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A Swiss franc is currently worth a little bit more than a dollar, so this works out to $2800/month or $33600/year. By US standards, this actually seems to be a

by tikhonj 13y ago

A Swiss franc is currently worth a little bit more than a dollar, so this works out to $2800/month or $33600/year. By US standards, this actually seems to be a good salary: significantly better than working full time at minimum wage. It would cover all my current expenses handily. Of course, I'm young and single but by no means frugal. (I find that the little costs involved in worrying about my expenses easily outweigh the money saved.) So this is quite an income. One of the main questions about something like this is about who would do boring, low-paid work with this sort of basic income. What I would really hope is that people would still do many of those jobs, but for far fewer hours--largely as a way to get money for incidental expenses and luxuries beyond the basic income. One problem I find with most jobs is that it's much easier to get more pay than less hours, even if I really want the latter. There is a large drop-off between full-time and part-time work.[1] Beyond a certain level, I would value having more free time far more than making more money. Unfortunately, mostly for social reasons, it's hard to express this preference. A basic income could make this much easier to do. While I suspect this might not pass, I think it would be very valuable for the entire world. One of the unfortunate realities in politics is that it is really hard to run experiments; small countries like Switzerland can act as a test subject for the entire world. Or perhaps like a tech early adopter for modern policies. Either way, this passing would be very interesting. [1]: For me, this is not quite as simple. In reality, there are plenty of jobs where I would be happy to work relatively long hours. But this stops being a question of pay, or even "work": after all, I'm happy to spend hours and hours programming for free. Being paid to do something I really like is wonderful, but it really changes the dynamics in ways that probably do not apply to most people.

rmc 13y ago
* By US standards, this actually seems to be a good salary: significantly better than working full time at minimum wage.* Switzerland is incredibly expensive. I don't really think it's accurate to do an actual comparison with exchange rates.
ashray 13y ago
Just bear in mind for your calculations that in Switzerland a cup of coffee often costs $6 as does a can of coke. Cost of living is extremely high. But still, this does look like a decent deal. Zurich is like San Francisco in terms of expenses.
- tikhonj 13y ago
  For reference, I currently live in Berkeley. While not quite as expensive as SF, it's pretty close. I also live in one of the somewhat less cheap parts of the city (northside)--my rent is much higher than it could be. On the other hand, I do have a roommate--it all comes back to being young and single (but, again, not frugal).
  - jamesaguilar 13y ago
    I'm just gonna throw this out there as a fellow Bay Area person. I like bragging about how bad I have it as much as the next social network self-flaggelator. But our costs aren't even remotely comparable to Zurich's. You need a lot more money to live there, especially if you even semi-regularly go out to eat. It's bad enough that when Swiss people come back through customs from other countries, their trunks are searched for groceries, not drugs.
    - lifeisstillgood 13y ago
      Well at least no-one tries wrapping an artichoke in a condom and swallowing it to get past customs. Not even the Swiss German speakers ;-)
      - lostlogin 13y ago
        I assumed I had missed a story. I've just run the oddest google search I've tried in the last little while.
        lifeisstillgood 13y ago
        possibly the last remaining googlewhack ? :-)
- seanmcdirmid 13y ago
  A can of coke can cost 6CHF at Zurich airport maybe, but the standard price is 2CHF, and even cheaper at some grocery stores. San Francisco is still much cheaper than Zurich in terms of expenses, only the rents are kind of comparable.
psuter 13y ago
Depending on your age, previous employment, where you live and current situation, you may in fact get a similar total today in Switzerland by combining unemployment and social insurances with health insurance subsidies, and maybe even preferential housing conditions if you're lucky. Needless to say it would be a nightmare, because you continuously need to demonstrate need for each allowance separately, some come from the city, some from the state, etc.
evincarofautumn 13y ago
You’re right on all points. Most people seem to get some enjoyment from what they do for work, or at least can find satisfaction in it at the end of the day. With a basic income, a person can worry less about making ends meet and more about doing what they want to do. In the short term, that might mean slacking off (and inflation)—but in the long term it seems like people would start being generally productive again, and much happier for it. A sizable chunk of people will just keep doing what they’re doing. There is little worse than creating jobs—I equate that with creating inefficiency. (Creating careers is another story.) But the more things we can automate, the more humans can live leisurely, thoughtful, happy lives. I for one would enjoy nothing more than to work full-time on my programming language projects without worrying about where my next meal will come from. P.S. Hi Tikhon! Coming to BA Haskell User Group on the 18th? https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/bahaskell/W0g4J-c5Dhs https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/bahaskell/W0g4J-c5Dh...
- option_greek 13y ago
  Reminds me of spacers in Asimov novels. Hope this is a starting point from which all of humanity can benefit. If I don't have to worry about making ends meet I will focus fully on learning about and building robots.
- dinkumthinkum 13y ago
  I think this is so disconnected from reality, though. It's posh and intellectual to think this way but its so not related to reality.
  - evincarofautumn 13y ago
    Maybe I understated the problems. Adding a basic income all at once would have extreme short-term effects on an economy, and that might continue for ten, twenty-odd years. But humans aren’t generally happy working as much as we do in agriculturalist societies. Long-term we have a chance to reduce the work level back to that of hunting and gathering, while preserving other benefits such as population stability in the face of natural disaster. Economy and ecology are inextricably linked. If a basic income stands to benefit us as a species, I’m willing to at least entertain the thought, despite the immediate drawbacks.
drob 13y ago
Not to mention this does away with all the administrative overhead of the dozens of piecemeal welfare programs we have in the US. Rather than whitelisting narrow sets of allowed expenditures and making people prove that they're poor for each program, I suspect giving people an income that allows them to live decently without all the red tape and attached strings will make for a much more efficient way to fight poverty and improve quality of life. That said, I don't think a basic income experiment with a successful outcome would cause us to take the notion seriously in the US. Portugal's decriminalization of drugs in 2001 comes to mind. By all accounts, it was a great success, which we've largely ignored. The dozens of countries with single-payer health care systems that deliver better care for far less money are another regrettable example. Here's hoping Switzerland undertakes what looks to be a fascinating experiment.
- adventured 13y ago
  The piecemeal programs are on purpose. They're buying votes. The entire modern structure of the US Government is set up around vote buying, on both sides. There's zero chance they'll switch to direct payments. It does away with the power, which is the entire point of having a sprawling bureaucracy - so people like Reid and Boehner and Pelosi can act like they're little kings.
  - drob 13y ago
    There's also a general disdain for the poor, rooted in just-world fallacy. As American politics would have you believe, the poor can't be trusted with cash. "They'll just spend it on drugs and plasma TVs!" Thus, the only politically salient form of aid to the poor is in the form of vouchers for specific things, e.g. food and medicine. This is dogma on the right, but it echoes surprisingly often from the left as well.
    - scott_karana 13y ago
      I'd like to see hard data on this. I've heard numerous anecdotes on both sides of the debate. Eg, "lost faith in humanity at my first job in the liquor store, as soon as Welfare day hit"
kijin 13y ago
> One problem I find with most jobs is that it's much easier to get more pay than less hours, even if I really want the latter. There is a large drop-off between full-time and part-time work. I wonder how much of that is due to habits and regulations that are necessary in the absence of basic income. When most people are full-time workers, and when most people need to be in order to survive, it's not surprising that the entire economic system gets optimized for full-time work. Lots of government regulations are also designed with full-time workers in mind, with the assumption that most part-time workers want to "upgrade" to full-time a.s.a.p. For example, in some jurisdictions it is illegal for an employer to employ a part-time worker for more than X hours a week (nearly full-time) without giving them benefits equivalent to what full-time workers get. This makes it very difficult for an employer to maintain an ongoing relationship with someone who prefers to work 20 hours a week. Not enough hours to justify full-time employment but too many hours to keep on the part-time payroll. Policies like that are necessary to protect workers in a world without basic income. In the long term, I imagine that a guaranteed basic income would make a lot of current employment-related regulations unnecessary, leading to more flexible terms of employment. But it will probably take a decade or more for Switzerland's economic system to adjust to basic income, and I really hope that the pain of the transition period doesn't make them call it a failure too soon. (I can already see the FOX News headline: 3 years after Switzerland implements basic income, their unemployment rate is up 20%! See what happens when Commies take over your country! etc. etc.)
- yaddayadda 13y ago
  It also means that there are employers who see a full-time employee as more expensive than two part-time employees and therefore have exclusive or nearly exclusive part-time employment. For employees in this situation that need full-time income, they end up taking a second or even third part-time job, thus working full-time or more hours but without the expected benefits of full-time employment.
- PeterisP 13y ago
  Your example about part-time workers seems very strange - the policies you state don't mean 'part time workers are bad, limit their usage', it simply means 'part time workers are just as okay as everyone else, and naturally they deserve "benefits" as well'. We can (and most likely will) move towards a large part of society working part-time - why should that part have less labor rights than everyone else?
cabalamat 13y ago
> this works out to $2800/month or $33600/year. Switzerland's per capita GDP is about USD 79000/year, so assuming 80% of the Swiss population are adults and citizens, this would cost about 34% of GDP, which may be unaffordable.
- kijin 13y ago
  Define "unaffordable". It's really annoying that people say "it's unaffordable" to mean "we don't want to pay", when the phrase is supposed to mean "we can't pay, we don't have enough money". I understand why people don't want to part with money, but at least let's be honest. If you sort everyone from poorest to richest, and plot their incomes on a graph, basic income just means that the slope is flatter than before [1]. As long as the area under the graph (GDP) remains the same, it's technically affordable. The flattening is accomplished by (a) taxing the rich more, and (b) a gradual reduction of salaries and/or working hours as the market finds a new equilibrium. What matters is political will, and it seems that Switzerland has more of it than most of the other developed countries. [1] http://i.imgur.com/IGkHoma.png http://i.imgur.com/IGkHoma.png (Sorry, it looks like crap because I just drew it in MS Paint.) Edit: Fixed graph. The red line is now curved properly.
  - mattlutze 13y ago
    Your graph has the richest people making less than they did before. This is unlikely to happen. The affordable question is one of: where the money's going to come from? How will small or large businesses, poor/middle-class/wealthy private individuals be required to support it? The initiative's organizing committee said the basic income could partly be financed through money from social insurance systems in Switzerland. I don't think the initiative people really have a clear idea.
    - kijin 13y ago
      > Your graph has the richest people making less than they did before. This is unlikely to happen. Isn't that the whole point of any policy that implies a massive redistribution of wealth? Of course the money needs to come from higher taxes. Ergo, "What matters is political will." As I said, it's really annoying that people say "it's unaffordable" to mean "we don't want to pay". This usage masks the real problem, which is political will (or lack thereof), not the physical scarcity of USD or CHF.
icebraining 13y ago
One of the main questions about something like this is about who would do boring, low-paid work with this sort of basic income. The people who already do them: immigrants, which make up more than 20% of the population of Switzerland.
- huhtenberg 13y ago
  Though heck of a lot of these immigrants work in CERN, Nestle, Fifa, Phillip-Morris and other internationals rather than washing toilets and sweeping streets.
- batiste 13y ago
  I would think that most would would probably keep their jobs. But instead of bringing home only 3000-3500 they would probably bring close to 6000.
konstruktor 13y ago
> One of the main questions about something like this is about who would do boring, low-paid work with this sort of basic income. I think that with basic income, this question would not make sense, and that's exactly the reason that I like the idea so much. The reason why people do boring, dirty and dangerous work for little money is that there are folks who have no skills that would enable them to get a more fulfilling, cleaner, safer job that pays more. Those people depend on income, any income, to live, so they do the dirty jobs, and since there is a large pool of these workers, the shitty jobs can even pay just enough to survive. With a decent basic income scheme, i.e. the basic needs of the people taken care of, the job market would probably flip: You would have to pay people very well for doing unpleasant work, and not so well for fulfilling jobs.
- marcamillion 13y ago
  > With a decent basic income scheme, i.e. the basic needs of the people taken care of, the job market would probably flip: You would have to pay people very well for doing unpleasant work, and not so well for fulfilling jobs. This is an interesting premise. It would probably cause a lot of firms to be started, that compete to do those 'shitty jobs' - that could potentially drive the cost down and be done much better. This experiment would be VERY interesting indeed.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - gaius 13y ago
    Very interesting to watch from another country. That is the real reason politics moves so slowly, because the usual results of political experimentation is mass starvation.
    - ZenoArrow 13y ago
      Political experimentation usually leading to starvation... Have you got a high number of examples to back that up? I can only think of a handful.
zem 13y ago
> One of the main questions about something like this is about who would do boring, low-paid work with this sort of basic income. people who talk about this always do so with the assumption that someone else would do the boring, low-paid work. but if you think about it, why should boring work be low-paid? it's unpleasant and time-consuming, so it should ideally be paid commensurately.
homeomorphic 13y ago
> One of the main questions about something like this is about who would do boring, low-paid work with this sort of basic income. My (probably wrong) impression was that hardly any Swiss work those kinds of jobs anymore as it is, and that the country relies on migrant temporary workers. How true is this? Also, your comment is great in general. It really made me think.
- maurits 13y ago
  The poverty line is 2200, the median around 5700, and a starting cashier at one of the big supermarket chains will make 3200+ and benefits. [1] [1]: http://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/portal/de/index/themen/03/04/blank/key/lohnstruktur/nach_branche.html http://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/portal/de/index/themen/03/04/bla...
adventured 13y ago
100 million adults in the US currently hold no job. $33,600 * 100 million = $3.36 trillion (20% of GDP) Good luck with that. That by itself is about $900 billion more than the total federal tax haul for 2012. Then throw in the other 50 million adults making less than $33.6k per year, assume a solid added cost of at least 25% of GDP. It's pure fantasy, and completely falls apart when you start doing the actual math.
- homeomorphic 13y ago
  I don't think anybody has suggested introducing the basic income amount of a country with that from the country with (one of) the world's highest costs of living. $33.6k is, at least in comparably priced Norway, a very very low income. As in: way less than what a cleaner or a supermarket cashier would make. The amount would obviously be different in different countries.
- ZeroGravitas 13y ago
  Basic income is given to everyone, not just the poor and/or unemployed. It's actually a very good idea, supported by people all across the political spectrum. You should read up on it before dismissing it.
  - crassus 13y ago
    Personally I can't imagine working 60 hours a week to pay taxes for someone else staying home and playing World of Warcraft
    - jhuckestein 13y ago
      Another aspect of basic income usually is to pay higher taxes on consumption and lower taxes on work
    - ZeroGravitas 13y ago
      One of the interesting things about basic income, is that it generates responses like this, yet you probably already do this in your country, whether it's welfare linked to job-seeking or disability or having kids etc. Worse still, the way in which these people are currently given the money makes it economically idiotic for them to go and find a small amount of work, since they'd often end up getting less money overall, so they're trapped in this life of which you don't approve.
jre 13y ago
Just to put things in perspective (I'm swiss), 2500CHF is a really low salary in Switzerland. There is another initiative asking for a minimum wage of 4000CHF per month. The median swiss salary is close to 6000CHF[1]. The administration says the poverty line is around 2200CHF per month for someone living alone [2]. You can't really just convert to $ and say it's a lot of money. A lot of basic stuff like food, transportation, housing are really expensive in Switzerland. [1] http://archives.tdg.ch/actu/suisse/suisses-gagnent-moyenne-5979-francs-mois-2011-11-28 http://archives.tdg.ch/actu/suisse/suisses-gagnent-moyenne-5... [2] http://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/portal/fr/index/themen/20/03/blank/key/07/01.html http://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/portal/fr/index/themen/20/03/bla...
- rmc 13y ago
  Here here. I've travelled through Switzerland, and can confirm that it's really expensive compared to many other countries. I made the mistake once of planning to stay overnight in Switzerland. That was expensive. About €40 to stay in a rural hostel.
  - eplanit 13y ago
    I believe the phrase is "hear, hear".
    - oneeyedpigeon 13y ago
      Both of them are phrases. Everyone understands the, strictly speaking, incorrect one. It's nice to know the origins of the phrase, but when more people use the 'incorrect' variant than the 'correct' one, it becomes 'correct'; that's the nature of language.
      - WCityMike 13y ago
        Under that theory, texting will swiftly become 'correct' English, and I refuse to believe THAT.
        13y ago
X4 13y ago
For those who don't know what the idea behind the unconditional income is: I'll briefly explain it. Imagine you work hard and only get enough to live on the edge. Now imagine you're not even the average joe, but feel that you could really change things on the world. You haven't to be a genius in order to do that, but you need to be creative, innovative and willing to work without the command to work. Now let's get an eagle's perspective on what would happen, if encouraged people would not have to spent their entire lives working for the bare minimum that keeps them slaves of the economy and industry. You would essentially create the startup-country #1. Everybody could now cherish their dreams again and make them real. You don't believe it right, that's "stupid eastern communism thinkblarg", right? How comes you Sir, Madam believe in Kickstarter, Crowdfunding, Bitcoin, P2P, Wikipedia.. and the individual freedom, so to say the american dream, when you actually have to rely on the mercy of the rich and your leading political party? Isn't that a wet dream reserverd for the 1:100.000? Let's chill and put into retrospect on what would happen if you were getting a salary that allowed you to get your basics needs fulfilled. You would be less sick, stressed, worn out. You would now be able to do what you always wanted to do in your life. Hey admit it, you wanted to buy a house at some time and have a wife and children and you knew that you'd have to work hard, the half of your life to get there. Believe it or not, but giving people freedom doesn't mean blindly trusting them. You are only one and the community you live in that government that likes to keep you locked into boundaries called country, consist of many of the smartest people on the world. Why not let them free, who do you trust if not them? We're far from a Star Trek world, where anybody get's free access to medicine and any food or resource he needs. Dear patriots, don't be afraid that your Governments managed it to go bankrupt, they've managed that already and not for the first time. It's time you your friends, families understand that the people you thought were the cause, aren't the cause. It's your Government stupid. I don't say hate Governments, but do you blindly trust a complete stranger to care for your baby? Certainly not. For those who're not still convinced that an unconditional income is a good idea: Why do you blindly trust your Government word-by-word to judge on your and everbody else's life's? When these people cannot even cooperate with just a few hundred other politicians? You see how wrong it is to not trust all people, but a selected few. Let's get over the indoctrinated prejudices and get to know each other again. Hi =)
- thenomad 13y ago
m_mueller 13y ago
As a Swiss I'm not completely opposed to the idea of basic income, I just think it's too early. Right now we still need most of the workforce to create our current level of wealth - our unemployed rate is pretty low, usually around 2-3%, and work efficiency is one of the best in the world - it's a well oiled machine where every cog still counts, including lower incomes. Even with the current GDP, paying that bill would be incredibly difficult, but I'd expect the GDP to even sink for some time, until positive effects can come in, making the whole thing a gamble with the well being of 8M people. Not worth it. However, going some decades into the future the whole thing might look different. Given that we can manage to still gather the planets ressources without stagnating, uneducated jobs will become less and less important as more and more can be automated through robots, intelligent information systems such as Watson's successors and so on. At that point the ratio of revenue to salary will be extremely skewed towards highly educated jobs, making it (a) easier and (b) probably necessary to channel some of this wealth to insure everyone can keep up with education. Note that we already do that now through a wellfare system that allows anyone to get by and get a degree, even at the prestigous ETH Zurich (tuition 1400$/year). At some point a basic income may become cheaper than a welfare system, but that's not now.
- StavrosK 13y ago
  You're overlooking how expensive poverty is. I don't have numbers, but this may well end up being cheaper than the alternative.
  - m_mueller 13y ago
    Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Right now the cost of our social insurances is somewhere around 20% of GDP[1]. This covers all bases to enable any poor family to let their children escape poverty through education, thus minimizing structural poverty and its effects that will bite the USA in the coming decades. The proposed basic income seems to come out at around 34%. Now tell me (a) what basic income will achieve more than what we have already in Switzerland and (b) how we should come up with the remaining 14%. [1] http://www.pa.uzh.ch/news/NeueLohnreglemente/Sozialversicherungsbeitraege2012.pdf; http://www.pa.uzh.ch/news/NeueLohnreglemente/Sozialversicher... left column: percentage of salary paid by employee, right column: percentage paid by employer, so just add all those numbers up
fab13n 13y ago
About poorly paid boring jobs: either they're socially necessary and will command higher wages, or they're not worth it, and we'll manage without them. The main interest of minimal income is to shift the power balance between employer and employees: today, most employees have a choice between complying and starving. Actually in many countries they have to do both. With minimal income, it becomes a choice between compliance and comfort rather than survival. Negotiation between them and their employers can happen again (people still value comfort)
- prostoalex 13y ago
  > today, most employees have a choice between complying and starving Really? What's the grand total number of starvation deaths in United States or Switzerland?
  - dinkumthinkum 13y ago
    People go hungry in the US. To suggest otherwise is, frankly stupid. People go hungry and people are poor enough that their main options for food are cheap, unhealthy, high caloric. So is it your contention there are no charity soup kitchens or charity groceries in the US, because you seem to imply it.
    - prostoalex 13y ago
      Unemployment rate is not 0%. Starvation rate is 0%. Grandparent was implying that the only choices are sub-par employment or starvation, end of story, which sounded a bit sensationalist.
madaxe 13y ago
* > who would do boring, low-paid work with this sort of basic income * Software and automation.
algorias 13y ago
>I find with most jobs is that it's much easier to get more pay than less hours Actually, this is less of a problem in Switzerland than in other countries. Specially at the low end of the income scale, it's easy to get jobs in the 30-50% range (100% being 40h/week). Just the fact that people here think in terms of an x% job should tip you off that it's pretty common.
sergiosgc 13y ago
> One of the main questions about something like this is about who would do boring, low-paid work with this sort of basic income. Half jokingly, I would say "Portuguese immigrants". I once went to Zurich for a conference and, on the day of the flight, was unshaved, poorly dressed (two hour sleep night before the fligbt). Man, was I drilled by the border police about my intentions in Switzerland. They were convinced I'd be moving there to serve tables or such (I'm a s/w engineer...). Apparently, there is a huge flow of my compatriots over to Swiss menial jobs.
gwu78 13y ago
A well crafted comment. But I have a thought experiment for you. "One of the main questions about this is who would do boring, low paid work..." First, let's assume we are starting from scratch and reassigning what "work" is compensated with pay and what work is not. For the purposes of our thought experiment, ignore "low paid" and "high paid" below, because we have not yet decided what work will be compensated with pay, let alone how much pay. Hence "boring, low paid work" becomes just "boring work". Next, let's further assume that "boring work" describes the type of work that people do not normally want to do. And here's the though experiment: What if the converse of "boring work" (e.g., "interesting work") was not actually "work"? That is, what if "interesting work" was not compensated? What if people were not paid for doing what they are naturally inclined to do, i.e., for doing what they love? What if we only compensated people for doing "boring work"? Remarkably, this actually does not sound too far from reality. Because that is exactly what many people do in order to be compensated: boring work. Similarly, many of us do plenty of "work" for which we are not compensated. What's different about the thought experiment is that we reassess whether persons who refuse to do boring work in favor of interesting work should actually be paid. After all, they are doing what they love. And they would presumably do this regardless of payment. If only the "grunt workers" get paid, then we have created an incentive to do grunt work. We have not removed the incentive to do more interesting, "higher level" work because that incentive does not find its basis in compensation, for this is the "work" that people actually want to do, regardless of payment. Or so that's what they always tell us.
downandout 13y ago
I am not an economist, but this sounds like a recipe for massive inflation. At some point, the spending power of the basic income, regardless of the actual amount given, will approach zero. Free money, health care, food, and unicorns for everyone sounds great, but these models are notorious for not working out well.
- fnordfnordfnord 13y ago
  >these models are notorious for not working out well. I guess you know because you've seen it tried so many times? Here is a fact for your non-economist economic model. Automation is displacing labor. And, here is a prediction: Automation will continue to displace labor until most menial labor tasks are gone.
  - sologoub 13y ago
    You forgot the direct causal effect this has on demand. The more labor is displaced, the more demand will need to come from somewhere else, and that is a massive problem to have. When automation increased productivity during most of the last century, demand grew and economy prospered. When towards the end of the century, automation started to cannibalize jobs, we started to rely more and more on debt. And that's where we are today. While there is likely some inflation, it would be really interesting to see how it balances out (if it does) against the benefits of added extra demand.
    - fnordfnordfnord 13y ago
      >You forgot the direct causal effect this has on demand. The more labor is displaced, the more demand will need to come from somewhere else, and that is a massive problem to have. Demand for labor, or demand for products? >When automation increased productivity during most of the last century, demand grew and economy prospered. When towards the end of the century, automation started to cannibalize jobs, we started to rely more and more on debt. And that's where we are today. You're hinting around the most important distinction between then and now (or the not too distant future). For many goods, we are entering a time where we can produce more than we are able to consume. We can continue creating artificial scarcity to keep people employed, which kind of makes labor the product. Or we can relax our ideas about how to distribute the proceeds of peoples' collective efforts. I don't think that it is tenable to continue with the artificial scarcity model because automation is just too attractive to industry.
6d0debc071 13y ago
> One of the main questions about something like this is about who would do boring, low-paid work with this sort of basic income. If it's more expensive to hire people to do crappy work, then the relative utility of robots goes up. It doesn't strike me as a particularly complex problem to make robots to collect people's trash, or similar jobs. Most of the low-wage jobs are very mechanical and routine in nature.
mizchief 13y ago
Unless they put in price controls for basic goods, nothing will really change when it comes to jobs. When everyone has an extra $2,800 a month to spend across the board, what do you think will happen to prices? Why would I give you my time when I get the money for free? Business will have to pay more to encourage people to continue to work for them, and increase prices to make up the difference.
api 13y ago
"One of the main questions about something like this is about who would do boring, low-paid work with this sort of basic income." Computers and robots. Not true quite yet, but will be in the next few decades.
TelmoMenezes 13y ago
> One of the main questions about something like this is about who would do boring, low-paid work with this sort of basic income. I believe this would not be a problem in the long run for the following reasons: - A lot of boring low-pay work is unnecessary (dealing with the endless paper trail of over-complicated bureaucracies, lots of things that companies do, like telemarketing, just because it's so cheap, etc. etc.); - A lot of it is necessary, so it would just become more expensive. At some price, people will be willing to do this work despite the basic income. Many people actually enjoy doing meaningful work, be it plumbing or being a doctor. It's the soul-crushing pointless work that is so depressing; - This would then create strong economic pressure to finally use technology for what it's good: automatize labor. No longer would there be the job loss dilemma; - Likewise, this would create strong economic pressure to simplify everything: no more pointless bureaucracy, no more over-complicated taxation schemes that require an army of accountants, much less pointless meetings and other corporate fat, and so on. I'm filled with hope by this idea and honestly believe that it has a chance of working. It's time to step into the next era.
- marknutter 13y ago
  I see it differently. If people are receiving a basic income their performance at a job becomes much less important. Why care if you do a good job if losing it doesn't really impact you that negatively?
  - drewrv 13y ago
    It would impact you negatively, it just won't lead to utter ruin and homelessness.
  - samatman 13y ago
    Let's presume you have a job, rather than being freelance or a founder: Would you continue to do well at it if it was, say, 60% of your income rather than all of it?
    - marknutter 13y ago
      I think that the less the job income affected my bottom line, the less I would care about performing well at it. If it was 10% of my income I would care even less. After all, I'd rather be working on my own ideas than someone else's.
fnordfnordfnord 13y ago
>By US standards, this actually seems to be a good salary: significantly better than working full time at minimum wage. The cost of living in Switzerland is among the highest in the world.
gcb1 13y ago
you cant say a salary is good without listing the cost of living. that salary would barely cover my cheap rent, and maybe 3 month of food... it is like living in san francisco with a "good salary" from the outskirts of idaho.
ChuckMcM 13y ago
I hope this passes because it will put to the test some of the possible benefits of a basic income. This is an interesting question: "One of the main questions about something like this is about who would do boring, low-paid work with this sort of basic income. What I would really hope is that people would still do many of those jobs, but for far fewer hours--largely as a way to get money for incidental expenses and luxuries beyond the basic income. One problem I find with most jobs is that it's much easier to get more pay than less hours, even if I really want the latter. There is a large drop-off between full-time and part-time work." As I understand the theory, people will do this for exactly the reason you give, which is that it will add to their income for extras. The basic tenet of the BI concept (as I understand it) is that you provide subsistence wages and do not add an economic penalty for working, thus people will work because it won't cut down on their basic income (like it does with welfare) instead it will improve their income picture.
deleted 13y ago
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mcv 13y ago
Keep in mind that with a $30,000/year basic income, a $30,000/year job would make your total income $60,000. There's definitely an incentive to work. Especially when compared to welfare, unemployment benefits etc, because you lose those when you get a job. You don't lose basic income. You always get ahead by working, even if it's something low paid for only a few hours a week. But more than that, it's quite possible that boring, low paid, unattractive jobs will have to become better paid or more interesting if they're essential jobs, and they might disappear entirely if they're not essential. I think the quality of jobs is likely to increase because of this.

by tikhonj 13y ago

rmc 13y ago

* By US standards, this actually seems to be a good salary: significantly better than working full time at minimum wage.* Switzerland is incredibly expensive. I don't really think it's accurate to do an actual comparison with exchange rates.

ashray 13y ago

Just bear in mind for your calculations that in Switzerland a cup of coffee often costs $6 as does a can of coke. Cost of living is extremely high. But still, this does look like a decent deal. Zurich is like San Francisco in terms of expenses.

tikhonj 13y ago
For reference, I currently live in Berkeley. While not quite as expensive as SF, it's pretty close. I also live in one of the somewhat less cheap parts of the city (northside)--my rent is much higher than it could be. On the other hand, I do have a roommate--it all comes back to being young and single (but, again, not frugal).
- jamesaguilar 13y ago
  I'm just gonna throw this out there as a fellow Bay Area person. I like bragging about how bad I have it as much as the next social network self-flaggelator. But our costs aren't even remotely comparable to Zurich's. You need a lot more money to live there, especially if you even semi-regularly go out to eat. It's bad enough that when Swiss people come back through customs from other countries, their trunks are searched for groceries, not drugs.
  - lifeisstillgood 13y ago
    Well at least no-one tries wrapping an artichoke in a condom and swallowing it to get past customs. Not even the Swiss German speakers ;-)
    - lostlogin 13y ago
      I assumed I had missed a story. I've just run the oddest google search I've tried in the last little while.
      - lifeisstillgood 13y ago
        possibly the last remaining googlewhack ? :-)
seanmcdirmid 13y ago
A can of coke can cost 6CHF at Zurich airport maybe, but the standard price is 2CHF, and even cheaper at some grocery stores. San Francisco is still much cheaper than Zurich in terms of expenses, only the rents are kind of comparable.

psuter 13y ago

Depending on your age, previous employment, where you live and current situation, you may in fact get a similar total today in Switzerland by combining unemployment and social insurances with health insurance subsidies, and maybe even preferential housing conditions if you're lucky. Needless to say it would be a nightmare, because you continuously need to demonstrate need for each allowance separately, some come from the city, some from the state, etc.

evincarofautumn 13y ago

You’re right on all points. Most people seem to get some enjoyment from what they do for work, or at least can find satisfaction in it at the end of the day. With a basic income, a person can worry less about making ends meet and more about doing what they want to do. In the short term, that might mean slacking off (and inflation)—but in the long term it seems like people would start being generally productive again, and much happier for it. A sizable chunk of people will just keep doing what they’re doing. There is little worse than creating jobs—I equate that with creating inefficiency. (Creating careers is another story.) But the more things we can automate, the more humans can live leisurely, thoughtful, happy lives. I for one would enjoy nothing more than to work full-time on my programming language projects without worrying about where my next meal will come from. P.S. Hi Tikhon! Coming to BA Haskell User Group on the 18th? https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/bahaskell/W0g4J-c5Dhs https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/bahaskell/W0g4J-c5Dh...

option_greek 13y ago
Reminds me of spacers in Asimov novels. Hope this is a starting point from which all of humanity can benefit. If I don't have to worry about making ends meet I will focus fully on learning about and building robots.
dinkumthinkum 13y ago
I think this is so disconnected from reality, though. It's posh and intellectual to think this way but its so not related to reality.
- evincarofautumn 13y ago
  Maybe I understated the problems. Adding a basic income all at once would have extreme short-term effects on an economy, and that might continue for ten, twenty-odd years. But humans aren’t generally happy working as much as we do in agriculturalist societies. Long-term we have a chance to reduce the work level back to that of hunting and gathering, while preserving other benefits such as population stability in the face of natural disaster. Economy and ecology are inextricably linked. If a basic income stands to benefit us as a species, I’m willing to at least entertain the thought, despite the immediate drawbacks.

drob 13y ago

Not to mention this does away with all the administrative overhead of the dozens of piecemeal welfare programs we have in the US. Rather than whitelisting narrow sets of allowed expenditures and making people prove that they're poor for each program, I suspect giving people an income that allows them to live decently without all the red tape and attached strings will make for a much more efficient way to fight poverty and improve quality of life. That said, I don't think a basic income experiment with a successful outcome would cause us to take the notion seriously in the US. Portugal's decriminalization of drugs in 2001 comes to mind. By all accounts, it was a great success, which we've largely ignored. The dozens of countries with single-payer health care systems that deliver better care for far less money are another regrettable example. Here's hoping Switzerland undertakes what looks to be a fascinating experiment.

adventured 13y ago
The piecemeal programs are on purpose. They're buying votes. The entire modern structure of the US Government is set up around vote buying, on both sides. There's zero chance they'll switch to direct payments. It does away with the power, which is the entire point of having a sprawling bureaucracy - so people like Reid and Boehner and Pelosi can act like they're little kings.
- drob 13y ago
  There's also a general disdain for the poor, rooted in just-world fallacy. As American politics would have you believe, the poor can't be trusted with cash. "They'll just spend it on drugs and plasma TVs!" Thus, the only politically salient form of aid to the poor is in the form of vouchers for specific things, e.g. food and medicine. This is dogma on the right, but it echoes surprisingly often from the left as well.
  - scott_karana 13y ago
    I'd like to see hard data on this. I've heard numerous anecdotes on both sides of the debate. Eg, "lost faith in humanity at my first job in the liquor store, as soon as Welfare day hit"

kijin 13y ago

> One problem I find with most jobs is that it's much easier to get more pay than less hours, even if I really want the latter. There is a large drop-off between full-time and part-time work. I wonder how much of that is due to habits and regulations that are necessary in the absence of basic income. When most people are full-time workers, and when most people need to be in order to survive, it's not surprising that the entire economic system gets optimized for full-time work. Lots of government regulations are also designed with full-time workers in mind, with the assumption that most part-time workers want to "upgrade" to full-time a.s.a.p. For example, in some jurisdictions it is illegal for an employer to employ a part-time worker for more than X hours a week (nearly full-time) without giving them benefits equivalent to what full-time workers get. This makes it very difficult for an employer to maintain an ongoing relationship with someone who prefers to work 20 hours a week. Not enough hours to justify full-time employment but too many hours to keep on the part-time payroll. Policies like that are necessary to protect workers in a world without basic income. In the long term, I imagine that a guaranteed basic income would make a lot of current employment-related regulations unnecessary, leading to more flexible terms of employment. But it will probably take a decade or more for Switzerland's economic system to adjust to basic income, and I really hope that the pain of the transition period doesn't make them call it a failure too soon. (I can already see the FOX News headline: 3 years after Switzerland implements basic income, their unemployment rate is up 20%! See what happens when Commies take over your country! etc. etc.)

yaddayadda 13y ago
It also means that there are employers who see a full-time employee as more expensive than two part-time employees and therefore have exclusive or nearly exclusive part-time employment. For employees in this situation that need full-time income, they end up taking a second or even third part-time job, thus working full-time or more hours but without the expected benefits of full-time employment.
PeterisP 13y ago
Your example about part-time workers seems very strange - the policies you state don't mean 'part time workers are bad, limit their usage', it simply means 'part time workers are just as okay as everyone else, and naturally they deserve "benefits" as well'. We can (and most likely will) move towards a large part of society working part-time - why should that part have less labor rights than everyone else?

cabalamat 13y ago

> this works out to $2800/month or $33600/year. Switzerland's per capita GDP is about USD 79000/year, so assuming 80% of the Swiss population are adults and citizens, this would cost about 34% of GDP, which may be unaffordable.

kijin 13y ago
Define "unaffordable". It's really annoying that people say "it's unaffordable" to mean "we don't want to pay", when the phrase is supposed to mean "we can't pay, we don't have enough money". I understand why people don't want to part with money, but at least let's be honest. If you sort everyone from poorest to richest, and plot their incomes on a graph, basic income just means that the slope is flatter than before [1]. As long as the area under the graph (GDP) remains the same, it's technically affordable. The flattening is accomplished by (a) taxing the rich more, and (b) a gradual reduction of salaries and/or working hours as the market finds a new equilibrium. What matters is political will, and it seems that Switzerland has more of it than most of the other developed countries. [1] http://i.imgur.com/IGkHoma.png http://i.imgur.com/IGkHoma.png (Sorry, it looks like crap because I just drew it in MS Paint.) Edit: Fixed graph. The red line is now curved properly.
- mattlutze 13y ago
  Your graph has the richest people making less than they did before. This is unlikely to happen. The affordable question is one of: where the money's going to come from? How will small or large businesses, poor/middle-class/wealthy private individuals be required to support it? The initiative's organizing committee said the basic income could partly be financed through money from social insurance systems in Switzerland. I don't think the initiative people really have a clear idea.
  - kijin 13y ago
    > Your graph has the richest people making less than they did before. This is unlikely to happen. Isn't that the whole point of any policy that implies a massive redistribution of wealth? Of course the money needs to come from higher taxes. Ergo, "What matters is political will." As I said, it's really annoying that people say "it's unaffordable" to mean "we don't want to pay". This usage masks the real problem, which is political will (or lack thereof), not the physical scarcity of USD or CHF.

icebraining 13y ago

One of the main questions about something like this is about who would do boring, low-paid work with this sort of basic income. The people who already do them: immigrants, which make up more than 20% of the population of Switzerland.

huhtenberg 13y ago
Though heck of a lot of these immigrants work in CERN, Nestle, Fifa, Phillip-Morris and other internationals rather than washing toilets and sweeping streets.
batiste 13y ago
I would think that most would would probably keep their jobs. But instead of bringing home only 3000-3500 they would probably bring close to 6000.

konstruktor 13y ago

> One of the main questions about something like this is about who would do boring, low-paid work with this sort of basic income. I think that with basic income, this question would not make sense, and that's exactly the reason that I like the idea so much. The reason why people do boring, dirty and dangerous work for little money is that there are folks who have no skills that would enable them to get a more fulfilling, cleaner, safer job that pays more. Those people depend on income, any income, to live, so they do the dirty jobs, and since there is a large pool of these workers, the shitty jobs can even pay just enough to survive. With a decent basic income scheme, i.e. the basic needs of the people taken care of, the job market would probably flip: You would have to pay people very well for doing unpleasant work, and not so well for fulfilling jobs.

marcamillion 13y ago
> With a decent basic income scheme, i.e. the basic needs of the people taken care of, the job market would probably flip: You would have to pay people very well for doing unpleasant work, and not so well for fulfilling jobs. This is an interesting premise. It would probably cause a lot of firms to be started, that compete to do those 'shitty jobs' - that could potentially drive the cost down and be done much better. This experiment would be VERY interesting indeed.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- gaius 13y ago
  Very interesting to watch from another country. That is the real reason politics moves so slowly, because the usual results of political experimentation is mass starvation.
  - ZenoArrow 13y ago
    Political experimentation usually leading to starvation... Have you got a high number of examples to back that up? I can only think of a handful.

zem 13y ago

> One of the main questions about something like this is about who would do boring, low-paid work with this sort of basic income. people who talk about this always do so with the assumption that someone else would do the boring, low-paid work. but if you think about it, why should boring work be low-paid? it's unpleasant and time-consuming, so it should ideally be paid commensurately.

homeomorphic 13y ago

> One of the main questions about something like this is about who would do boring, low-paid work with this sort of basic income. My (probably wrong) impression was that hardly any Swiss work those kinds of jobs anymore as it is, and that the country relies on migrant temporary workers. How true is this? Also, your comment is great in general. It really made me think.

maurits 13y ago
The poverty line is 2200, the median around 5700, and a starting cashier at one of the big supermarket chains will make 3200+ and benefits. [1] [1]: http://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/portal/de/index/themen/03/04/blank/key/lohnstruktur/nach_branche.html http://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/portal/de/index/themen/03/04/bla...

adventured 13y ago

100 million adults in the US currently hold no job. $33,600 * 100 million = $3.36 trillion (20% of GDP) Good luck with that. That by itself is about $900 billion more than the total federal tax haul for 2012. Then throw in the other 50 million adults making less than $33.6k per year, assume a solid added cost of at least 25% of GDP. It's pure fantasy, and completely falls apart when you start doing the actual math.

homeomorphic 13y ago
I don't think anybody has suggested introducing the basic income amount of a country with that from the country with (one of) the world's highest costs of living. $33.6k is, at least in comparably priced Norway, a very very low income. As in: way less than what a cleaner or a supermarket cashier would make. The amount would obviously be different in different countries.
ZeroGravitas 13y ago
Basic income is given to everyone, not just the poor and/or unemployed. It's actually a very good idea, supported by people all across the political spectrum. You should read up on it before dismissing it.
- crassus 13y ago
  Personally I can't imagine working 60 hours a week to pay taxes for someone else staying home and playing World of Warcraft
  - jhuckestein 13y ago
    Another aspect of basic income usually is to pay higher taxes on consumption and lower taxes on work
  - ZeroGravitas 13y ago
    One of the interesting things about basic income, is that it generates responses like this, yet you probably already do this in your country, whether it's welfare linked to job-seeking or disability or having kids etc. Worse still, the way in which these people are currently given the money makes it economically idiotic for them to go and find a small amount of work, since they'd often end up getting less money overall, so they're trapped in this life of which you don't approve.

jre 13y ago

Just to put things in perspective (I'm swiss), 2500CHF is a really low salary in Switzerland. There is another initiative asking for a minimum wage of 4000CHF per month. The median swiss salary is close to 6000CHF[1]. The administration says the poverty line is around 2200CHF per month for someone living alone [2]. You can't really just convert to $ and say it's a lot of money. A lot of basic stuff like food, transportation, housing are really expensive in Switzerland. [1] http://archives.tdg.ch/actu/suisse/suisses-gagnent-moyenne-5979-francs-mois-2011-11-28 http://archives.tdg.ch/actu/suisse/suisses-gagnent-moyenne-5... [2] http://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/portal/fr/index/themen/20/03/blank/key/07/01.html http://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/portal/fr/index/themen/20/03/bla...

rmc 13y ago
Here here. I've travelled through Switzerland, and can confirm that it's really expensive compared to many other countries. I made the mistake once of planning to stay overnight in Switzerland. That was expensive. About €40 to stay in a rural hostel.
- eplanit 13y ago
  I believe the phrase is "hear, hear".
  - oneeyedpigeon 13y ago
    Both of them are phrases. Everyone understands the, strictly speaking, incorrect one. It's nice to know the origins of the phrase, but when more people use the 'incorrect' variant than the 'correct' one, it becomes 'correct'; that's the nature of language.
    - WCityMike 13y ago
      Under that theory, texting will swiftly become 'correct' English, and I refuse to believe THAT.
      - 13y ago

X4 13y ago

For those who don't know what the idea behind the unconditional income is: I'll briefly explain it. Imagine you work hard and only get enough to live on the edge. Now imagine you're not even the average joe, but feel that you could really change things on the world. You haven't to be a genius in order to do that, but you need to be creative, innovative and willing to work without the command to work. Now let's get an eagle's perspective on what would happen, if encouraged people would not have to spent their entire lives working for the bare minimum that keeps them slaves of the economy and industry. You would essentially create the startup-country #1. Everybody could now cherish their dreams again and make them real. You don't believe it right, that's "stupid eastern communism thinkblarg", right? How comes you Sir, Madam believe in Kickstarter, Crowdfunding, Bitcoin, P2P, Wikipedia.. and the individual freedom, so to say the american dream, when you actually have to rely on the mercy of the rich and your leading political party? Isn't that a wet dream reserverd for the 1:100.000? Let's chill and put into retrospect on what would happen if you were getting a salary that allowed you to get your basics needs fulfilled. You would be less sick, stressed, worn out. You would now be able to do what you always wanted to do in your life. Hey admit it, you wanted to buy a house at some time and have a wife and children and you knew that you'd have to work hard, the half of your life to get there. Believe it or not, but giving people freedom doesn't mean blindly trusting them. You are only one and the community you live in that government that likes to keep you locked into boundaries called country, consist of many of the smartest people on the world. Why not let them free, who do you trust if not them? We're far from a Star Trek world, where anybody get's free access to medicine and any food or resource he needs. Dear patriots, don't be afraid that your Governments managed it to go bankrupt, they've managed that already and not for the first time. It's time you your friends, families understand that the people you thought were the cause, aren't the cause. It's your Government stupid. I don't say hate Governments, but do you blindly trust a complete stranger to care for your baby? Certainly not. For those who're not still convinced that an unconditional income is a good idea: Why do you blindly trust your Government word-by-word to judge on your and everbody else's life's? When these people cannot even cooperate with just a few hundred other politicians? You see how wrong it is to not trust all people, but a selected few. Let's get over the indoctrinated prejudices and get to know each other again. Hi =)

thenomad 13y ago

m_mueller 13y ago

As a Swiss I'm not completely opposed to the idea of basic income, I just think it's too early. Right now we still need most of the workforce to create our current level of wealth - our unemployed rate is pretty low, usually around 2-3%, and work efficiency is one of the best in the world - it's a well oiled machine where every cog still counts, including lower incomes. Even with the current GDP, paying that bill would be incredibly difficult, but I'd expect the GDP to even sink for some time, until positive effects can come in, making the whole thing a gamble with the well being of 8M people. Not worth it. However, going some decades into the future the whole thing might look different. Given that we can manage to still gather the planets ressources without stagnating, uneducated jobs will become less and less important as more and more can be automated through robots, intelligent information systems such as Watson's successors and so on. At that point the ratio of revenue to salary will be extremely skewed towards highly educated jobs, making it (a) easier and (b) probably necessary to channel some of this wealth to insure everyone can keep up with education. Note that we already do that now through a wellfare system that allows anyone to get by and get a degree, even at the prestigous ETH Zurich (tuition 1400$/year). At some point a basic income may become cheaper than a welfare system, but that's not now.

StavrosK 13y ago
You're overlooking how expensive poverty is. I don't have numbers, but this may well end up being cheaper than the alternative.
- m_mueller 13y ago
  Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Right now the cost of our social insurances is somewhere around 20% of GDP[1]. This covers all bases to enable any poor family to let their children escape poverty through education, thus minimizing structural poverty and its effects that will bite the USA in the coming decades. The proposed basic income seems to come out at around 34%. Now tell me (a) what basic income will achieve more than what we have already in Switzerland and (b) how we should come up with the remaining 14%. [1] http://www.pa.uzh.ch/news/NeueLohnreglemente/Sozialversicherungsbeitraege2012.pdf; http://www.pa.uzh.ch/news/NeueLohnreglemente/Sozialversicher... left column: percentage of salary paid by employee, right column: percentage paid by employer, so just add all those numbers up

fab13n 13y ago

About poorly paid boring jobs: either they're socially necessary and will command higher wages, or they're not worth it, and we'll manage without them. The main interest of minimal income is to shift the power balance between employer and employees: today, most employees have a choice between complying and starving. Actually in many countries they have to do both. With minimal income, it becomes a choice between compliance and comfort rather than survival. Negotiation between them and their employers can happen again (people still value comfort)

prostoalex 13y ago
> today, most employees have a choice between complying and starving Really? What's the grand total number of starvation deaths in United States or Switzerland?
- dinkumthinkum 13y ago
  People go hungry in the US. To suggest otherwise is, frankly stupid. People go hungry and people are poor enough that their main options for food are cheap, unhealthy, high caloric. So is it your contention there are no charity soup kitchens or charity groceries in the US, because you seem to imply it.
  - prostoalex 13y ago
    Unemployment rate is not 0%. Starvation rate is 0%. Grandparent was implying that the only choices are sub-par employment or starvation, end of story, which sounded a bit sensationalist.

madaxe 13y ago

* > who would do boring, low-paid work with this sort of basic income * Software and automation.

algorias 13y ago

>I find with most jobs is that it's much easier to get more pay than less hours Actually, this is less of a problem in Switzerland than in other countries. Specially at the low end of the income scale, it's easy to get jobs in the 30-50% range (100% being 40h/week). Just the fact that people here think in terms of an x% job should tip you off that it's pretty common.

sergiosgc 13y ago

> One of the main questions about something like this is about who would do boring, low-paid work with this sort of basic income. Half jokingly, I would say "Portuguese immigrants". I once went to Zurich for a conference and, on the day of the flight, was unshaved, poorly dressed (two hour sleep night before the fligbt). Man, was I drilled by the border police about my intentions in Switzerland. They were convinced I'd be moving there to serve tables or such (I'm a s/w engineer...). Apparently, there is a huge flow of my compatriots over to Swiss menial jobs.

gwu78 13y ago

A well crafted comment. But I have a thought experiment for you. "One of the main questions about this is who would do boring, low paid work..." First, let's assume we are starting from scratch and reassigning what "work" is compensated with pay and what work is not. For the purposes of our thought experiment, ignore "low paid" and "high paid" below, because we have not yet decided what work will be compensated with pay, let alone how much pay. Hence "boring, low paid work" becomes just "boring work". Next, let's further assume that "boring work" describes the type of work that people do not normally want to do. And here's the though experiment: What if the converse of "boring work" (e.g., "interesting work") was not actually "work"? That is, what if "interesting work" was not compensated? What if people were not paid for doing what they are naturally inclined to do, i.e., for doing what they love? What if we only compensated people for doing "boring work"? Remarkably, this actually does not sound too far from reality. Because that is exactly what many people do in order to be compensated: boring work. Similarly, many of us do plenty of "work" for which we are not compensated. What's different about the thought experiment is that we reassess whether persons who refuse to do boring work in favor of interesting work should actually be paid. After all, they are doing what they love. And they would presumably do this regardless of payment. If only the "grunt workers" get paid, then we have created an incentive to do grunt work. We have not removed the incentive to do more interesting, "higher level" work because that incentive does not find its basis in compensation, for this is the "work" that people actually want to do, regardless of payment. Or so that's what they always tell us.

downandout 13y ago

I am not an economist, but this sounds like a recipe for massive inflation. At some point, the spending power of the basic income, regardless of the actual amount given, will approach zero. Free money, health care, food, and unicorns for everyone sounds great, but these models are notorious for not working out well.

fnordfnordfnord 13y ago
>these models are notorious for not working out well. I guess you know because you've seen it tried so many times? Here is a fact for your non-economist economic model. Automation is displacing labor. And, here is a prediction: Automation will continue to displace labor until most menial labor tasks are gone.
- sologoub 13y ago
  You forgot the direct causal effect this has on demand. The more labor is displaced, the more demand will need to come from somewhere else, and that is a massive problem to have. When automation increased productivity during most of the last century, demand grew and economy prospered. When towards the end of the century, automation started to cannibalize jobs, we started to rely more and more on debt. And that's where we are today. While there is likely some inflation, it would be really interesting to see how it balances out (if it does) against the benefits of added extra demand.
  - fnordfnordfnord 13y ago
    >You forgot the direct causal effect this has on demand. The more labor is displaced, the more demand will need to come from somewhere else, and that is a massive problem to have. Demand for labor, or demand for products? >When automation increased productivity during most of the last century, demand grew and economy prospered. When towards the end of the century, automation started to cannibalize jobs, we started to rely more and more on debt. And that's where we are today. You're hinting around the most important distinction between then and now (or the not too distant future). For many goods, we are entering a time where we can produce more than we are able to consume. We can continue creating artificial scarcity to keep people employed, which kind of makes labor the product. Or we can relax our ideas about how to distribute the proceeds of peoples' collective efforts. I don't think that it is tenable to continue with the artificial scarcity model because automation is just too attractive to industry.

6d0debc071 13y ago

> One of the main questions about something like this is about who would do boring, low-paid work with this sort of basic income. If it's more expensive to hire people to do crappy work, then the relative utility of robots goes up. It doesn't strike me as a particularly complex problem to make robots to collect people's trash, or similar jobs. Most of the low-wage jobs are very mechanical and routine in nature.

mizchief 13y ago

Unless they put in price controls for basic goods, nothing will really change when it comes to jobs. When everyone has an extra $2,800 a month to spend across the board, what do you think will happen to prices? Why would I give you my time when I get the money for free? Business will have to pay more to encourage people to continue to work for them, and increase prices to make up the difference.

api 13y ago

"One of the main questions about something like this is about who would do boring, low-paid work with this sort of basic income." Computers and robots. Not true quite yet, but will be in the next few decades.

TelmoMenezes 13y ago

> One of the main questions about something like this is about who would do boring, low-paid work with this sort of basic income. I believe this would not be a problem in the long run for the following reasons: - A lot of boring low-pay work is unnecessary (dealing with the endless paper trail of over-complicated bureaucracies, lots of things that companies do, like telemarketing, just because it's so cheap, etc. etc.); - A lot of it is necessary, so it would just become more expensive. At some price, people will be willing to do this work despite the basic income. Many people actually enjoy doing meaningful work, be it plumbing or being a doctor. It's the soul-crushing pointless work that is so depressing; - This would then create strong economic pressure to finally use technology for what it's good: automatize labor. No longer would there be the job loss dilemma; - Likewise, this would create strong economic pressure to simplify everything: no more pointless bureaucracy, no more over-complicated taxation schemes that require an army of accountants, much less pointless meetings and other corporate fat, and so on. I'm filled with hope by this idea and honestly believe that it has a chance of working. It's time to step into the next era.

marknutter 13y ago
I see it differently. If people are receiving a basic income their performance at a job becomes much less important. Why care if you do a good job if losing it doesn't really impact you that negatively?
- drewrv 13y ago
  It would impact you negatively, it just won't lead to utter ruin and homelessness.
- samatman 13y ago
  Let's presume you have a job, rather than being freelance or a founder: Would you continue to do well at it if it was, say, 60% of your income rather than all of it?
  - marknutter 13y ago
    I think that the less the job income affected my bottom line, the less I would care about performing well at it. If it was 10% of my income I would care even less. After all, I'd rather be working on my own ideas than someone else's.

fnordfnordfnord 13y ago

>By US standards, this actually seems to be a good salary: significantly better than working full time at minimum wage. The cost of living in Switzerland is among the highest in the world.

gcb1 13y ago

you cant say a salary is good without listing the cost of living. that salary would barely cover my cheap rent, and maybe 3 month of food... it is like living in san francisco with a "good salary" from the outskirts of idaho.

ChuckMcM 13y ago

I hope this passes because it will put to the test some of the possible benefits of a basic income. This is an interesting question: "One of the main questions about something like this is about who would do boring, low-paid work with this sort of basic income. What I would really hope is that people would still do many of those jobs, but for far fewer hours--largely as a way to get money for incidental expenses and luxuries beyond the basic income. One problem I find with most jobs is that it's much easier to get more pay than less hours, even if I really want the latter. There is a large drop-off between full-time and part-time work." As I understand the theory, people will do this for exactly the reason you give, which is that it will add to their income for extras. The basic tenet of the BI concept (as I understand it) is that you provide subsistence wages and do not add an economic penalty for working, thus people will work because it won't cut down on their basic income (like it does with welfare) instead it will improve their income picture.

deleted 13y ago

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mcv 13y ago

Keep in mind that with a $30,000/year basic income, a $30,000/year job would make your total income $60,000. There's definitely an incentive to work. Especially when compared to welfare, unemployment benefits etc, because you lose those when you get a job. You don't lose basic income. You always get ahead by working, even if it's something low paid for only a few hours a week. But more than that, it's quite possible that boring, low paid, unattractive jobs will have to become better paid or more interesting if they're essential jobs, and they might disappear entirely if they're not essential. I think the quality of jobs is likely to increase because of this.