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Basic income plan clearly rejected by Swiss voters

swissinfo.ch

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Re: Basic income plan clearly rejected by Swiss voters

#51

Post by yummyfajitas »

raverbashing wrote: post #43
DrNuke wrote: post #31

It is premature but inevitable: automation, stagnant growth, migrations and deflation are all pushing towards universal basic income. Not 2k euros/month but enough to allow surviving and decency.

Welfare without limits is incompatible with Open Borders Remains to be seen who will want to actually do the (needed) jobs when staying at home is enough I am in favour of Basic Income, but it's not such clear cut

Given that open borders will help hundreds of millions escape dire poverty, whereas basic income will (at best) reduce some administrative costs and allow some people to live a life of leisure, how do you justify this preference?

Do the prospective brown people who might want to escape dire poverty (i.e., gain access to clean running water, flush toilets, and adequate food) just not count? Even if they counted only as 3/5 of a person, the numbers would still be drastically in their favor.

Re: Basic income plan clearly rejected by Swiss voters

#52

Post by theoh »

Havoc wrote: post #18
_nalply wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The downside are populistic decisions like the Swiss minaret referendum. Now we have the sentence «The construction of minarets is prohibited.» in the constitution. ( https://www.admin.ch/opc/en/classified-compilation/19995395/... ) I think such regulations should be decreed as a law and not as a constitution norm if at all. But if everybody has a say you get bikeshedding in the constitution.

>The construction of minarets is prohibited. Hardly surprising. Nobody wants to be awoken at ungodly hours by that howling.

It's not funny or considerate to assume that there are no Muslims in the HN community...

Re: Basic income plan clearly rejected by Swiss voters

#53

Post by areyoucrazy »

_nalply wrote: post #7
elcapitan wrote: post #4

I wish I would live in a country where essential political decisions like that are made by the people and not by some professional political elite in a far away capital.

The downside are populistic decisions like the Swiss minaret referendum. Now we have the sentence «The construction of minarets is prohibited.» in the constitution. ( https://www.admin.ch/opc/en/classified-compilation/19995395/... ) I think such regulations should be decreed as a law and not as a constitution norm if at all. But if everybody has a say you get bikeshedding in the constitution.

  The downside are populistic decisions like the Swiss minaret referendum...
Oh, you liberals. You hide behind democracy when, in fact, you are a bunch of tyrants who would like to jam your ideas of immigration, multiculturalism, socialism etc. down the people's throats whether they like it or not.

Why are you labeling direct democratic decision by majority of people as bad/downside? It seems that when people do something you like, then democracy is great, but if they do something you disagree with, then it's bad.

Re: Basic income plan clearly rejected by Swiss voters

#54

Post by Zarkonnen »

k__ wrote: post #46
chongli wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't the fact that the margin on the no vote was so high put a damper on the enthusiasm for supporters? Or do the Swiss routinely vote over and over again on rewordings of the same idea?

Well, it was 2500 bucks. Maybe 1500 would get more people to vote for it, or something else chagned, etc.

Thing is that Switzerland is a super-expensive country. 1500 would not actually be enough to live on. You can get 4000 working at the till at a supermarket.

Re: Basic income plan clearly rejected by Swiss voters

#55

Post by s3nnyy »

stickac wrote: post #44
s3nnyy wrote: post #37

Switzerland is the only country in the world that implements direct democracy. You can really feel the difference to the rest of Europe. Swiss more often than not stand behind decisions made by their government. When talking about their politicians, the Swiss say "WE decided that ..." whereas e.g., Germans say: "THEY decided that ..." If you look for a coding job in Europe, Zurich is a great place to live and is the…

You are completely ignoring the fact that the cost of living is much higher in Zurich than the rest of Europe. (For example, the rent is around 10 times higher than in Prague). But after-all, you are a recruiter, why would anyone expect you to provide unbiased information, right?

Zurich is not comparable to London, Berlin or Prag due to the fact that it is an order of magnitude smaller than most European cities. The diameter of Zurich is just 13 km.

The city itself is tiny and the "city center" is even tinier. This leads to the variance of the rent being very high: In the very center of town you might have to pay 1500 CHF for a 1-bedroom apartment, but if you can live also 5 km from the city center, you can have it way cheaper.

I am renting a 4-bedroom apartment for 1600 CHF (https://flatfox.ch/de/wohnung/8051-zurich-grosswiesenstrasse...) and I need around 12 minutes to get to Zurich main train station.

Re: Basic income plan clearly rejected by Swiss voters

#56

Post by _nalply »

_nalply wrote: post #32
tdkl wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The majority of population isn't in place to make honest, rational choices unaffected by feelings, culture, religion (I wanted to state educated, but education doesn't necessarily mean that the choice would be on the rational side) and media influence.

And do you think Switzerland is different?

This is controversial, but I think any nation can have direct democracy adapted to the nation's culture. It's just that the Swiss have more than a hundred years experience with direct democracy and have learnt for the most part to be diligent in their decisions.

Re: Basic income plan clearly rejected by Swiss voters

#57

Post by alva »

_nalply wrote: post #7
elcapitan wrote: post #4

I wish I would live in a country where essential political decisions like that are made by the people and not by some professional political elite in a far away capital.

The downside are populistic decisions like the Swiss minaret referendum. Now we have the sentence «The construction of minarets is prohibited.» in the constitution. ( https://www.admin.ch/opc/en/classified-compilation/19995395/... ) I think such regulations should be decreed as a law and not as a constitution norm if at all. But if everybody has a say you get bikeshedding in the constitution.

Out of interest, why is populistic commonly used as a pejorative? It seems to be the best friend of democracy.

Re: Basic income plan clearly rejected by Swiss voters

#58

Post by V-2 »

ihsw wrote: post #50
Zarkonnen wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Grubby", "unwashed", "infiltrate", "degeneracy". Quite the word choice.

.

Korwin-Mikke is known for his colourful language - which he doesn't reserve for so-called refugees, far from that- and a proclivity for PR scandals. He's hardly representative of Polish mainstream political class though (he himself would be greatly offended at such implication), so kindly please keep Poland as such out of it

Re: Basic income plan clearly rejected by Swiss voters

#59

Post by noauth »

greendesk wrote: post #12
MikeNomad wrote: post #8

Not happy with the headline. They voted no for an "unconditional" basic income. I think that is a huge difference, especially when a majority of the voters also want immigration reform.

My understanding is that basic income can only be "unconditional." If there are conditions attached to it, what might be they?

They might have conditions on income, property ownership, citizenship etc. In Cyprus (where I live) the recipients must agree to give unrestricted access to their bank accounts and the application form is quite long (15 pages IIRC). There are people (elderly mainly) that are unable to complete the application.

It's conditional yet it's still called "Minimum guaranteed income".

Re: Basic income plan clearly rejected by Swiss voters

#60

Post by _nalply »

MikeNomad wrote: post #41
tgb wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While that's how I read it, perhaps the condition would be citizenship. I.e. they don't want to simultaneously allow more people into their country and also give everyone in their country a lot of money for fairly obvious reasons. However, the article doesn't give translations of the actual measures so it's hard to say.

That is exactly what I had in mind re: my original comment. Seeing from other comments there would be an earnings threshold. That, to me, is not "unconditional." I'm probably running afoul of language/translation shear...

No you are right. For me it's not «unconditional» neither. However the commitee's proposal is not legally binding. Parliament would have needed to work out the exact details.
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