Switzerland is the only country in the world that implements direct democracy. You can really feel the difference to the rest of Europe. Swiss more often than not stand behind decisions made by their government. When talking about their politicians, the Swiss say "WE decided that ..." whereas e.g., Germans say: "THEY decided that ..."
If you look for a coding job in Europe, Zurich is a great place to live and is the only place where net-salaries are on par with the Bay Area: You can expect to get 7000 - 12000 CHF / month after taxes. If you are from the EU and thinking to move, you find my email address in my Hacknews profile. Also you can read here why I moved to Switzerland to work in IT: https://medium.com/@iwaninzurich/eight-reasons-why-i-moved-t...
As already mentioned, you're ignoring a fact that even by working there for 10 years, it's close to impossible to buy a part of land and build a house anywhere near a city. Land and house prices are too high to stay there for live. It's only profitable to live there, make savings and buy 2-3 houses in Uk/Germany for it. Like two of my co-workers did.
The parent posts this pretty regularly, and I followed up with him. Turns out if you are a US citizen it's not going to happen. Not sure why he keeps posting here as a majority of people are in the US, with no warning given.
The story of Switzerland's direct democracy is exaggerated. There is no such thing as a complete direct democracy, even if a few individual questions are decided by popular vote.
The only questions you can decide by referendum is things that either have no budgetary consequences or things that set a long term political direction (join the EU, basic income, ...).
Anything that has a shorter horizon needs to be tightly coupled to the budget and you can only adopt a complete budget, not decide on individual questions. Once you accept that you only choose between budgetA and budgetB for the next year/term - you also accept that those who write those budgets as propositions are "parties" and you have arrived at parliamentary, not direct, democracy. Most democracies already have referendums on things like this, but still aren't "direct democracies".
In short - the Swiss have just slightly more referendums than the rest, but they too have a parliament with parties that propose complete, coherent budgets. I like the idea of slightly more referendums but no country that has a budget with thousands of expenses and thousands of different taxes could be governed only direct votes on each of them (perhaps most importantly because no one is interested in voting on thousands of issues).
Total after tax compensation is still better in the bay area although when you compare total compensation at companies like Google and Facebook. So if your in the USA already it's would be a minor downgrade and a huge move. Immigration timelines are also about similar with about 10+ years necessary to become a swiss citizen like in the USA.
It's definitely an easier move for an EU citizen to do than the USA although from a family and immigration standpoint. But immigration wise it isn't hard to get an H1B or L1 visa since the hiring company will handle all of it. From there applying for a green card is pretty automatic. For canadian's and australians, it's even easier to immigrate, almost the same amount of work as moving to switzerland for an EU citizen.
Indian and Chinese people have a hard time with green cards in the USA because there is per country lineups. The immigration 'lines' for those 2 countries are much longer than any other nationality because of their population sizes. Switzerland or somewhere else in the EU might be more attractive from that standpoint, although I don't know if they implemented something similar there.
Cost of living wise CH is definitely more expensive. Housing costs are also close in SF and CH.
The amount of net-saleries don't tell you much about the standard of living you will have in a certain place. The expenses can be so radically different, especially if you think of ever having a family. Also work hours differ a lot.
I have worked at Universities and IT in the US, Switzerland, and Austria. Austria has almost free kindergardens, schools, and higher education. In CH (basel area) I paid 70USD/day/child kindergarden fee. In the US it's quite normal to start saving for your kids education when they are born.
US health care is a mess. Even after paying tons of money you have to set money aside for all the times you get screwed over by insurgence companies refusing to pay certain parts of a procedure. If you are honest with yourself you have to subtract this all from your pay check and/or add this when you live in an area that has fail-proof health insurance for under 400 USD/month/family.
CH's living expenses are generally very high and most people starting a job there underestimate this. If you think a 40 USD pizza at a normal looking place is insane, you are one of them.
Just throwing some pointers out that salaries must be compared in context ...
You might not be the right person to ask this, but maybe somebody else from Switzerland will be able to.
I'm starting a coding internship in Geneva in about two months and I was wondering whether you would have any advice about renting apartments in the area. For example, should I be trying to find apartments in France, or am I better off sticking with Switzerland. Should I be getting in touch with estate agents in the area via phone? Are there any good sites which contain apartment listings? I will be staying there for 12 months so any advice would be much appreciated.
This may not come as a suprise to people from the US, but my sister (who lives and works near Zurich) says you have to pay everything yourself. Dentist, doctor, they just got a child and the father got one day off work if i got it correctly, and she only a couple of weeks. Still children stay at home untill they are 5 or something, you just have to pay someone privatly if you want to work.
The list goes on and on and on, so from this Bay Area like salery there is only something left if you're young, without children and healthy.
Coming from Switzerland, this is not at all surprising. No one expected this initiative to pass. It was really more of an attempt to get a conversation started, and it's succeeded in that.
As a (tentative) supporter of basic income, I'm already quite happy that something like a fifth to a quarter of voters went for it.
Question, how does Switzerland avoid becoming more polarized country with so many referendum questions each year?
Do you think there is a risk passing a referendum resolution that passed just by a small margin?
I have been thinking about this since the result of Austrian presidental elections, and how more polarized the politics in Europe is becoming, while trying to figure out if there is a way how to move politics to a a place where it would strive for finding society-wide consensus and compromise on most issues.
Doesn't the fact that the margin on the no vote was so high put a damper on the enthusiasm for supporters? Or do the Swiss routinely vote over and over again on rewordings of the same idea?
Who is this basic income aimed at in Switzerland? Somehow I can't picture homeless people living on the streets of Bern but like anywhere else I'm sure there are homeless there people too.
One of the reasons why it was rejected, is because the supporters were slightly too idealistic. The elephant in the room is obviously, who would be eligible for the BI.
Most of the supporters and some of the initiators of the initiative, that I've spoken with, were strongly for a idealistic implementation, meaning everybody physically located in Switzerland would be eligible.
While the number one argument against a BI was that exactly this absolute unconditionality would be a recipe for a disaster, especially given the current migration situation in the EU.
The Swiss are notoriously risk averse, so any proposal that does not take into account any possible side effects, usually gets rejected with a margin just like this one.
To have a realistic chance of acceptance, I think the 'unconditional' needs to be dropped. Add a conditional on citizenship, flesh out the financing some more and just try again. The problem here is that a "national basic income" instantly catapults you politically very far right, even though it's a very leftist position.
I think this is a nice demonstration of how well direct democracy can work.
The argument against direct democracy (referendums on any subject any sizeable group wants to put on vote) is that people will be economically irresponsible and vote themselves popular, expensive goodies with no regards of financing or cost.
Many countries in Europe, including Switzerland, were ramping up debt. In Switzerland this was stopped by the people via a vote in 2001. In the eurozone it took the debt crisis.
Switzerland is one the most highly educated and richest country on earth. Do you think the results of direct democracy would be equally responsible in Egypt, Syria or Bolivia? (I'm half-Syrian).
The argument against direct democracy is that the population isn't very informed. Not necessarily that they are selfish.
Even in the US, voters often tend to vote against their own self interest. E.g. people that stand to benefit from social programs often vote for conservatives against social programs.
I think it showed that 20-25% of people did exactly that. Probably correlates highly with the number of people that would have benefited from a direct income. I don't think this proved what you wanted to prove at all.
I wish I would live in a country where essential political decisions like that are made by the people and not by some professional political elite in a far away capital.
I think such regulations should be decreed as a law and not as a constitution norm if at all. But if everybody has a say you get bikeshedding in the constitution.
Maybe direct democracy works in a small scale, and by "small" I mean a few dozen people in a town.
Referendum is no panacea. A legislative body can tweak legislation and debate it and compromise. When voting on a referendum there is no such compromise. It's just a binary choice.
I got up early this morning because I'd missed the date to vote by post. Somehow it feels like your vote matters more when you go cast it in person :-)
20% is not a bad result, I think they expected around 15%. A lot of people would've gone "Fuuuuuuu I voted for that" if it'd been accepted.
As technology advances, I would assume that work will become more scarce. Taking this scenario to the extreme will mean that the majority of the world will at some point will be unemployed in the future. Some form of basic income will result.
Taking a long-term view, 23% in favor is strong progress for an idea that was once considered outrageous.
Let's see the trend in future referendums. You could argue that basic income may be impractical today. But over the next 10, 20, 30 years, the world will change dramatically.
It's an interesting idea, but I don't think the time is right just yet for basic income. When AI is to the point that most skilled jobs can be automated and humans don't really need to work, then we can start giving people money.
It's too early to say that. The urban cantons did not finish counting, especially Zurich, Basel, Bern and Geneva. I'd expect that there will be 30% yes votes, but of course there are always surprises.
Let me start by saying this is one of the most important topics to discuss.
I would argue that UBI itself will have unexpectingly positive effect on productivity by removing the bias causing people to justify unnecessary work because they need to make a living. This will give individuals the confidence to take the time and pursue further more value for society. There will always be laziness, of-course, but we try to achieve freedom for a change.
It seems like a lot of modern politics is not "we should have more" but instead "you guys should have less". I think the election result is an outcome of more and more people thinking along the latter lines.
To bad. Would have been fun watching Switzerland try something new.
This was a proposal long on rhetoric and short on concrete action steps. Future referendums that are more substantive may be treated differently by voters.
[+] [-] s3nnyy|9 years ago|reply
If you look for a coding job in Europe, Zurich is a great place to live and is the only place where net-salaries are on par with the Bay Area: You can expect to get 7000 - 12000 CHF / month after taxes. If you are from the EU and thinking to move, you find my email address in my Hacknews profile. Also you can read here why I moved to Switzerland to work in IT: https://medium.com/@iwaninzurich/eight-reasons-why-i-moved-t...
[+] [-] akerro|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mixmastamyk|9 years ago|reply
Was mildly annoyed at having my time wasted.
[+] [-] alkonaut|9 years ago|reply
The only questions you can decide by referendum is things that either have no budgetary consequences or things that set a long term political direction (join the EU, basic income, ...).
Anything that has a shorter horizon needs to be tightly coupled to the budget and you can only adopt a complete budget, not decide on individual questions. Once you accept that you only choose between budgetA and budgetB for the next year/term - you also accept that those who write those budgets as propositions are "parties" and you have arrived at parliamentary, not direct, democracy. Most democracies already have referendums on things like this, but still aren't "direct democracies".
In short - the Swiss have just slightly more referendums than the rest, but they too have a parliament with parties that propose complete, coherent budgets. I like the idea of slightly more referendums but no country that has a budget with thousands of expenses and thousands of different taxes could be governed only direct votes on each of them (perhaps most importantly because no one is interested in voting on thousands of issues).
[+] [-] anotherevan|9 years ago|reply
Whereas the Australians say: “Look what those bastards have done now …”
[+] [-] mhb|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mahyarm|9 years ago|reply
It's definitely an easier move for an EU citizen to do than the USA although from a family and immigration standpoint. But immigration wise it isn't hard to get an H1B or L1 visa since the hiring company will handle all of it. From there applying for a green card is pretty automatic. For canadian's and australians, it's even easier to immigrate, almost the same amount of work as moving to switzerland for an EU citizen.
Indian and Chinese people have a hard time with green cards in the USA because there is per country lineups. The immigration 'lines' for those 2 countries are much longer than any other nationality because of their population sizes. Switzerland or somewhere else in the EU might be more attractive from that standpoint, although I don't know if they implemented something similar there.
Cost of living wise CH is definitely more expensive. Housing costs are also close in SF and CH.
[+] [-] stefanix|9 years ago|reply
I have worked at Universities and IT in the US, Switzerland, and Austria. Austria has almost free kindergardens, schools, and higher education. In CH (basel area) I paid 70USD/day/child kindergarden fee. In the US it's quite normal to start saving for your kids education when they are born.
US health care is a mess. Even after paying tons of money you have to set money aside for all the times you get screwed over by insurgence companies refusing to pay certain parts of a procedure. If you are honest with yourself you have to subtract this all from your pay check and/or add this when you live in an area that has fail-proof health insurance for under 400 USD/month/family.
CH's living expenses are generally very high and most people starting a job there underestimate this. If you think a 40 USD pizza at a normal looking place is insane, you are one of them.
Just throwing some pointers out that salaries must be compared in context ...
[+] [-] krmboya|9 years ago|reply
However being from some part of this planet I googled a few keywords and came across this: https://www.vice.com/read/guide-to-european-racist-leagues
The website features a lot in HN so but I don't know about the quality of their journalism. Anyway, you never know till you try...
[+] [-] Keyframe|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dom96|9 years ago|reply
I'm starting a coding internship in Geneva in about two months and I was wondering whether you would have any advice about renting apartments in the area. For example, should I be trying to find apartments in France, or am I better off sticking with Switzerland. Should I be getting in touch with estate agents in the area via phone? Are there any good sites which contain apartment listings? I will be staying there for 12 months so any advice would be much appreciated.
[+] [-] imaginenore|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] notaregular|9 years ago|reply
I get barely 6000 after taxes after working here for almost three years. I'm not Zürich area, but still. Out of curiosity, in which branch are you?
[+] [-] jeena|9 years ago|reply
The list goes on and on and on, so from this Bay Area like salery there is only something left if you're young, without children and healthy.
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] victorantos|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stickac|9 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] bikamonki|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Zarkonnen|9 years ago|reply
As a (tentative) supporter of basic income, I'm already quite happy that something like a fifth to a quarter of voters went for it.
[+] [-] a-saleh|9 years ago|reply
Do you think there is a risk passing a referendum resolution that passed just by a small margin?
I have been thinking about this since the result of Austrian presidental elections, and how more polarized the politics in Europe is becoming, while trying to figure out if there is a way how to move politics to a a place where it would strive for finding society-wide consensus and compromise on most issues.
[+] [-] chongli|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dghughes|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nairboon|9 years ago|reply
Most of the supporters and some of the initiators of the initiative, that I've spoken with, were strongly for a idealistic implementation, meaning everybody physically located in Switzerland would be eligible. While the number one argument against a BI was that exactly this absolute unconditionality would be a recipe for a disaster, especially given the current migration situation in the EU.
The Swiss are notoriously risk averse, so any proposal that does not take into account any possible side effects, usually gets rejected with a margin just like this one.
To have a realistic chance of acceptance, I think the 'unconditional' needs to be dropped. Add a conditional on citizenship, flesh out the financing some more and just try again. The problem here is that a "national basic income" instantly catapults you politically very far right, even though it's a very leftist position.
[+] [-] chvid|9 years ago|reply
The argument against direct democracy (referendums on any subject any sizeable group wants to put on vote) is that people will be economically irresponsible and vote themselves popular, expensive goodies with no regards of financing or cost.
This shows otherwise.
[+] [-] NaliSauce|9 years ago|reply
Many countries in Europe, including Switzerland, were ramping up debt. In Switzerland this was stopped by the people via a vote in 2001. In the eurozone it took the debt crisis.
[+] [-] patrickaljord|9 years ago|reply
Switzerland is one the most highly educated and richest country on earth. Do you think the results of direct democracy would be equally responsible in Egypt, Syria or Bolivia? (I'm half-Syrian).
[+] [-] Houshalter|9 years ago|reply
Even in the US, voters often tend to vote against their own self interest. E.g. people that stand to benefit from social programs often vote for conservatives against social programs.
[+] [-] lunchables|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rs999gti|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] elcapitan|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _nalply|9 years ago|reply
I think such regulations should be decreed as a law and not as a constitution norm if at all. But if everybody has a say you get bikeshedding in the constitution.
[+] [-] massysett|9 years ago|reply
Referendum is no panacea. A legislative body can tweak legislation and debate it and compromise. When voting on a referendum there is no such compromise. It's just a binary choice.
[+] [-] kazinator|9 years ago|reply
Oops, 60% of the populace thinks you're a nuisance who should just shut up and put up (and ideally just go away).
[+] [-] rubyfan|9 years ago|reply
How to Move to Switzerland
http://m.wikihow.com/Move-to-Switzerland
[+] [-] ck2|9 years ago|reply
Because the first referendum that should be called for in a country that has 1:1 voting on issues is to end all political advertisements.
[+] [-] lolc|9 years ago|reply
20% is not a bad result, I think they expected around 15%. A lot of people would've gone "Fuuuuuuu I voted for that" if it'd been accepted.
[+] [-] hsnewman|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] raverbashing|9 years ago|reply
Yeah, there's your answer. It seems the Swiss are conservative with how they spend their money
[+] [-] scboffspring|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] paulsutter|9 years ago|reply
Let's see the trend in future referendums. You could argue that basic income may be impractical today. But over the next 10, 20, 30 years, the world will change dramatically.
[+] [-] jdlyga|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mpitt|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Zelmor|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _nalply|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] known|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] anoplus|9 years ago|reply
I would argue that UBI itself will have unexpectingly positive effect on productivity by removing the bias causing people to justify unnecessary work because they need to make a living. This will give individuals the confidence to take the time and pursue further more value for society. There will always be laziness, of-course, but we try to achieve freedom for a change.
[+] [-] boulos|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bjourne|9 years ago|reply
To bad. Would have been fun watching Switzerland try something new.
[+] [-] andrewjl|9 years ago|reply