8 ms·

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

• 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?
      • Luc 13y ago
        Can you see my eyes rolling in their sockets? No one suggested any of the stuff in the caricature you draw there.
        • sp332 13y ago
          User cylinder claimed that peer-to-peer aid cannot make a meaningful impact on society.
          • chc 13y ago
            I don't believe he actually said that. I believe what he actually said was that there exist programs of giving which can only be effective when practiced on a large scale.
            • sp332 13y ago
              In order to make a meaningful impact on society, you need mandated programs The contrapositive (logically equivalent) statement is: If you don't have mandated programs, you can't make a meaningful impact on society.
              • chc 13y ago
                Taken in context, his statement does not appear to me to be a universal positive claim, so inverting it to a universal negative seems unfair. His point appears to be that this particular idea as well as some others are such that they cannot be effective when the scale is too small.
      • tree_of_item 13y ago
        No, money should be confiscated by a tax collector and redistributed systematically to all citizens __without__ some bureaucratic process which determines eligibility. That's what basic income means.
        • 13y ago
    • humanrebar 13y ago
      It's a weak argument because it's an accusatory personal question, which are poor arguments in general. But the underlying objection isn't convincingly refuted by your assertion or hypothetical question.
    • sp332 13y ago
      It's not an argument. I'm curious why swombat is more comfortable with the government using his money for something he himself has decided not to do.
      • swombat 13y ago
        There's a big difference between donating money to the poor and creating a vast society-wide social safety net that enables riskier careers (like entrepreneurship and art) for more people. I support the latter, not the former, and I cannot anywhere near afford the cost of the latter by myself. Think of it as a new social contract with a modern definition of human dignity that does not include having to toil at a horrible job just to survive. I'd sign up to that.
    • prostoalex 13y ago
      Take a look at Bill Gates and his fight against malaria. What they've done has had just enormous impact http://www.gatesfoundation.org/What-We-Do/Global-Health/Malaria http://www.gatesfoundation.org/What-We-Do/Global-Health/Mala... He could've gone two ways: 1) Spend time convincing the society to approve a mandated program by having everyone else pitch in. 2) Make money in private sector, and direct it to the causes that are relevant to him, free to run his foundation as he chooses. Which way was more efficient?
      • cylinder 13y ago
        Don't prove your point with outliers. He's literally the richest man in the world.
        • prostoalex 13y ago
          Precisely. Earned his money in the private sector and impacting public sector in huge way. Imagine how much progress he could've made if he started pushing this idea as a mid-level bureaucrat.
    • Houshalter 13y ago
      Yes but the point is if you think it is a good idea to give money to poor people, why are you yourself not doing it already? Sure we would be better off if we required everyone to contribute, but helping only, say, 10 people would still be desirable right?
  • Ntrails 13y ago
    Him giving to the poor doesn't achieve the same goal as a government providing a basic wage to all. Yes, you can help some people, but this is a change in the very fabric of society. In how people choose to live, to strive or to squander. This is a remarkable piece of legislation and truly exciting to observe.
    • humanrebar 13y ago
      I think it's fair to ask tough questions before one experiments with the fabric of society. It will likely be interesting and exciting if the legislation passes, but will it be better or even good?
      • chc 13y ago
        Tough questions are welcome, but they won't sound like "Well, if you think a nationwide basic income is such a good idea, why don't you do it yourself?" That question is only tough because there is no underlying logic to respond to — it's a lazy talking point intended to impugn the other side's motives rather than address the actual issue at hand.
        • sp332 13y ago
          Ok, you're the 3rd person in this thread who thinks I'm making an accusation. What accusation am I making? What motives am I imputing to swombat?
          • chc 13y ago
            You're not criticizing the idea swombat is proposing. Instead, you're questioning swombat's current actions.
          • humanrebar 13y ago
            It appears that I agree with you objection, but the heavy use of the word "you" in your question comes across hostile and personal. If you phrased your question in a more passive tone or otherwise referred to unnamed third parties, I'm sure this conversation would have much less of an edge.
  • chc 13y ago
    Treating every instance of giving money as equal is like failing to distinguish between packing popcorn from real popcorn. The motives and effects are not the same for every exchange of money. There is no way that swombat could provide a basic income for everyone, which is the idea under discussion here.
    • sp332 13y ago
      I'm not asking one person to provide a basic income for everyone. Here is my question: If a majority of the people in the country support this, why are they all not already doing it? And if they do not support it, then the referendum will not pass.
      • chc 13y ago
        > Here is my question: If a majority of the people in the country support this, why are they all not already doing it? Because they are not a psychically linked hive mind. The way the majority of people in a country coordinate the flow of resources through society is through the government. That's what's happening here. This is a bit like asking, "If you want peace, why don't you just drop out of the war?" The coordination is an essential part of the outcome.
        • sp332 13y ago
          You have it backwards. I'm asking "If you want peace, why did you personally decide to start shooting those guys with no mandate from the government?"
          • chc 13y ago
            You seem to be straining the analogy well beyond the actual comparison being made, to the point where I have no idea what you're talking about. The point is that one party in a fight stopping shooting does not constitute peace and one person giving a small amount of money to one other person does not accomplish the same goals as a basic income. I do give to charity, but the net effect of this is not a proportionally scaled down version of the effect of a basic income.
  • Zigurd 13y ago
    If you support a real free market economy, please, first, untangle banking and industry from overt and covert government involvement before you insist that the poor schlubs at the bottom of the economy be the experimental subjects for economic purity.
  • xixi77 13y ago
    It's a good question, but really, his government is already taking his money and giving it to the poor in the form of existing (means-tested) social programs, that have an additional effect of creating an extreme disincentive to work, since you get disqualified from those as your income grows. Replacing all means-tested government aid to the poor with a simple check to everyone would dramatically cut program costs and abuse, and quite likely actually result in more people getting actual jobs. It would also be a good reason to repeal the minimal wage laws, since there would be no rationale for them any more. To me, this seems like a pretty good tradeoff, even if overall tax rates go up a little to pay for it. The main danger I see in this is that with the system in place, there would be continuous public pressure on the politicians to keep increasing the basic income level, until productive employment becomes not profitable any more and the economy collapses. Of course this problem is inherent in any welfare society, but I think it's more dangerous here, because of the sheer transparency. But if anyone can make this work, it's probably Switzerland, and we would all learn a lot from the experiment.
    • humanrebar 13y ago
      The danger is more subtle than that. There is also the danger that productivity decreases enough that the Swiss GDP cannot support the entitlement at acceptable levels, even without blatant pandering to political factions. I wonder if some sort of regressive payout as a function of income (as in a logarithmic curve) doesn't make more sense. With a guaranteed base income, this would actually encourage working- and middle-class productivity. The entitlement would then be a multiplier of work, not a substitute for it.
      • xixi77 13y ago
        If the basic income is reasonably low (the income figure seems high for the US, but cost of living is much higher in Switzerland), I don't see a major decrease in productivity. If anything, I see an increase, due to elimination of extreme disincentives the means-tested programs create. But there surely is a level at which what you are describing would happen, and that is exactly what I am worried about. The regressive payout sounds like a good idea, but isn't it equivalent to just flattening the income tax?
  • k-mcgrady 13y ago
    There's a big difference. You can donate and help a small number of people. The government can instantly pull everybody in the country out of poverty. That's not something you can do yourself.
• lmg643 13y ago
  i also agree the idea sounds pretty interesting. i think the main problem is how to address cases where people mis-spend their basic income. someone is unemployed, and they blow the basic income on booze, etc. issue is how do we protect people from themselves. we can say damn the consequences and encourage prudence but i believe this is why most aid qualifications exist. i know HN readers will be less likely to do have this problem (other than spending on a startup :) ) but HN readers are not a representative cross section of people.
  • andreasklinger 13y ago
    do you have sources that verify the disproportional "mis-spending" of welfare money. i would doubt it is such a critical issue. and if usually related to problems/illness that could have been tackled earlier (alcoholism, depression eg)
  • mistercow 13y ago
    If people waste their basic income on alcohol, well, so what? I don't know the tax situation in Switzerland, but in the US, that means a big chunk of that money is immediately reclaimed as taxes. The rest goes back into the economy, and the person is not really in any worse of a situation than they would have been without basic income. It's one situation where basic income doesn't really help, but it doesn't really hurt either.
    • breischl 13y ago
      The money did come from someone else in the first place, where it would almost certainly have been better-spent than on getting wasted. And you may just be enabling a substance abuse problem to continue and worsen. To put it another way, you end up where you would have without the guaranteed income, except that the alcoholic has done that much more damage to him/herself, and the taxpayers are that much poorer. So I'd say that yeah, in that particular case it does hurt.
  • Spoom 13y ago
    In a reasonable society with universal healthcare, misspending the universal income on things like booze could be treated as a health problem. As for how to feed people who fall into that trap, there might need to be some emergency income available for which a doctor would need to sign off. Of course, we'd have to fix healthcare first in the US, which is its own giant political argument.