Live data from Hacker News

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

reuters.com

211–220 of 582 posts

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

#211
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…

i haven't yet made up my mind either. personally, i find the upcoming "1:12" vote [highest salary in a company may at most be 12x the lowest salary] much more dangerous to the swiss economy. the discussions on both votes are very interesting and healthy tho.

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

#212
post #195
post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that 4000CHF after tax or before?

Before.

Taxing a redistributive payment from the government makes no sense. Why not just pre-calculate how much of it goes to tax and then save everyone the paperwork?

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

#213
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.

A can of coke can cost 6CHF at Zurich airport maybe, but the standard price is 2CHF, and even cheaper at some grocery stores. San Francisco is still much cheaper than Zurich in terms of expenses, only the rents are kind of comparable.

Medical expenses are presumably lower in Switzerland, college tuition at e.g. MIT for a person making $300k/yr vs. an ETH-Z student, and IIRC taxes on capital gains are lower in Switzerland than in NYC or California (due to state/local taxes). Consumer goods are definitely cheaper in the US.

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

#214
post #49
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now I'm curious about the possibility of immigrating to Switzerland... Ha. Sort of seriously.

Just keep in mind you may get a fine for taking a shower late in the evening. And that you most friendly neighbor will turn into a snitch after any violation of yours, especially since you're an auslander. I mean, Switzerland is a lovely country, but some laws regarding cohabitation around there are really anal. On the flipside, whenever my neighbor starts mowning his damn lawn when I'm healing my hangover on sunday,…

you may get fine for taking a shower late in the evening erhm... no. while there might be house rules set by the lessor which prevents certain things that might disturb other inhabitants, it's not a law.

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

#216
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.

Basic income is given to everyone, not just the poor and/or unemployed.

It's actually a very good idea, supported by people all across the political spectrum. You should read up on it before dismissing it.

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

#217
post #188
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…

I know no more than I read in the last 10 minutes, so I have a question for you: How serious is a referendum like this? When a government pushes a major change. They need to back it up with a lot of analysis. Where does the money come from? What the major economic impacts. What do the big businesses/industries/unions/Chambers of Commerce/ etc think of it. The referendum system sounds like a good idea for issues that…

This is one of the question that will be central to the upcoming debate. Usually, when we vote on economic issues (like we voted on raise in VAT, more holidays, etc...), we usually have all kind of organisation explaining what their position is and why. So you obviously get the political parties opinions, but also the economic associations (the Swiss Business Federation for big companies, the Union of small-medium business), the employee unions and so on. On this topic, we'll most likely get a lot of opinion from the economics academic world as well.

Also, when you get your voting material, there is a leaflet that explains the position of the government and the parliament (in this case, they will most likely recommend a "no").

Now, the comittee that supports the basic income says that the real cost is 30 billions CHF. The rest of the 200 billions CHF comes from the part that is deduced from the salaries by the companies and from the suppression of a bunch of social programs (we already have a system where the state pays the basic necessities to the people without any other revenue, with some conditions). [1]

They also admit that the "dynamic effect" of the basic income are hard to estimate. This is likely to be the controversial part of the debate. It is such a big shift in paradigm that I think nobody, even the most brilliant economists, can predict what will happen. And it is most likely the reason why it will be refused. It's a big jump in the unknown.

Last but not least, the actual text of the initiative (translated in this comment [2]) doesn't fix the level of the basic income. 2500 CHF is just a proposition and if it is accepted, it's up to the parliament to come up with a law that regulates how this all works. So maybe it could be introduced incrementally.

[1] http://bien.ch/fr/page/initiative-federale#revenudebase [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6499949

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

#218
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…

* By US standards, this actually seems to be a good salary: significantly better than working full time at minimum wage.*

Switzerland is incredibly expensive. I don't really think it's accurate to do an actual comparison with exchange rates.

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

#219
post #135
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…

Here here. I've travelled through Switzerland, and can confirm that it's really expensive compared to many other countries. I made the mistake once of planning to stay overnight in Switzerland. That was expensive. About €40 to stay in a rural hostel.

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

#220
post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Political experimentation usually leading to starvation... Have you got a high number of examples to back that up? I can only think of a handful.

Sure, Cambodia is one, North Korea, China in the 50s, Zimbabwe... Millions dead.

Universal healthcare, social security and pensions in Germany (late 19th century): millions saved.

And it's that big a political experiment that the most powerful country in the world still doesn't dare to replicate it in its entirety.

Post reply on HN