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Swiss to vote on 2,500 franc basic income for every adult

reuters.com

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Re: Swiss to vote on 2,500 franc basic income for every adult

#121

Post by adventured »

tikhonj wrote: post #2

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 outwei…

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.

Re: Swiss to vote on 2,500 franc basic income for every adult

#123

Post by e12e »

cabalamat wrote: post #88
tikhonj wrote: post #2

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 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.

Keep in mind that part of that 80% are probably pensioners/not working -- thereby already receiving some sort of benefits already.

Re: Swiss to vote on 2,500 franc basic income for every adult

#124

Post by vaibpuri »

This "might" lead to people actually working more in a certain sense. If a person is to receive an X amount of francs per month then employers will require 40 hour / weeks leading to approximately 15 francs per hour (€12.5), which for a place like Switzerland is kind of fair.

Those who choose not to work enough might have to face inflationary affects in housing etc. needing to catch up to the median (not average) population income levels.

Eitherways, if the Swiss go wrong on this their system of voting is flexible enough to allow for change back.

Re: Swiss to vote on 2,500 franc basic income for every adult

#125

Post by justincormack »

Kiro wrote: post #47

Wouldn't basic income just lead to higher prices and inflation?

The assumption is that the government will do this and still run a balanced budget; how realistic this is I do not know as there are no numbers. In which case its just redistribution, so no its not inflationary.

Re: Swiss to vote on 2,500 franc basic income for every adult

#126

Post by adventured »

drob wrote: post #64
tikhonj wrote: post #2

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 outwei…

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 povert…

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.

Re: Swiss to vote on 2,500 franc basic income for every adult

#127

Post by TheEzEzz »

chronolitus wrote: post #92
rodgerd wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And in 1990 women could even vote!

While I don't disagree that my country has had (and in some aspects still has) a backwards mentality, I fail to see how your comment has anything to do with the conversation.

I take the point as a counter to the notion that a pure democracy is inherently superior to other mixed forms of democracy, where voting is less direct.

Re: Swiss to vote on 2,500 franc basic income for every adult

#128

Post by [deleted] »

icebraining wrote: post #100
cabalamat wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Have you discounted the 20-25% of immigrants who are counted in the GDP per capita, but who almost certainly won't receive this income?

[deleted]

Re: Swiss to vote on 2,500 franc basic income for every adult

#129

Post by kijin »

mattlutze wrote: post #118
kijin wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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 Switzerlan…

> 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.

Re: Swiss to vote on 2,500 franc basic income for every adult

#130

Post by chmars »

The text of the Swiss initiative can be found at http://www.admin.ch/ch/d/pore/vi/vis423t.html. Please note that it does not mention 2'500 Swiss francs as a basic income.

Rough translation into English:

Federal People's Initiative 'For an uncoditional basic income'

The federal constituion shall be amended as follows:

Art. 110a (new) Unconditional Basic Income

(1) The Confederay introduces an unconditional basic income.

(2) The basic income shall allow the whole population a decent life and participlation in public activities.

(3) The law defines funding and amount of the basic income.

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