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Swiss to vote on 2,500 franc basic income for every adult
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Re: Swiss to vote on 2,500 franc basic income for every adult
#82For those in the EU, there is currently an official (run by the European Comission) on-line petition in which EU citizens can vote for encouraging the application of the Basic Income idea at https://ec.europa.eu/citizens-initiative/REQ-ECI-2012-000028... .
This is not a "let's apply this now!" thing, but a petition to study the ways and means of how it could be applied.
Re: Swiss to vote on 2,500 franc basic income for every adult
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
Its cost controls are weak, at best. There's no way the country will come out the other side of this with cheaper healthcare. There will be, of course, (truly) great stories about people who were suffering because of the evil practice of dropping customers from coverage when they get sick, and their finally getting the treatment their agreement with the insurance company should have entitled them to, but the total co…
"Its cost controls are weak, at best. There's no way the country will come out the other side of this with cheaper healthcare." Thankfully the cost controls are existant, at least, which is by inspection better than the status quo. This existence also renders your conclusion on costs a complete non sequitur. Trivia: as much as conservatives hate Obamacare (spoilers: a lot), they can't resist using the cost savings it…
The existence of controls doesn't necessarily equate to effectiveness.
Pair ineffective cost controls with a massive, complex, bloated, ineffective framework, and it doesn't seem to follow that the result is by inspection necessarily better than the status quo. Nor was my conclusion on costs, therefore, a complete non-squitur.
And since when is marginally bettering a fairly lousy status quo somehow laudable? That's a remarkably disappointing outlook.
Many Republicans hate it because their team lost, which is a poor reason to hate a bill, but just as poor–and perhaps more insidious–is that many Democrats cheer its passage, while knowing very little about it. Because their team won.
We've seen that story played out time and time again, in both parties, on myriad issues.
We really, really can do better than that, on all sides.
Re: Swiss to vote on 2,500 franc basic income for every adult
#84I would greatly prefer a basic income to the thousands of poorly run programs that aim to help the poor. The poor are not helpless but simply don't make enough money for some minimal standard of living (i.e. they are poor). A side effect of many existing programs is that they make the poor dependent and actually discourage self-improvement. A basic income would minimize these unfortunate but real consequences of help…
A corollary from basic ecology: artificially adding prey to an area that cannot support more predators is tantamount to reducing competition amongst those predators, worsening the problem of motivation; or because of breeding, adding predators, worsening the problem of scarcity.
Re: Swiss to vote on 2,500 franc basic income for every adult
#852'500 CHF is about the budget for a student life-style in Zurich. I expect a lot of young Swiss going on long holidays to cheaper places like south-east asia or eastern europe.
Re: Swiss to vote on 2,500 franc basic income for every adult
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
The 1:12 project is at the same stage as the basic income one: up for referendum. Latest polls showed people were still undecided (vote is at the end of November).
I was under the impression the 1:12 vote already happened and was voted with an overwhelming majority, e.g. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-21647937 http://www.economist.com/blogs/schumpeter/2013/03/switzerlan... Could you explain the discrepancy ?
This refers to another constitution change:
By strengthening the control of shareholders over payout for executives, they want to stop these extremely high bonuses.
So this was a much less radical law change, that the 1:12 article would be.
Re: Swiss to vote on 2,500 franc basic income for every adult
#87A 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 outwei…
> 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.)
Re: Swiss to vote on 2,500 franc basic income for every adult
#88A 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 outwei…
> 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.
Re: Swiss to vote on 2,500 franc basic income for every adult
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
Its cost controls are weak, at best. There's no way the country will come out the other side of this with cheaper healthcare. There will be, of course, (truly) great stories about people who were suffering because of the evil practice of dropping customers from coverage when they get sick, and their finally getting the treatment their agreement with the insurance company should have entitled them to, but the total co…
"Its cost controls are weak, at best. There's no way the country will come out the other side of this with cheaper healthcare." Thankfully the cost controls are existant, at least, which is by inspection better than the status quo. This existence also renders your conclusion on costs a complete non sequitur. Trivia: as much as conservatives hate Obamacare (spoilers: a lot), they can't resist using the cost savings it…
Wrong. Young people are paying quite higher premiums for care under Obamacare.
http://americanactionforum.org/research/premium-increases-fo...
Re: Swiss to vote on 2,500 franc basic income for every adult
#90I would greatly prefer a basic income to the thousands of poorly run programs that aim to help the poor. The poor are not helpless but simply don't make enough money for some minimal standard of living (i.e. they are poor). A side effect of many existing programs is that they make the poor dependent and actually discourage self-improvement. A basic income would minimize these unfortunate but real consequences of help…
Yeah, the basic income is tough because it doesn't address all of the elements that discourage self-improvement, but it does address some.
I'd be curious to see what the net decrease/increase in costs would be if the US wiped out the vast majority of assistance programs and switched over to a basic income. After that, someone would need to take a stab at seeing what the net increase/decrease is from the change in incentives and general societal structure.