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Switzerland’s Proposal to Pay People

• deleted 13y ago
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  • jsmcgd 13y ago
    This method would still preserve a free market and not require top down control. In fact it could remove a great deal of government/bureaucracy. I think the key would be to make sure that people are paid not too much so that the low paid, menial but essential jobs are still filled and inflation doesn't sky rocket.
    • polarix 13y ago
      If the low paying, menial jobs are indeed essential, why are they low paying? Do the people working these jobs currently really have a choice? Is that morally justifiable?
      • eli_gottlieb 13y ago
        They're low paying largely because the capitalist class uses both brute force and state power (union-busting is a premier example) to systematically suppress the price of labor.
        • patrickaljord 13y ago
          What kind of brute force are you talking about? If people want to unionize they are free to do so. But business owners should be free to ignore unions if they wish and use force if unions decide to occupy the business private property as protected by the constitution. They are free to stop working and protest but business owners should be free to replace them if they can. None of the parties however should be allowed to steal from the other's property and if it happens they should be able to ask the state for protection of their belonging.
          • eli_gottlieb 13y ago
            >What kind of brute force are you talking about? Guns, thugs, police, arrests. That kind[1]. >If people want to unionize they are free to do so. Well they're not[2]. [1] -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goon_squad http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goon_squad [2] -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union-busting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union-busting Oh, and then there's the issue that property in the means of production is itself a relation created by the capitalist state, as are the modes of its organization (ie: joint-stock companies instead of commons trusts or workers' cooperatives).
      • weddpros 13y ago
        It's all a matter of skills, and scarcity. These jobs are low paying because competition is high between low-skilled candidates: "if you don't want to mob the floor, you're fired, I'll find someone else". Do these people have a choice ? They usually have a choice between many low paying jobs. Is it morally justifiable? If you believe meritocracy is a bad thing, then no. If you think it's a good thing, then low paying low-skilled jobs are just a fact.
    • agilebyte 13y ago
      A person that would still go to work a menial job, even with a basic income, would get so much respect from me, and I think from others as well. That is another form of currency. At the same time these kind of jobs are increasingly being replaced by robots.
    • icebraining 13y ago
      I think the key would be to make sure that people are paid not too much so that the low paid, menial but essential jobs are still filled You don't need to worry about that. If those jobs are really essential, then they won't remain low paid; the salaries will increase until they find people willing to do them. Of course, it might be weird to see dishwashers earning more than programmers, but on the other hand that won't last, since it'll create plenty of business opportunities to automate them.
      • VLM 13y ago
        "If those jobs are really essential" In my Grandfathers generation, attendants pumped gas into cars. People pump their own gas now. The world didn't end. I've never seen a shoeshine boy other than in movies. I expect a lot of jobs would simply disappear and no one would really mind. So you'll have to bag your own groceries, well, OK then. Hmm this store doesn't have any garbage cans or bathrooms for shoppers, interesting, I guess that means they don't have to maintain something that isn't there. My local bank branch no longer has tellers, its all on the insurance agent model where the local branch is a cheap one room office in an office park, or its all online, I was a customer of NetBank for many years until their downfall, which was nothing to do with customer service, they were bought by a subprime mortgage broker trying to diversify who obviously went bankrupt, no branches was never an issue.
  • jkrems 13y ago
    No, communism will not grant basic income. Communism tried to force everyone to work in exchange for "income". That's a pretty different concept. The article also contains the awesome phrase "countries less socialist than Switzerland" - while Switzerland is the country of banks and has a strong history of pretty straight-forward capitalism.
    • alxtye 13y ago
      When did communism force everyone to work? Do you mean the USSR?
  • onion2k 13y ago
    Perhaps you should have read it, because the proposal has nothing to do with communism. Under communism the means production are owned by the state - consequently everyone is an employee of the government, and from that springs equality. Only it doesn't, obviously, because the people organising it all tend to keep more for themselves. People are greedy when they have the opportunity. The system the article is outlining is essentially the notion that if you give everyone a small amount of money, enough to live without being in poverty but not a fortune, then the societal benefits from lower crime, lower healthcare bills, improved quality of life all round, and so forth, makes everyone better off. There'd still be plenty of incentive to work because you wouldn't be able to afford the luxuries we enjoy if you didn't, but on the other hand people would have the option to work less and, for example, care for their relatives rather than having to work more as they do now. Ultimately society wins. It's a very interesting proposal. Especially if you're a liberal (small l).
    • eli_gottlieb 13y ago
      Communism is a classless, moneyless society in which the means of production are not owned at all, but held totally in common and allocated based on usage for labor. Socialism is when workers control the means of production. State socialism is a specialized form of socialism in which the state acts as the arm of workers.
      • sologoub 13y ago
        "allocated based on usage for labor." You mean based on need? Don't recall there being any kind of qualifier that you have to work X amount to get Y, which would essentially be barter capitalism (without currency that is). Under theoretical communism, the allocation is equal to all individuals and has no preferential treatment. Of course, that's not really achievable in the current form of the human condition, as the history amply shows.
        • eli_gottlieb 13y ago
          Usage for labor just means, "You get the means of production by using them", or, "Everyone directly controls what they use, and nothing else."
• xacaxulu 13y ago
  Loaded title much? American news outlets always have a way of making social safety nets and increased qualities of life sound bad. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2240002/Switzerland-best-place-born-world-Britain-27th.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2240002/Switzerland-...
  • scrabble 13y ago
    I found it funny that the title of the article was really negative, but if you read the article itself the end of the second page says that maybe it is also a good idea for the US.
    • gress 13y ago
      Titles are written by editors not the author. The are intentionally linkbait.
    • jamestc 13y ago
      The title isn't negative, though. Just radical.
      • gnaritas 13y ago
        No, that's a very negative title to a conservative; that's no accident.
  • spuz 13y ago
    Whether you believe it is loaded or not depends on your pre-existing beliefs. If you were brought up to believe in the American dream perhaps it seems controversial to expect to be paid just for having been born. But if you were brought up in a highly socialised society this would not sound controversial. I've read quite a bit on basic income before and generally have the opinion that it might be a good idea so it does not sound negative to me to propose that people are paid to be alive. In that way I think it's a clever title as its meaning appears to change depending the reader's perspective.
  • jere 13y ago
• lazyant 13y ago
  See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mincome http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mincome . I don't see what's the theoretical problem of having a "socialist" minimum for everybody together with a "capitalist" system where you can make as much as you can.
  • yummyfajitas 13y ago
    The theoretical argument is that due to the diminishing marginal utility of income, you get less labor supplied. Suppose the utility loss from taking a job is X, and U(income) is a concave function. Both of these are standard assumptions, well validated empirically. With no basic income, people will take a job if U(job income) - X > U(income=0), or equivalently U(job income)-U(income=0) > X. With a basic income, people take a job if U(job income + basic income) - U(basic income) > X. By concavity, there are values of X for which the former inequality holds and the latter does not. So people falling into this regime will be deterred from taking a job by a basic income. Society as a whole is poorer as a result by an amount equal to those individual's marginal productivity. I.e., fewer nails are manicured, fewer homes are cleaned, fewer restaurant meals are supplied. Note that you can alleviate these negative effects by replacing a basic income guarantee with a basic job guarantee (i.e., just like a basic income, but you need to work for it). That also costs the taxpayer far less.
    • anonymoushn 13y ago
      The current policy of means-tested welfare is just a complex combination of minimum income and high (sometimes >100%) marginal tax rates for the poor. The proposal to get rid of these programs and replace them with a more simple system of basic income is just a proposal to lower the marginal tax rates for the poor, so that they are no longer the highest.
      • yummyfajitas 13y ago
        The policy of a guaranteed job achieves the same goals, without the incentives for idleness. Society also benefits, since it gains some productive labor from the workers. Rather than paying $7/hour of Basic Income and getting $0 in value in return, society might pay $7/hour of Basic Job and get $4 of litter removed from parks in return.
• mercenario 13y ago
  So you pay your taxes so the government can gives you back that exact money you payed? What's the point? I have a better ideia, why don't government cut everyones taxes by the same amount?
  • yread 13y ago
    You've registered an account on HACKER news just to comment on a political article in NYTimes?
    • mercenario 13y ago
      I'm a old and frequent reader, but usually don't have much to say so I never bothered creating an account. And my english is not very good either. But the political links here are the ones who have always encouraged me to comment.
    • patrickaljord 13y ago
      What kind of question is that? Do people need a specific reason to register an account on HN now? Sheesh.
  • lmm 13y ago
    The point is a) wealth redistribution, because the marginal value of money is much greater for those who have less of it b) a nationalized safety net against catastrophe, because individuals are bad at planning for disaster, or even entirely predictable futures (witness e.g. the US IRA system) c) the social benefits to everyone (in terms of crime, disease, general wellbeing, being able to have public facilities that don't get destroyed...) of not having a poor underclass (Yes it's paternalistic, but without a certain level of paternalism, lots of citizens die. Handing out money is about the least paternalistic way of stopping that).
    • mercenario 13y ago
      If it's about wealth redistribution, why give money to the rich? If it's about anything else, why take the money in the first place just to give it back later?
• aclimatt 13y ago
  I don't see how inflation would not completely negate the effects of this without some strict fiscal policy in tandem. If you are essentially raising the average wage by X, would prices not rise accordingly? Those who make X plus a salary would not be able to afford the mansions of yesterday, because those who make X plus an even higher salary can afford to outbid them. Likewise, basic necessities like food can easily increase in price to what people can afford to pay.
  • anonymoushn 13y ago
    If the spending is funded by taxes rather than printing, why would we expect huge inflation to result?
    • eli_gottlieb 13y ago
      Well, let's admit it: because under a debt-backed fiat currency, the value of currency is a function of income inequality. To reduce inequality is thus to dilute the currency and create inflation.
    • stevesearer 13y ago
      I would expect price inflation to occur in some areas because people will have more money to spend which will have the effect of less downward pressure on prices. In my life, if I started receiving $1000 extra dollars each month, I imagine I would first go and try to rent a nicer apartment. Unfortunately, I'd expect others to do the same, giving landlords the ability to charge more because there are more dollars chasing the same number of apartments.
  • yummyfajitas 13y ago
    Presumably you are taxing income to pay for this. The net result is a transfer of wealth from people who work to people who don't. As a result the money supply does not increase. If any inflation occurs, it is caused solely by a shift of spending from goods/investments not measured by CPI (or the swiss equivalent) to those that are. (I.e., if money shifts from investment in electronics research to pizza consumption, the price of pizza will rise and the price of of oscilloscopes will fall. Since CPI includes the price of pizza but not oscilloscopes, inflation will rise.)
• deleted 13y ago
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• OnACoffeeBreak 13y ago
  One of the previous discussions here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6532738 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6532738
• trendoid 13y ago
  Similar experiments are being tried in India : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income_in_India https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income_in_India http://binews.org/2011/09/india-basic-income-pilot-projects-are-underway/ http://binews.org/2011/09/india-basic-income-pilot-projects-... here is an excerpt from the 2nd link : "These projects are similar to the Namibian basic income pilot project and to the U.S. and Canadian governments’ Negative Income Tax experiments conducted in the 1960s and 1970s, but the rural project adds an important new innovation to the method: the project is being conducted on the village, rather than on the individual, level. All residents of eight Indian villages will receive the basic income, and their behavior will be compared with residents of twelve “control” villages. This method will allow project designers to study village-wide effects of the transfer. Guy Standing, professor of economic security at Bath University (UK) and an honorary co-president of the Basic Income Earth Network, helped to conceive and organize the project. He argues that it needs to be conducted with scientific dispassion. But he’s hopeful of the outcome. Asked about the results of the Namibian pilot project—which he was also a part of—Standing said that organizers documented many positive effects: “Child school attendance went up dramatically, use of medical clinics went up. Those with HIV/ AIDS started to take ARTs (Antiretroviral Therapy drugs) because they’d been able to buy the right sort of food with the cash. Women’s economic status improved, and the economic crime rate went down. Income distribution improved.”"
• bilalq 13y ago
  The discussion of basic income has been brought up here before. The article briefly mentions unemployment, but I think that is going to become a major issue in the future. Advances in technology keep cutting down the need for labor. As automation erodes away at the need for workers, what will we be left with? Certainly, there will always be a need for people that can maintain and innovate our technologies, but why hire people to do the things that machines can do better, faster, and more cost-effectively? I think unemployment is something that is naturally going to increase in the long-term. I don't know if basic income would work or not, but it is worth considering.
  • sillysaurus2 13y ago
    why hire people to do the things that machines can do better, faster, and more cost-effectively? Because it's about 10,000x easier to program a person than to program a machine. "Sudo make them a sandwich" works on people with almost no further instruction.
    • Daniel_Newby 13y ago
      Mass markets are driven by marginal costs, not one-time engineering costs. The marginal cost of making food manually is extremely high.
      • dragonwriter 13y ago
        > Mass markets are driven by marginal costs, not one-time engineering costs. If you define "mass market" as "a market in which the quantities delivered are so high as to render the amortized initial fixed costs negligible in the final cost of goods", this is, of course, tautologically true. Of course, that that doesn't actually help with proving that any particular market is a "mass market" in that sense with regard to any particular proposed bit of one-time engineering.
  • mtgx 13y ago
    Ultimately we may want robots to do everything for us, and making anything to be so efficient that governments or companies would even offer food or other stuff for free. But until that happens, there will probably be a transition period of 50-100 years that will be very difficult for most humans. I think there are 2 solutions to fix that: 1) move humans "upmarket" (more complex work robots can't do very well yet) constantly through education. But this sounds very difficult to do and organize, as the skill to learn will always be a moving target, and I have very little faith governments are competent and fast enough to tackle this problem. So self-teaching from Internet courses and whatnot, might be the only solution here. The problem is humans also hate learning, and can't wait to get out of school to "stop learning stuff". 2) Pay everyone a living wage, for "free", by increasing taxes on capital for companies, all over the world, to sustain the increasing unemployment and the effects of automation. Since governments are lazy, and like solutions that they don't have to think too hard about, this is probably the more likely scenario. That's not to say they will do it willingly, though. Oh no, especially not with corporations basically owning many of the world's biggest governments right now. So there will be more mass protests and revolutions, until the governments get forced to come up with a solution - any solution (that works for the unemployed people).
• deleted 13y ago
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  • swombat 13y ago
    Incorrect - it is a basic income that is going to be paid to everyone, working or not. http://www.businessinsider.com/behind-the-swiss-unconditional-income-iniative-2013-10 http://www.businessinsider.com/behind-the-swiss-unconditiona... > We are not proposing a minimum income — we are proposing an unconditional income. > A minimum wage reduces freedom — because it is an additional rule. It tries to fix a system that has been outdated for a while. It is time to partly disconnect human labor and income. We are living in a time where machines do a lot of the manual labor — that is great — we should be celebrating.
  • manarth 13y ago
    The article describes a policy that is /absolutely/ that: "being paid for being alive". The policy described doesn't require you to work full-time, part-time, or at all. "Every month, every Swiss person would receive a check from the government, no matter how rich or poor, how hardworking or lazy, how old or young."
  • xxchan 13y ago
    Did you read the article? It is exactly that, a wage for being a swiss national (and alive). The title's a bit sensationalized because.. well.. fucking news can't get people to click on their stories otherwise, but it's technically valid.
• mseebach 13y ago
  The problem with this proposal is that it will change dynamics a lot, and it's hard to predict how people will respond to those dynamics. In other words, what will the unintended consequences be? Will people with non-great jobs around the basic income level keep going to work, or will they stay home and maintain their current living standard, or will they keep going to work, and roughly double it? If many people choose to stay home, the cost of the services they provide will rise quite dramatically. This will have some hard to predict consequences across the economy. Some of the services will just be foregone with little tangible effect. Lawns will be mowed less often, street swept less often etc. Slightly worse impact on the economy will be when busy people decide to forego help, such as cleaners, babysitters, handymen etc. and do the job themselves, competing with either or both work and leisure time, which impacts either or both productivity and quality of life. The most direct impact will be the rise in cost of services that can't be foregone or "taken in-house". Trash-collection, several bits of the retail supply chain etc. This will raise the cost of everything for everyone. Also, besides these impacts, there's the human element. If a person makes the short-term decision to not work (and not studying or working on a startup or something similar), that person moves further and further away from ever participating in productive labour. I'm a bit old-fashioned on this, but I consider allowing people to go idle, long-term like that, is a grave failure of society. Many people who start in unpleasant low-wage jobs, don't end in them. Those who never start any job(/education/productive activity) at all have no chance of progressing beyond them. But the worst is that taken together, the rise in prices will create a strong force towards getting rid of low income jobs, which will raise the bar significantly for those at the bottom, committing many of those willing to work to not work. This is all speculation, and it's all dependent on the level to which low-income people will or won't chose to work.
  • siculars 13y ago
    All good points. But that's the genius of it. Nobody knows what will happen. And what will happen will be affected by untold numbers of variables. Right now if you go to visit the Swiss you'll immediately notice how expensive everything is. Every. Single. Thing. I think it's absolutely the case that those prices will rise. With more disposable income, producers will start hiking their prices to capture more of it. Runaway inflation. As for what people will do. I think that's a bit less obvious. I'm sure there are those that will go on permanent holiday. How the economy will fill low wage/skill jobs is an open question. Will they have to import a 'serf' class? Non citizens who don't get payouts who actually have to work to live? Very exciting to see it all play out indeed. My gut is that this will be a net negative.
• joseflavio 13y ago
  I believe that there is a second and more dark intention in this proposal. Today Switzerland is part of EU but they still have quotas for "work permits" depending on the nationality of the worker, this goes against the principles of Schengen (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schengen_Agreement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schengen_Agreement) and there is lot of pressure for Switzerland to remove these "quotas" (mainly against eastern European countries). The problem is that the wages there are way higher than other Schengen countries, and without the quotas there would be massive immigration to Switzerland that would lower sharply the wages for jobs that don't require higher education. So, IMO, Switzerland wants to give a minimum wage to create a "virtual block" to the poor countries of Schengen... (I am French and I live near the border) edit to clarify: if you are a Swiss citizen you would earn your wage + state wage, and if you are an immigrant you would earn just your wage... making virtually impossible to afford living there (considering your wage =~ state given wage), only for very well paid jobs that this would make no difference. edit: typo
  • homeomorphic 13y ago
    > Today Switzerland is part of EU No, it is not. [1] [1] http://europa.eu/about-eu/countries/member-countries/index_en.htm http://europa.eu/about-eu/countries/member-countries/index_e...
    • mongol 13y ago
      That must have been a typo of some kind
    • joseflavio 13y ago
      Sorry, you are right, Switzerland is only part of Schengen (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schengen_Area https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schengen_Area), but still the long term objective of the Schengen Area would be borderless trade, immigration, workforce, etc.
  • mseebach 13y ago
    No, this is a separate problem. Free movement of labour is an EEA policy which permits nationals of one EEA country to work in another EEA country on the same conditions as that member state’s own citizens. "Same conditions" includes the right to the same benefits. If Switzerland accepts the basic income, they would probably have to leave EEA or negotiate some pretty steep exceptions to its membership.
• hikarudo 13y ago
  It would be great to see a discussion of this proposal from the point of view of Austrian economics. Anyone here cares to give an opinion?
• tehwalrus 13y ago
  I literally laughed out loud at the accusation of Switzerland being a "Socialist" country. Having spent a summer in Zürich amongst the investment banks (although not working at one I hasten to add) the US-English insult was too much. EDIT: Sorry, did I say investment banks? I meant Private Banks of course.
• rayiner 13y ago
  I'm trying to think how a basic income would impact say inner city communities in the U.S. I'm not sure that the only problem in those communities is a lack of cash. Rather, there seems to be a collapse in the social structure that leads to crime, drug use, etc. Experiences with micro-finance abroad have shown that such programs are most effective when the cash comes with some social engineering. Maybe the same is true for domestic welfare. Simply giving everyone a check won't cause fathers to stay with their kids and won't keep gangs from filling in the power vacuum created by their absence. A check isn't going to replace work as a framework for structuring society nor give people the fulfillment that comes from work. It's possible that paternalistic welfare is simply unworkable in practice. But I think advocates of basic income ignore the fact that there is a rationale behind paternalistic welfare that isn't addressed by basic income: that poor people lack more than just money.
  • rsingel 13y ago
    Arbeit Macht Frei.
    • stackcollision 13y ago
      Despite the evil connotations associated with this phrase post-WW2, I have to say that I agree with it.
  • xxchan 13y ago
    Other things can improve when you're not stressed and struggling on minimum wage (or not wage at all).
    • tonyedgecombe 13y ago
      Exactly, it's got to be harder to convince people to push your drugs when they aren't cold and hungry.
  • andreasklinger 13y ago
    people lack education and possibilities for long-term planning. if you provide the second the first will follow. if you provide the first your other mentioned problems will go down.
• swombat 13y ago
  As a Swiss citizen currently living in the UK, who is earning a fair amount of money and planning to probably go back to live in Switzerland, I am going to vote for this proposal (unless the referendum documentation makes it look absolutely stupid, e.g. it has some really bad implementation idea). I hate taxes as much as the next guy, but reducing risk of destitution for everyone in the country down to zero is one cause for which I'll be happy to pay taxes. Why do I want more money? To buy toys, to buy time, and to buy security. The basic income resolves the last two items, and puts the first one well within reach for most reasonable toys.
  • frogpelt 13y ago
    It sounds good in theory doesn't it? I hope it passes. It will be a great study case. I fear that it won't be pure welfare and therefore the conclusions we can draw will be limited.
  • sp332 13y ago
    If you support giving money to poor people, why are you waiting for the government to take your money and do it for you? Why aren't you already giving money to the poor?
    • Luc 13y ago
      Meh, sounds like a lot of work and worries.
    • cylinder 13y ago
      This is such a weak argument. In order to make a meaningful impact on society, you need mandated programs that require all to contribute. Do you propose that foreign aid, military spending, healthcare all be done on a peer to peer basis as well?
      • blisterpeanuts 13y ago
        So, all the hundreds of thousands of people here in America who donate their time to charitable work are wasting their time because it's not "mandated"? The billions of dollars Americans (and, no doubt, Europeans as well) donate voluntarily to charitable causes should instead be confiscated by a tax collector and redistributed systematically to all citizens according to some bureaucratic process which determines eligibility?
• manarth 13y ago
  Something that's not been mentioned much is the impact on the benefits system - and specifically the cost. Presumably this would completely replace all benefits - everyone gets $X a month, as a universal benefit. No specific claim for housing benefit, jobseekers benefit, etc. On the one hand, this massively reduces the bureaucracy/overhead of administering the system, reviewing claims, etc. On the other hand, all the public servants involved in the administration would presumably be out of work. But then, everyone's got this extra cash, to put back into the economy through their purchases… Would be really interesting to see the effects at a large/national scale.
• SeoxyS 13y ago
  Like swombat, I'm also a swiss citizen living abroad (in San Francisco), and will be voting for this referendum. Basic income is the ultimate fair and bureaucracy-less social safety net: there is no burden of proof, and nobody gets left out.
  • andreasklinger 13y ago
    Also i would assume that the costs infrastructure for "proofing" and managing are high enough to put in as a factor.
• gadders 13y ago
  When this has been discussed previously, the objection is always raised as to why would anyone want to do an unpleasant job if all their basic needs are already taken care of. The reply always seems to be "Because robots!"
• ffrryuu 13y ago
  Basic income is a universal human right.
  • breischl 13y ago
    I really wish people would quit declaring anything they want as a "universal human right." The real universals are things you naturally have that must be taken away from you. If you were the sole person on an island, you could speak freely, practice whatever religion, pursue happiness, etc. You have those rights unless someone else shows up and takes them away from you. Things like an income, health care, and all the so-called "positive rights" are just entitlements. You can stand alone on an island and scream about your right to an income, but it won't matter. Maybe the entitlements are a good idea, but no matter how good they might be they're still not "universal human rights."
    • ffrryuu 13y ago
      You can give up that right, I'll take it away from you since you don't seem to want it.
      • breischl 13y ago
        Actually not, since that "right" hasn't been created yet. Which is just another indication that it's actually an entitlement rather than a right. Rights exist without government, governments merely recognize them. On the other hand entitlements don't exist at all without government funding.
        • ffrryuu 13y ago
          Such defeatist thinking, it won't get you far in life :) j/k
• VLM 13y ago
  Any discussion of a basic income on HN probably needs a captcha to prove authors have read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Permanent_Fund http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Permanent_Fund maybe by entering the annual individual payout in 2012 was (fill in the blank) 878 or $878 or $878.00 or whatever. Most posts against it usually have a tinge of "keep the government out of my medicare" about them. "Somebody should try this" or "Its too dangerous to try" and all the like almost intentionally seem to ignore this actual implementation.
  • graue 13y ago
    Even in the best year (2008, $3269) this isn't remotely enough to live on. That's less than $9 a day, and that's an exceptionally high payout! In 2012 it was $2.40 a day. Maybe you could live on that in India or Vietnam, but not in the U.S.
    • VLM 13y ago
      I would disagree in that during my starving student years I occasionally submitted tax returns vaguely resembling those kind of figures. You need roommates and can't be too picky about food and entertainment, but its possible. Its certainly a lot easier to live on than $0 ! This does have certain implications where either it gets indexed to some kind of cost of living index, probably very corruptly, or it gets polarized into some kind of coastie/non-coastie or urban/rural issue.
  • frogpelt 13y ago
    I did not know about this program, thanks for sharing. I see a glaring difference though. Instead of taxing everyone on their person income the government took a portion of the profits from the natural resources of the state and set it aside for an endowment of sorts. The fund itself is invested and the dividends are paid out. Most welfare plans do not operate this way, even if they started out with that intent.
• mangeletti 13y ago
  It's unfortunate that the Austrian School has taken a blow during the great depression, which was entirely due to government influence (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Reserve_Act http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Reserve_Act (read "Putting the fox in charge of the hen house")), leading to the adoption of a new orthodox standard of tax and spend (Keynesian) and later increase in monetar(ism|y control and domination from above) (Friedman). Now, after the 2008 crisis, which was caused entirely by government influence (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Reinvestment_Act#2008_financial_crisis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Reinvestment_Act#2008... (read "Bad credit? No problem.")), the resurgent attack against laissez-faire economics is regarded as something new by those who haven't read their history books TL;DR The fox is in charge of the hen house, blames the hens on their problems, and uses that as a justification to put an even large fox in charge of more hens.
• tete 13y ago
  If you think it is a crazy idea and don't see the reason. Think about social insurance systems and how many people are needed just for the paperwork, support when it comes to question, doctors who (re)verify that someone is really sick. And then think about all the overhead you have as an entropeneer and how much risk you have, just for trying out an idea. And then think about the risks, if you dedicate your life to art or if you dedicate your life to help other people. Maybe there are systems to fix all of this, but they will be complex and have a lot of overhead (in other words: Tax paid for paperwork). Remving the "having bad luck" problem means more people that will actually go for something, meaning more chances of bringing ahead giant leaps. And think about how people can focus on the actual problem without constantly having that "How to pay your fees next month" thought in the back of your head, that makes you makes you wanna cry, whenever you find that that's not the solution.... espcially when you have a family.
  • ricardobeat 13y ago
    > entropeneer I like that word. Creators of entropy.
• cl3m 13y ago
  Unfortunately, I don't think there is any chance this will pass. Swiss are very risk averse and I don't think they want to mess with the successful economy they have now. There is way to much uncertainty. The initiative to increase the minimum holiday (4 to 6 weeks) failed already. For those interested, there is a initiative this month to limit the maximum salary to 12x the minimum salary in the same company (1:12) which might pass..
  • swombat 13y ago
    For the record, I voted against the 12x proposal. It's unnecessary meddling in the workings of a free market, meant to appease ideologists. The basic income proposal, however, is a pretty dramatic, wide-ranging change that could make a big difference. It's not appeasing: it's incendiary.
• sunseb 13y ago
  I live in Switzerland, I will vote for this idea, but there is absolutely no chance this referendum will succeed. The Swiss are very conservative people and don't want to change their model until it's proven more effective.
• negamax 13y ago
  Everyone here should watch that Ducktales episode where everyone in the valley gets lots of bottle caps and then there's no value to them. It's a fallacy and shortsightedness to think there be no inflation. No country is a closed system. People will be spending money on imported goods. This will only leave inflating money supply as a resort; so state can fulfil its obligation.
• macspoofing 13y ago
  Can someone explain how this is paid for? As I understand it, the basic income involves paying each citizen $2800 per month, or $33600 per year. For Switzerland that would mean a total expense of $270 billion ( $269,270,400,000 ) per year. If instituted in the US, that would mean an expense of $10 trillion ( $10,516,800,000,000 ) per year. Both numbers are around what the total GDP of each country is. How does this math work out? I'm missing something, and no article actually explains it. //EDIT Does this mean that if you get a job that pays $34,000/year you would get no supplemental income? Whereas if you get a job that pays $30,000/year, the government will subside your income to the tune of $3600? That's the only way this makes sense any sense. Right?
  • stackcollision 13y ago
    I don't think it does. Just remember that an artist came up with this. The rotary engine was great in theory, too.
  • e98cuenc 13y ago
    This is only for people that are earning less than $2800. In Switzerland that's basically only unemployed people. The unemployment rate when I was there was ~3.5%, so it's roughly $10B / year, which looks acceptable for a country as wealthy as Switzerland.
    • macspoofing 13y ago
      >This is only for people that are earning less than $2800 Are you sure about that? From the article: >Every month, every Swiss person would receive a check from the government, no matter how rich or poor, how hardworking or lazy, how old or young.
      • malandrew 13y ago
        This actually makes perfect sense. It represents a cleanly defined abstraction layer and awareness of separation of concerns. The Swiss government pays everyone a check every month, rich, poor, whatever. Everyone now has income and feels fair because they all get the check. This also adds a wealth effect, because those with a great job now feel richer since they have $2800 more per month and spend more because of it. This is the welfare abstraction and has little to no waste or overhead because you only need to check if someone is or is not a system. This is completely binary and easily provable. At the other end, you have taxation. The only interfaces between the guaranteed income system and the tax system are (1) the guaranteed income system provides a list of all citizens registered for guaranteed minimum income (i.e. drawing a check, which should be like 99+% of the population), and (2) the tax system collects taxes to pay for the guaranteed income system. Everyone who gets a check, which is pretty much all Swiss citizens, now need to add one line item to their taxes, which the government can verify via interface (1) above. Those who make a lot of money via their job and the minimum income pay more in taxes. For pretty much everyone who is rich, the $2800/month actually comes right back out in taxes. It's a pretty brilliant implementation. Nicely architected.
• CalRobert 13y ago
  As we increasingly move to a post-scarcity economy, at least in terms of the most basic necessities of life, this kind of measure will be necessary to avoid civilization becoming teeming hordes of poor with a few billionaires (the ones who own the robots) sprinkled in. Of course, this is all before climate change wipes out crops and antibiotics destroy the species!
• RyanMcGreal 13y ago
  Canada considered establishing a guaranteed income in the 1980s after the MacDonald Commission Report recommended it in 1985. It would have replaced most social welfare programs, which turned much of the left against it. Ironically, social welfare in Canada has since been stalled, stagnated, cut back and means-tested to the point where the guaranteed income proposal seems impossibly generous rather than parsimonious. As it happens, the Mulroney Government that received the MacDonald Commission report embraced the recommendation to pursue a free trade agreement with the USA and ignored the guaranteed income proposal. The idea has bounced around a bit since then but gained no political traction.
• algorias 13y ago
  I think this is the most important vote we will get to cast in a long time, not just for us here in Switzerland, but for the world at large. By and large, capitalism (as a political system) has failed the world. Capitalism is a very efficient, even beautiful, distributed algorithm that is very good at allocating resources in a reasonably close to optimal fashion, more efficient than central control in many aspects. It doesn't automatically make social justice happen, however. Its efficiency is at the same time its heartlessness. Too many people ignore this blatantly obvious fact (see prisoner's dilemma, tragedy of the commons, etc) because that realization is painful and requires a deep honest look at our own position in society. If we want to see significant social change in the world within the next 100 years, experiments like unconditional basic income need to happen at a large scale. Switzerland is one of the few places in the world (if not the only) with the wealth an political freedom to make that possible. Personally, I believe that voting for this proposal is a moral imperative rather than a choice. This is the first time in my life I feel compelled to campaign for a cause, so I'm brainstorming about how to get the message out. Any help would be appreciated!
  • bjt 13y ago
    How is capitalism a political system?
    • algorias 13y ago
      For many modern societies, I would consider the fact that they're free market economies their defining characteristic, rather than their being democracies. The idea of capitalism drives laws and lobby. It hides deep structural problems our societies face, influencing public discourse. A misunderstood idea of what capitalism is supposed to be causes many people think "not my problem", and "those lazy bastards" instead of actually looking at the problems others face with empathy. In summary, it removes human dignity from the center of our considerations.
    • sambeau 13y ago
      Capitalism is a human-created system that stratifies and organises the behaviour and status of people. How could that be anything other than a political system? Capitalism is neither eternal nor universal it is merely a system that most humans adhere to currently.
• blisterpeanuts 13y ago
  I'm going to go out on a limb and say this is the most ridiculous idea that will have disastrous and unintended consequences across the board, leading to more poverty and crime and economic stagnation than ever, at least here in the U.S. Once such a program is implemented, charities will dry up as the average giver realizes that the recipient already gets plenty. The more dedicated givers, the idealistic volunteers, will still be out there providing free meals and helping in shelters, but the vast majority of working people with some disposable income to share will no longer give; they'll just shrug and say, "I gave at the office" or, more literally, "My money was confiscated at the office". Furthermore, this will provide a disincentive to find work, and we'll see a surge of immigration from Latin America to fill all those low end jobs that our comfortable native populace no longer feels a need to bother themselves over. The Clinton/Gingrich welfare reform efforts were intended to move families off of public dependency and to a large extent they met with success. It's rather "out of the box" these days to propose the diametric opposite, but by all means, Switzerland, please use yourself as a laboratory so we can observe the results. According to Swiss friends, that country has to import guest workers to perform menial labor; will this mean that these guest workers will be shipped home, or will they also receive a stipend? And if they do, will they still have an incentive to mop floors and wash dishes?
  • dublinben 13y ago
    If you'd read the article, you would know that this only applies to Swiss citizens, not migrant workers.
    • blisterpeanuts 13y ago
      If you'd read my posting, you would know that I was talking about citizens of a country. I asked, rhetorically, what the Swiss would do about the migrant workers, who, by the way, constitute 25% of the work force in today's Switzerland; excluding them would render the policy almost pointless.
  • JetSpiegel 13y ago
    If the homeless are citizens, they too will receive the money. So there won't be a need for so many charities. There is no disincentive to find work. Either you don't work and earn X, or you work and you earn X + Y. Just like it happens now, with less hoops to jump through.
• hermannj314 13y ago
  As a libertarian, I feel the government should stay out of people's lives, and yet I feel this actually achieves that over the current style in the US of needing to be deemed 'worthy poor' by the majority. Assuming this replaces all other government payments: most tax credits, food stamps, social security it create an amazing administrative savings. I'm thinking through the implications for the child support model in the United States. As I understand it, the child has a right to receive compensation from their birth parents to pay for housing, food, clothing; but if the government is taking ownership of all human beings, it seems the birth parent would have no responsibility to provide support in excess of the basic income. Orphanages, foster parents, or current custodial guardians would just receive the basic income and act accordingly. The implications for this sort of program seem huge.
  • wavefunction 13y ago
    >>government is taking ownership of all human beings I take the view that a basic income like the one proposed is actually all human beings taking ownership of our government from the current selected few privileged few.
• rjdagost 13y ago
  There's something fundamental I'm missing about this proposal: how will this not cause inflation on consumer products? People who earn above the basic income level will be hit with a double whammy: (1) They have to fund the basic income with higher taxes (2) They have to pay higher prices for consumer products due to the inflated supply of money being spent on consumer products I just don't see the point, but I would be interested in seeing the practical consequences if another nation tried it.
• cheez 13y ago
  I think this is the only way governments should "assist" their people. Further, I think portions of a minimum income should be the only way of creating currency. Currently, it is done through debt. Money should be made by the people, for the people. Perhaps it can be done as follows: 1. Institute a negative income tax 2. Any citizens who get a refund based on the negative income tax are paid by money that is created This way, when the economy slows down and people are making less money, more money is created which is what we do anyway.
• xixi77 13y ago
  This is a beautiful idea. Replacing the means-tested transfers, such as housing assistance, food stamps, unemployment benefits, etc.etc. with a simple check to everyone would provide dignity to all citizens, save on administration costs, remove the major disincentives to work that the current programs create, and even encourage entrepreneurship and creativity, since people would be less worried about their ideas not working out. It would even destroy the rationale behind minimal wage. I would gladly pay more in taxes for all that, although I suspect a lot of the program will pay for itself -- through elimination of all the above, and through the economic benefit of spending. I do worry a bit though: with the system in place, given how simple and transparent it is, what would prevent politicians from continuously raising the basic income level, until productive work becomes completely unattractive, and the economy collapses? How can that be prevented? Even though the current welfare systems are horrible in comparison on efficiency grounds, the fact that they tend to target specific small groups, makes it easier to keep them from blowing up.
• breischl 13y ago
  Interesting idea. I hope Switzerland does it so the rest of us can watch from the cheap seats and see how it works out. Human nature being what it is, there will still be some people who manage to wreck their own lives. The guaranteed income isn't much, it would be fairly easy to fritter it away on any number of vices addictions, or just garden variety fiscal mismanagement. So when people find themselves too broke for food or rent despite a minimum income, what then? There's an obvious argument that they had their chance and screwed it up, so they get to live with the consequences. But what if they've managed to drag their kids into the hole with them, or if their really old, or otherwise sympathetic? Do we restart the entire welfare conversation while taking a minimum income as a given? This also seems like it would simultaneously provide a big incentive for people to want to become citizens, and an equal reason to not let them. I wonder how that will be handled?