eliminate some tax carveouts that people love.
The pathway from today to the desired state can't just be hand waved away. If we added universal basic income, what entitlements are we eliminating? How much would that save? What parts of the government are getting shut down, and how much does that save? Who are the winners and losers in the new system?
[+] [-] ianbicking|10 years ago|reply
Which is to say, there are situations where no one is really defrauding the system, but because the rules don't offer any soft landing people have to stay inside a system and can't explore the marginal contributions they are capable of making.
(Still this wouldn't remove the purpose and need for disability insurance, just remove some of the strange structures in it that have developed.)
EconTalk had a really good podcast on disability insurance: http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2012/04/autor_on_disabi.htm...
[+] [-] jmspring|10 years ago|reply
Hell, one of the ones locally, managed to get a PhD from the local university some years back but has not had a steady job in over two decades.
The idea of a basic income is interesting, but it would need to be couples with cleaning up some of the able bodied "self proclaimed" victims.
[+] [-] frogpelt|10 years ago|reply
Also, if they're willing to be unethical and dishonest now, why would a guaranteed basic income change their mindset? They already have that.
[+] [-] unknown|10 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] gbin|10 years ago|reply
In short: 1. Implemented a "right to work", everybody should have a work at a 2 francs a day 2. Parisian flocked to the state company so they paid anybody they could not give work to 1.5 francs a day for the "right to idle". Something like half the Parisians got paid like this. 3. People started to hear about this from outside the city and started to move to Paris. 4. As you can predict, it ended up as a collapse and one of the cause of this revolution.
Source Wikipedia or this abstract: https://books.google.com/books?id=rlhDAQAAMAAJ&lpg=PA866&ots...
[+] [-] Cthulhu_|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sergiotapia|10 years ago|reply
"Just because an initiative - such as a basic income - gathers enough signatures to trigger a popular referendum in Switzerland, it doesn't mean it will be passed (indeed the national minimum wage initiative was similar - and was heavily defeated). So far it is firmly opposed by the Swiss Federal Government:"
[+] [-] rdlecler1|10 years ago|reply
That said, it would be interesting to see how basic income might affect entrepreneurship in the US. Entrepreneurs might not have to move to high cost cities like San Francisco and maybe this would encourage more remote work.
[+] [-] JoeAltmaier|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|10 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] sunseb|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] swombat|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] marvelous|10 years ago|reply
Art. 110a Unconditional basic income
1. The Confederation shall ensure the establishment of an unconditional basic income.
2. The basic income should allow the entire population to lead a dignified life and to participate in public life.
3. The law particularly regulates the financing and the amount of the basic income.
The parliament and the senate recommend to vote against this.
Source in french: https://www.admin.ch/opc/fr/federal-gazette/2015/8727.pdf
The government would then have to implement this.
[+] [-] cromulent|10 years ago|reply
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6499409
[+] [-] nabla9|10 years ago|reply
That's 2,256 EUR or 2,443 USD.
[+] [-] igama|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Muted|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chkuendig|10 years ago|reply
2000.- isn't poverty level and more than wellfare would pay - but not much more.
[+] [-] planetjones|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tenfingers|10 years ago|reply
I do not consider myself poor, but there's no way I can afford any sort of holiday in switzerland.
I have friends and some colleagues in switzerland: for them, a year's rent of my house would equal for roughly a single month of their salary. For those living close to Geneve, sometimes less.
It's mind-blowing, really.
[+] [-] dre85|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] didibus|10 years ago|reply
Either way, I'm not gonna go ahead and proclaim it's a good idea or not, but I think it's a valid idea that demands thought, and experimentation.
I hope Switzerland has the capacity to both pass this law, and retract it if it doesn't pan out as expected.
[+] [-] DanBlake|10 years ago|reply
I asked one of the taxi drivers what a cashier makes and he said $80k. With prices that high, It almost feels like a house of cards. I dont understand why exchange rates dont drastically bring these prices into alignment. Seems like importing goods from other countries would completely destroy this ecosystem.
[+] [-] adventured|10 years ago|reply
"The median wage in the Swiss private sector was 6,118 francs [~$6k] last year. A gas station shop worker in Lucerne is paid 3,570 francs a month"
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-05-18/swiss-reje...
[+] [-] rdl|10 years ago|reply
It absolutely does make sense to import high-end high value add products which reduce labor, if you're in an artificially high labor cost environment.
[+] [-] jondubois|10 years ago|reply
What would that do to the Swiss tax system if people left Switzerland and started paying most of their tax in other countries?
That said, I like the idea of basic income. I just think that the laws around it should be designed very carefully.
[+] [-] frogpelt|10 years ago|reply
What happens if a recession hits and there's 25% unemployment What happens if 25% of the people really decide to stay home and not work? What if unemployment is only 10% but the other 90% become less productive?
Yes, capitalism and "every man for himself" has it's own drawbacks but the positives outweigh the negatives.
[+] [-] CuriousSkeptic|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thallian|10 years ago|reply
Before that, there is the usual lobbying by different political parties and it depends on the perceived gravitiy of the changes how much you see. There are billboards, discussions in radio, TV and newspapers. Sometimes there are also other groups coming into the public light as happening now eg. with law professors campaigning against the 'Durchsetzungsinitiative' (the discussion about that one is getting more and more heated).
[+] [-] dschiptsov|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nokya|10 years ago|reply
The exact amount of the income is unknown and not part of the Law and any press article is basically reporting based on speculations.
The source of the income is also not part of the initiative. It is the Government's duty to find a way to finance it once the Swiss citizens have decided there should be one.
There are two major suspected targets for collecting the necessary money. First source would be the VAT, through an increase of the current VAT. It is currently set at 8% and it's among the lowest in the world (the Swiss public administration workers are very efficient and working in a public office is not typically the kind of job given to people with personal issues as in many other countries).
The second potential source is a taxation on trading operations. Even the slightest taxation rate on trading operations (aka 0.00001% capped at 0.01$) would immediately solve the issue of funding the revenue.
[+] [-] listic|10 years ago|reply
Who will actually get to vote and when?
[+] [-] nairboon|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nokya|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MicroBerto|10 years ago|reply
How does this not create some form of inflationary influence?
[+] [-] nickik|10 years ago|reply
If you shift consumtion from some luxery goods to more low end goods there might be a slight increase in the price of some of the lower end goods but because of the price elasticity it will only be a very small amount.
The avg price level should remain about the same, some relativ price would be effected but not to any overly large degree.
We have to remember that this is not a overly radical proposal most people will still have about the same amount that they have now. Some people on the lower end will somewhat increase their income but not enougth to change prices significantly.
[+] [-] josm|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mrow84|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] slevin063|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dang|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] emanuelsaringan|10 years ago|reply
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