Swiss to vote on 2,500 franc basic income for every adult • Hacker News Board

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

#151

Post by scott_karana » Sat, Oct 05, 2013, 8:39 AM UTC

drob wrote: post #132

adventured wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There's also a general disdain for the poor, rooted in just-world fallacy. As American politics would have you believe, the poor can't be trusted with cash. "They'll just spend it on drugs and plasma TVs!" Thus, the only politically salient form of aid to the poor is in the form of vouchers for specific things, e.g. food and medicine. This is dogma on the right, but it echoes surprisingly often from the left as well.

I'd like to see hard data on this. I've heard numerous anecdotes on both sides of the debate. Eg, "lost faith in humanity at my first job in the liquor store, as soon as Welfare day hit"

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

#152

Post by omegant » Sat, Oct 05, 2013, 8:44 AM UTC

jre wrote: post #145

As a swiss citizen, I'm really happy we'll have to vote on this. I'm not sure yet what I'm going to vote (I'm slightly bending towards a yes), but I think this is a very interesting debate to have. Especially because this is not a traditional left-right fight. On the left, you have some unions saying this is going to be counter-productive and that it will reduce the leverage of employees in negotiation ("You've alrea…

Being from Spain and having seen the reaction to high quantities of money available. A system like this will need to be very well monitored, it can help immensely to those in need, but if done unconditionally it will certainly encourage laziness in a sector of the society. My wife is a doctor and before the crisis she used to have patients DEMAND the permanent disability, because they wanted to stop working. They were always saying "It´s my right, give MY disability!". They were regular people with no or little physical problems. Of course the people that really really needed the disability (very ill and in pain) didn´t want it. They just wanted to keep working and bringing money home. Now as there is no money, the former has almost disappeared from the hospital.

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

#153

Post by jre » Sat, Oct 05, 2013, 8:45 AM UTC

derefr wrote: post #149

sentenza wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, there is actual experimental evidence to the contrary. Some of the Arabian Emirates have cash payments to their ethnically Arabian citizens that are practically equivalent to a high basic income. In those cases, all the "dirty" labor is done by legal/illegal immigrants that are not eligible for said basic income and thus willing to work for much less. IMO this is the central problem with the idea of a…

What happens if you take the implicitly-assumed-to-be-ridiculous third option, and give every visitor a green card and a basic income voucher when they cross the border? Then you don't have any illegal immigrants, just lots and lots and lots of citizens. (Don't just reply with the obviously-bad first-order effect on the country receiving the immigrants; remember that bad things would also be happening to the labor po…

I think you raise an interesting point on the second-order effects, but that is only relevant if a big country introduces basic income.

In the case of Switzerland, I think the first-order effect greatly exceeds any other effect on the neighbouring countries's labor pools. Because Switzerland is freaking small (7 million people - the size of a big european city) and is surrounded by large countries (Germany, France, Italy).

So let's say you get 2 millions people from each of the 3 large countries, that's 6 million people. For the large countries, this isn't such a big loss. But for Switzerland, it's almost doubling the population, which is going to be a huge problem in term of finance, housing, transports, etc...

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

#154

Post by ashray » Sat, Oct 05, 2013, 8:48 AM UTC

huhtenberg wrote: post #112

ashray wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just bear in mind for your calculations that in Switzerland a cup of coffee often costs $6 as does a can of coke. Cost of living is extremely high. But still, this does look like a decent deal. Zurich is like San Francisco in terms of expenses.

Stop with this senseless FUD, will you. A cup of coffee in Starbucks may cost $6. A cup of (a better) coffee in any cafe 2-3 CHF. Can of Coke is about the same if bought in a touristy place, but in a grocery shop it's a 2L bottle that will be that much. > Cost of living is extremely high. It's not. Cost of luxurious living is extremely high. In Geneva, in Zurich, perhaps in Bern and Basel. But you drive 10 minutes ou…

First of all, I didn't down vote you. Secondly, all I suggested was that the OP take cost of living into account for his calculations. This is hardly senseless considering that cost of living in most Swiss cities is higher than most tier 2 American cities.

Swiss cities often rank at the top for most expensive cities in the world so yeah, I'd say cost of living is certainly on the high side. Of course they also rank at the top for quality of life but that's another side of the same coin.

Lastly, my numbers may not be current or correct (last I went to Switzerland was July '13) but your tone is certainly rude and out of line. Sorry I didn't represent Swiss prices correctly, thanks for the correction.

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

#155

Post by homeomorphic » Sat, Oct 05, 2013, 8:48 AM UTC

adventured wrote: post #121

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.

I don't think anybody has suggested introducing the basic income amount of a country with that from the country with (one of) the world's highest costs of living. $33.6k is, at least in comparably priced Norway, a very very low income. As in: way less than what a cleaner or a supermarket cashier would make. The amount would obviously be different in different countries.

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

#156

Post by xavi » Sat, Oct 05, 2013, 8:49 AM UTC

kijin wrote: post #98

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.

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…

I am all for more fair wealth distribution, but I don't see how this would be sustainable. With a basic income so high and higher taxes on the rich, what's the incentive to work for money? Hence, who would pay this?

I think Georgism ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism ), which doesn't tax income, but it only taxes land (so, not earned income) is a better approach to get a sustainable and more fair distribution of wealth.

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

#157

Post by gaius » Sat, Oct 05, 2013, 8:53 AM UTC

adventured wrote: post #126

drob wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not just from the recipients - any public sector workers who administer the programme are also bought. This is the problem we have in the UK. New Labour added a million people to the public payroll, and they weren't nurses and firemen...

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

#158

Post by 001sky » Sat, Oct 05, 2013, 8:53 AM UTC

jre wrote: post #135

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…

Just to put things in perspective (I'm swiss), 2500CHF is a really low salary in Switzerland. There is another initiative asking for a minimum wage of 4000CHF per month. The median swiss salary is close to 6000CHF[1]. The administration says the poverty line is around 2200CHF per month for someone living alone [2]. You can't really just convert to $ and say it's a lot of money. A lot of basic stuff like food, transpo…

The exchange rate that would equalise the price of a Swiss Big Mac with an American one is SFr1.55 to the dollar; the actual exchange rate is only 0.96. [1]

== Swiss Franc is most overvalued currency

[1] http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2012/01/daily-c...

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

#159

Post by seszett » Sat, Oct 05, 2013, 8:56 AM UTC

Udo wrote: post #136

TheEzEzz wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If 50% of the population aren't allowed to vote, it's not a pure democracy.

It's easy to say after the facts, but if women aren't allowed to vote and aren't citizens, then 100% of citizens do vote.

Most systems we call democracies don't consider their population under 18 as citizens, thus don't allow them to vote, and that's usually around 20% of population. Most also don't consider that immigrants should vote, and in the case of Switzerland that's another 20 or 25%.

I'm obviously not saying that not allowing women to vote is good or anything, but that you can't say a system is not "purely" democratic just because of full class of population doesn't vote. As long as 100% of citizens vote, then it's democracy (like in ancient Greece, where no more than 20% of population were citizens).

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

#160

Post by gaius » Sat, Oct 05, 2013, 8:57 AM UTC

marcamillion wrote: post #120

konstruktor wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One of the main questions about something like this is about who would do boring, low-paid work with this sort of basic income. I think that with basic income, this question would not make sense, and that's exactly the reason that I like the idea so much. The reason why people do boring, dirty and dangerous work for little money is that there are folks who have no skills that would enable them to get a more fulfill…

> With a decent basic income scheme, i.e. the basic needs of the people taken care of, the job market would probably flip: You would have to pay people very well for doing unpleasant work, and not so well for fulfilling jobs. This is an interesting premise. It would probably cause a lot of firms to be started, that compete to do those 'shitty jobs' - that could potentially drive the cost down and be done much better.…

Very interesting to watch from another country. That is the real reason politics moves so slowly, because the usual results of political experimentation is mass starvation.