21 ms·
Basic income plan clearly rejected by Swiss voters
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- _nalply 10y agoIt'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.
- scboffspring 10y agoWould agree if the final result we already know where not 80%. At 55% we may have had a surprise, not in that case. EDIT: Moreover, provisional results for ZH shows 75% no (French) (http://www.20min.ch/ro/news/suisse/story/Revenu-de-base--les-resultats-par-canton-13107562 http://www.20min.ch/ro/news/suisse/story/Revenu-de-base--les...)
- _nalply 10y agoNow it's definitive. The cantonal majority says no, which kills the referendum.
- elcapitan 10y agoI 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.
- tdkl 10y agoSorry to burst your bubble but direct democracy doesn't work everywhere by default.
- _nalply 10y agoAnd why do you think so?
- tdkl 10y agoThe majority of population isn't in place to make honest, rational choices unaffected by feelings, culture, religion (I wanted to state educated, but education doesn't necessarily mean that the choice would be on the rational side) and media influence.
- _nalply 10y agoAnd do you think Switzerland is different?
- tdkl 10y agoNo I don't need to, they've shown they're different. Can I turn the question around : do you think this would work in USA, India and Brazil (random countries, nothing specific)?
- herbst 10y agoI honestly think e-democracy would work everywhere after a few years of total chaos.
- _nalply 10y agoThis is controversial, but I think any nation can have direct democracy adapted to the nation's culture. It's just that the Swiss have more than a hundred years experience with direct democracy and have learnt for the most part to be diligent in their decisions.
- coldtea 10y ago>The majority of population isn't in place to make honest, rational choices unaffected by feelings, culture, religion In a real democracy, they're not supposed to either. If their culture, religion, etc is important to them, it should definitely affect their decisions, and that's the democratic way. Same for their feelings. Democracy is not about voting what's "right" (who is to say? you?) but about getting what the majority wants. And there's nothing unhonest about letting culture, religion and feelings affecting your vote. What you describe as your ideal democracy where people only make "rational choices" is rather the old republican idea of sages who know better than the people (like the "founding fathers" in the US) and encode some norms forever. "Rational" used in this sense, is totally normative -- "what I think is rational" or "what those experts say it rational and good for you", and in the end undemocratic.
- _nalply 10y agoThe downside are populistic decisions like the Swiss minaret referendum. Now we have the sentence «The construction of minarets is prohibited.» in the constitution. (https://www.admin.ch/opc/en/classified-compilation/19995395/index.html#a72 https://www.admin.ch/opc/en/classified-compilation/19995395/...) 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.
- shrugger 10y ago[deleted, vote brigading]
- _nalply 10y agoYes, you didn't understand. Detailed construction regulations don't have a place in the constitution.
- elcapitan 10y agoI agree, but that's not really an argument against direct democracy, but rather in favor of a slightly differently constructed constitution - basically there should be a unchangeable core of norms, and no additions that defy the purpose of those norms should be possible. Religious freedom in that case.
- tomp 10y agoTechnically, it's not against religious freedom - after all, you can still practice, at home!
- Havoc 10y ago>The construction of minarets is prohibited. Hardly surprising. Nobody wants to be awoken at ungodly hours by that howling.
- Inthenameofmine 10y agoWhile I agree about the howling, that was already not allowed. The referendum was only about the physical minarets. Unfortunately the church clocks make just as much noise in Switzerland.
- xyzzy4 10y agoPerhaps you should move to Iran. The people there wanted sharia law and they got it.
- rubyfan 10y agoIt's your lucky day, wikiHow has step by step instructions: How to Move to Switzerland http://m.wikihow.com/Move-to-Switzerland http://m.wikihow.com/Move-to-Switzerland
- technofiend 10y agoSwitzerland is notoriously tough to emigrate to unless you have a great deal of seed capital to start your own business.
- eps 10y ago... or if you have an EU citizenship, in which case you can just get there, get visa, settle and start searching for a job. In that order.
- saiya-jin 10y agoIncorrect order, sir. You can move there, live there on 3-month tourist visa, look for work in the meantime, and once somebody will hire you, you will receive proper work permit (visa). You can re-enter, but it's a damn expensive place to live and not earn. Unless you are from 10 new EU countries, then getting work permit isn't automatic but you deal with limited queues per year, per canton. Once depleted (which goes fast), bye. And employer has to prove to officials that there is no one Swiss or with existing permit to do this job, which adds a lot of bureaucracy. It gets deeper, far from easy simple situation. But it's true that EU citizens have certain advantages.
- rbanffy 10y agoThe downside is that the people who vote are not necessarily informed about what they are voting.
- ck2 10y agoYes but I also want to know how many millions were spent on advertisements trying to persuade "the people" one way or another by the political elite. 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.
- usrusr 10y agoCall it defeatist if you like, but the last thing you should want is that kind of spending getting forced underground. You said it yourself, "one way or another". The money is there, it "wants" to get spent, the more openly that happens, the less harm will be done. If you don't give it a channel it will find one.
- massysett 10y agoMaybe 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.
- coredog64 10y agoCommunism is the same way. What works on the communal farm doesn't scale out to a nation-state.
- kazinator 10y agoWhat if you were a discriminated minority, and important decisions specifically affected you were put to a referendum? Oops, 60% of the populace thinks you're a nuisance who should just shut up and put up (and ideally just go away).
- pka 10y agoSure, sucks. But anyway, would you like to live in a place where the majority of people don't like you? It's going to be a fact with our without referendums or laws.
- cronjobber 10y agoIf you get a different result under representative democracy, the minority must be assumed to have more actual (real world) power than mere headcount indicates. In that case, direct democracy is indeed broken, but the reason is not "discrimination" against those who are actually pretty powerful, but eventual instability from the system's inability to act as a predictive proxy for more direct (less civilized) resolution.
- mpitt 10y agoChange the title? It's misleading to imply the results are final.
- rubyfan 10y agoPretty clear trend at ~20% across a number of their regions. Unless the uncounted regions are drastically different than the rest of the country I'd say this one is easy to call.
- MikeNomad 10y agoNot happy with the headline. They voted no for an "unconditional" basic income. I think that is a huge difference, especially when a majority of the voters also want immigration reform.
- greendesk 10y agoMy understanding is that basic income can only be "unconditional." If there are conditions attached to it, what might be they?
- tgb 10y agoWhile that's how I read it, perhaps the condition would be citizenship. I.e. they don't want to simultaneously allow more people into their country and also give everyone in their country a lot of money for fairly obvious reasons. However, the article doesn't give translations of the actual measures so it's hard to say.
- _nalply 10y agoThat's because the referendum is open ended. The referendum text: «The confederation provides for an introduction of an unconditional basic income.» It's a very short text. https://bedingungslos.ch/de/pages/initiativtext https://bedingungslos.ch/de/pages/initiativtext (German) The referendum committee made a non-binding proposal to give Fr. 2500 and if someone already earns Fr. 2500 they would not get additional money. The details would still need to be worked out by the parliament. In Switzerland being founded on consensus this means that after a «yes» a huge discussion would start how to implement the basic income. But it seems that the referendum is going to be rejected.
- tgb 10y agoInteresting, thanks.
- MikeNomad 10y agoThat is exactly what I had in mind re: my original comment. Seeing from other comments there would be an earnings threshold. That, to me, is not "unconditional." I'm probably running afoul of language/translation shear...
- Zarkonnen 10y agoComing 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.
- chongli 10y agoDoesn'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?
- Zarkonnen 10y agoIt does put a damper on things, but yeah, it's not uncommon for more or less the same thing to come up every decade or two. Evergreen topics include immigration reform, nuclear power, and whether Switzerland needs an army.
- chongli 10y agoAhhh. Well, it will be interesting to see how the economy evolves over the next decade and how that might affect a future vote. If tons of Swiss middle class lose their jobs and move down to low class it could be a dramatic reversal.
- jkn 10y agoMandatory health insurance is another good example:[1] In 1890 the constitution was changed by popular vote to give the federal government the authority and duty to establish a health care system, either voluntary or mandatory. A project for mandatory accident and health insurance passed the parliament in 1899, but a referendum was requested and the proposed law was rejected by popular vote in 1900. A new law was passed in 1911, keeping the mandatory accident insurance but leaving the states free to make health insurance voluntary or mandatory. This law survived a referendum in 1912. Attempts at revising the health insurance law failed in the 20's, 40's and 50's. A popular initiative for mandatory health insurance failed the vote in 1974. A counter-project submitted by the government, with mandatory coverage for large risks only, also failed the vote. Finally, another popular initiative for mandatory health insurance is deposited in 1986. The government prepares an indirect counter-project, resulting in a law that includes mandatory health insurance. The law is adopted by the parliament in March 1994, but a referendum is requested. Both the initiative and the referendum on the law are submitted to a popular vote in December 1994. The initiative fails by 76.6% "no" while the counter-project passes by 51.8% "yes". [1] http://www.hls-dhs-dss.ch/textes/d/D16608.php http://www.hls-dhs-dss.ch/textes/d/D16608.php
- DrNuke 10y agoIt is premature but inevitable: automation, stagnant growth, migrations and deflation are all pushing towards universal basic income. Not 2k euros/month but enough to allow surviving and decency.
- raverbashing 10y agoWelfare without limits is incompatible with Open Borders Remains to be seen who will want to actually do the (needed) jobs when staying at home is enough I am in favour of Basic Income, but it's not such clear cut
- yummyfajitas 10y agoGiven that open borders will help hundreds of millions escape dire poverty, whereas basic income will (at best) reduce some administrative costs and allow some people to live a life of leisure, how do you justify this preference? Do the prospective brown people who might want to escape dire poverty (i.e., gain access to clean running water, flush toilets, and adequate food) just not count? Even if they counted only as 3/5 of a person, the numbers would still be drastically in their favor.
- raverbashing 10y ago> how do you justify this preference? One is helping the ones that are already in the country, the other one isn't. I'm not against helping, but there is a limit. How do you propose to help "millions" when a lot of them can't even read http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/syrian-read-english-1.3541276 http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/syrian-read-englis... > Do the prospective brown people who might want to immigrate just not count? Sure. Let's open the doors so we have more harassment of women, homosexuals and increased Anti-semitism. Which is funny, because some of my ancestors came from the same region that is in trouble today (maybe they were "Infidels" and were kicked out because of that, who knows)
- yummyfajitas 10y ago
- raverbashing 10y agoI found it funny how most major news outlets made a big deal of this Yeah, there's your answer. It seems the Swiss are conservative with how they spend their money
- scboffspring 10y agoOffical now, cantonal majority cannot be reached (12 no, 11 to go) http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/results-votes-june-5th-2016-in-switzerland/42153620 http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/results-votes-june-5th-2016-in-s...
- s3nnyy 10y agoSwitzerland 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-to-switzerland-to-work-in-it-c7ac18af4f90#.fnug055jh https://medium.com/@iwaninzurich/eight-reasons-why-i-moved-t...
- stickac 10y agoYou are completely ignoring the fact that the cost of living is much higher in Zurich than the rest of Europe. (For example, the rent is around 10 times higher than in Prague). But after-all, you are a recruiter, why would anyone expect you to provide unbiased information, right?
- s3nnyy 10y agoZurich is not comparable to London, Berlin or Prag due to the fact that it is an order of magnitude smaller than most European cities. The diameter of Zurich is just 13 km. The city itself is tiny and the "city center" is even tinier. This leads to the variance of the rent being very high: In the very center of town you might have to pay 1500 CHF for a 1-bedroom apartment, but if you can live also 5 km from the city center, you can have it way cheaper. I am renting a 4-bedroom apartment for 1600 CHF (https://flatfox.ch/de/wohnung/8051-zurich-grosswiesenstrasse/7741/ https://flatfox.ch/de/wohnung/8051-zurich-grosswiesenstrasse...) and I need around 12 minutes to get to Zurich main train station.
- _nalply 10y agoAh that's Schwamendingen. Well known for a high foreigner percentage (37%). https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwamendingen#Bev.C3.B6lkerung https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwamendingen#Bev.C3.B6lkerun... (German). To downvoters: please see my comment below. I am not against foreigners.
- ihsw 10y ago.
- Zarkonnen 10y ago"Grubby", "unwashed", "infiltrate", "degeneracy". Quite the word choice.
- ihsw 10y ago.
- V-2 10y agoKorwin-Mikke is known for his colourful language - which he doesn't reserve for so-called refugees, far from that- and a proclivity for PR scandals. He's hardly representative of Polish mainstream political class though (he himself would be greatly offended at such implication), so kindly please keep Poland as such out of it
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- distances 10y agoI have hard time understanding if ihsw is trying to show how far the Polish leadership has fallen, or if he is seriously finding their undemocratic stance somehow acceptable.
- matthewmacleod 10y agoPlease reconsider expressing your views in this offensive way. It's quite reasonable to discuss the current situation with immigration into Europe, but it's quite another thing to make unfounded accusations about"criminality, antisocial behavior, and otherwise degeneracy" when I'm sure you would accept that such behaviour is not engaged in by the majority. Rhetoric like this does nothing but inflame reflexive, unthinking anti-immigration movements and does nothing to actually further the discussion.
- areyoucrazy 10y agoBasic Income + Open Borders = National Suicide This proposal probably wouldn't pass in USA as well, especially given the fact that it's easy to get a Green Card and citizenship.
- skylan_q 10y agoThey're voting for asylum reform, but against UBI. What's the point? In a generation, they'll have UBI.
- mweibel 10y agoWhat does the asylum reform say about the UBI? I don't see how you get from one to the other?
- skylan_q 10y agoThe types of immigrants they're looking to bring in with reform aren't trying only to escape war, but looking for a free leg-up. i.e. Syrian war refugees going to Germany instead of any of the countries along the way that aren't experiencing war. They'll be sure to vote established people's money for themselves.
- skylan_q 10y agoI'd like to know why someone disagrees with what I've said.
- Kim_Bruning 10y agoAre you sure it's easy to get a green card and citizenship? Maybe half a century ago it was, and that's where all the stories come from. Right now, it's actually very hard; even (or especially) for regular normal middle class hardworking people.
- Suncho 10y agoI disagree. I feel that the first country to have basic income + open boarders will "win." People will move there. The human mind is very powerful. On average, countries with more humans are more powerful.
- ck2 10y agoBut the swiss have guaranteed health care right? I'd like to see the USA get basic healthcare guarantee someday. If you are a human being, you get $2000 per year in healthcare regardless of proof of income, etc. Just being a human being in need. I hope the Bernie Sanders movement now focuses on the 26 states that are preventing health insurance for millions of people instead of trying to change the USA from the top down.
- kgwgk 10y agoHealthcare is guaranteed in Switzerland in the sense that you are forced by law to have insurance (you can get subsidies if you're poor enough, though). And the basic insurance coverage may not be up to USA standards (you may share the hospital room with five other patients, for example).
- mxo8 10y agoWhat are these USA standards you are talking about (just curious)?
- kgwgk 10y agoI don't know, which is why I said "may". I think part of the higher spending in healthcare the US may be due to a higher level of service (which in fact may not be really needed in some cases). Of course there are many other reasons (for example, doctors are paid much better in the US: http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/15/how-much-do-doctors-in-other-countries-make/?_r=0 http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/15/how-much-do-doc... ).
- jdlyga 10y agoIt'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.
- sbardle 10y agoYC is taking the long term view, which is great. But what concerns me is the way in which Basic Income is already getting heavily politicised. Politicians are already using it to attract voters (front page of UK Guardian today, Labour party are "considering" a basic income). We are still very much at the research stage.
- bjourne 10y agoIt 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.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- wokulski 10y agoIs this d3.js?
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- chvid 10y agoI 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. This shows otherwise.
- NaliSauce 10y agoWhat if I told you that it was the people who forced the government to be fiscally responsible: https://www.efv.admin.ch/efv/en/home/themen/finanzpolitik_grundlagen/schuldenbremse.html https://www.efv.admin.ch/efv/en/home/themen/finanzpolitik_gr... 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 10y ago> This shows otherwise. 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).
- nickik 10y agoMaybe it is the richest country because of direct democracy ...
- saiya-jin 10y agoit's a mixed bag. I know in my home country (Slovakia), if they had same vote as Swiss few years back, people would vote for some ridiculous bad stuff. One example out of many - extending minimum paid vacation per year from 4 weeks to 6. Swiss population said NO, because of the financial consequences to employers. Now tell me, how many countries out there would end up with same result given this option? Quality attracts and breeds more quality. Somehow, they manage to pull it off for last 800 years, in one way or the other.
- 10y ago
- hsnewman 10y agoAs 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.
- known 10y agoWisdom of the Crowd https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisdom_of_the_crowd#Problems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisdom_of_the_crowd#Problems
- wendallplatform 10y ago> Question, how does Switzerland avoid becoming more polarized country with so many referendum questions each year? I don't know if you're a non-native speaker, but in English the question mark (the '?') shows that something is a question, so you don't need to also literally put 'Question' at the start of your question to make that clear.
- allannienhuis 10y agoI think this is just a turn of phrase - short for 'I have a question: ' No need to be so critical of someone's sentence structure, especially when it's a very clearly articulated one. People don't come here to have their writing analyzed. Providing a bit of helpful advice to someone who's clearly struggling with the language or mistaken can _sometimes_ be useful, but this just seems to be critical, not helpful at all.
- dang 10y agoWe detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11840717 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11840717 and marked it off-topic.
- areyoucrazy 10y agoWhy is Basic Income such a popular topic on Hacker News?
- koolba 10y agoIt's the social policy equivalent of blockchain circa 2013.
- pipio21 10y agoI believe it is probably because most people here are programmers. If you are a wildly successful programmer you are automating the work of others, and putting them out of job. Most of them though are working for the man and dream of a world in which they are free to do whatever they want, their dream job, without the risk that is involved on it (not being able to support yourself and your family). So what they ask for is a "safety Net" that dilutes the risks onto others. It did not work in the past, with communism, but they believe with the advances in automation, it could work today. Personally I believe in "testing everything" before actually doing it.
- nickik 10y agoBecause hackers tend to believe in the idea that automation and advanced AI causes a reduction of jobs and the destruction of middle class. This leads to a lot of rich people who control the AI and robots and a lot of poor who can't find jobs. To counteract this, Basic income is a good idea because it allows for low risk job switching, furthering education and a small bureaucracy but extensive social safety net.
- PunchTornado 10y agoSome say UBI has no connection to technology. It is just about eliminating welfare administrative costs and making people contribute to their communities in other ways.
- lisivka 10y agoam pridem, ex quo suffragia nulli uendimus, effudit curas; nam qui dabat olim imperium, fasces, legiones, omnia, nunc se continet atque duas tantum res anxius optat, panem et circenses.
- lolc 10y agoI 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.
- anoplus 10y agoLet 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.
- fiatjaf 10y agoDie, basic income. Of course, leftist supporters of democracy will say this does not count and wasn't "democratic".
- dang 10y ago> Die, basic income. Please stop posting unsubstantive ideological comments to Hacker News. We don't want this level of discussion here. If you can't make a point thoughtfully, please don't post until you can. The name-calling undermines your argument too. It's surprising to me how people who post comments like this don't seem to realize that they're diminishing their own cause in the mind of the reader.
- tluyben2 10y agoWhat solution do you suggest instead?
- highCs 10y agoWould a UBI potentially hurts switzerland main businesses?
- saiya-jin 10y agoit would hurt many businesses in long run and country overall. they work in different ways
- nairboon 10y agoOne 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.
- gonvaled 10y agoI hope that if your BI is only for citizens and since this is presumably financed by taxes, you are going to grant a big tax exemption to non Swiss nationals, since they (according to your plan) will have no chance of benefiting from BI. What other ramifications this can have is difficult to foresee. The nice things about simple plans is that they are simple: once you start complicating matters, it gets really messy.
- nairboon 10y agoA citizens-only BI is just an example to maximize the difference to the current rejected proposal and setup a spectrum of possible implementations. There'd be probably some reasonable solution in the middle, where after working and paying taxes for n years makes you eligible for an BI. Actually, I'd be in favor of a pragmatic vesting form, where the BI-payout is not binary, but you'd become eligible for a bigger share gradually over time, not just for non Swiss nationals, but especially for Swiss nationals. So that we youngsters won't just get a big payday, but it could be tied to a vesting scheme connected with your total taxes ever payed. Meaning, after taking on some small jobs and earning money the hard way first, even young (Swiss) people would have to 'earn' their BI.
- TelAviv_1 10y agoThe Swiss, while very progressive, live in a country where most people pay taxes. So the voters, who know where money comes from, soundly rejected this. This may have a better chance of succeeding in the United States, where only 5% of people effectively pay any Federal Income Tax. After all, 95% of the population would love more "free money."
- Zelmor 10y agoGood thing for the majority to reject this ridiculous idea. There is no such thing as a free dinner.
- known 10y agoWonder what majority Swiss will say if they want to pay taxes or not?
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- boulos 10y agoIt seems like the submitter meant to link to the "story" of the same title (http://www.swissinfo.ch/directdemocracy/vote-june-6_basic-income-plan-awaits-voters-verdict/42200378 http://www.swissinfo.ch/directdemocracy/vote-june-6_basic-in...) rather than editorializing a voting results page.
- paulsutter 10y agoTaking 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.
- andrewjl 10y agoThis was a proposal long on rhetoric and short on concrete action steps. Future referendums that are more substantive may be treated differently by voters.