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

#301

Post by renata » Sat, Oct 05, 2013, 3:08 PM UTC

rb2k_ wrote: post #114

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.

Also: Keep in mind that you could cut almost all social systems (unemployment insurance, the whole departments that manage that stuff currently, ...)

One thing that has always confused me with this claim in regards to basic incomes - if our current model is "We have welfare so people don't die when they can't get food, medical care, etc", then what happens when someone receiving a basic income spends it all on hookers and blow? Are we okay with letting him die now, because he had the option to pay for his basic needs and just chose not to? Or are we still going to have to have some kind of safety net for idiots?

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

#302

Post by summerdown2 » Sat, Oct 05, 2013, 3:13 PM UTC

omegant wrote: post #152

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 wer…

> 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.

Thought experiment: If the overall effect of basic income is to make things better overall(1), does it really matter if some people become lazy?

(1) Through whatever metric you want to measure.

... To give some background, my question is whether the existence of laziness is a sufficient critique in itself. If things get better on average, but some people are enabled to sit around all day, is that really a problem?

I'm asking this because the UK government at the moment is constantly railing against lazy people taking benefits, as if it's self-evident that should be stopped. To me, this just sounds like the politics of envy and hate (though I admit I could be wrong).

Put another way: if a utopia involves some people getting benefits they don't deserve, would that be a bad thing?

Obviously, I'm not saying basic income will produce a better society. I think it might, but needs empirical testing. My question is more whether the existence of undeserving beneficiaries is sufficient to rule it out.

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

#303

Post by xavi » Sat, Oct 05, 2013, 3:14 PM UTC

lmartel wrote: post #165

xavi wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Frickin' everyone would. If someone offered you 30k/year basic income would you quit your cushy programming job, or would you buy more stuff?

Frickin' everyone? I look at the evolution of unemployment rates ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Unemployment_rate_United_s... ) and I see a clear trend that I think is not going to change. Besides, among the employed, I'm quite sure that an important percentage of people don't like their jobs. And, to answer your question, I would probably quit a "cushy" programming job to pursue my projects and interests.

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

#304

Post by waterlesscloud » Sat, Oct 05, 2013, 3:19 PM UTC

jre wrote: post #206

ilikehummus wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did not see this anywhere in the article and most models of basic income i know do not do this. They instead only fill you up until you got amount X of money.

It doesn't seem to be available in English, but the organisation that wrote the initiative say so on their website[1]. They say "It is added to other revenues". So yeah, the intention is really to have an unconditional basic income for everybody and not some sort of negative income tax scheme as has been proposed elsewhere. [1] http://bien.ch/fr/page/initiative-federale#revenudebase

It makes sense to me to do that way, if you're going to do it at all. Then there's no disincentive to work.

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

#305

Post by JDulin » Sat, Oct 05, 2013, 3:25 PM UTC

eatitraw wrote: post #176

There are so many people excited about all these "equality" bills, and nobody criticizes it. So I'll just leave it there: http://paulgraham.com/inequality.html

I agree with almost everything pg said in that essay. But I also agree that the the best economy of the future will (someday) include a minimum living wage like this.

That's because it's not a bill in pursuit of some Utopian equality: It's a survival bill. Giving someone $2,800 a month without explicitly taxing the rich to fund it is hardly an attempt at eliminating income inequality. I would call this type of wage a 'freedom-wage' more than anything else because it would give people (Like college students with mountains of debt or unskilled middle-age workers.) more economic freedom to do great things like start companies, learn new skills, and practice art. The goal here is survivability and freedom, not "fixing" massive inequality.

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

#306

Post by DanBC » Sat, Oct 05, 2013, 3:28 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #262

alextingle wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish we could deport racists.

I wish we could deport people who throw around the "racist" label casually. There is nothing racist about believing that big, complex, interdependent societies function best when people share basic values, beliefs, and culture. It's the difference between multiculturalism as practiced in the U.S., where e.g. asian immigrants to the west coast have assimilated the basic values of american society while remaining disti…

> where e.g. many muslim immigrants refuse to assimilate to the point of wanting to be governed by separate sets of laws.

(Mildly interesting that you mention Muslims and sharia, but don't mention Jews and Beth Din).

There are some serious failures of the UK method - faith schools are a scary abomination; Beth Din and Sharia courts have led to child abusers and wife beaters not being reported to police, but just moving to a different part of the country (to continue abusing), women are unable to obtain a religious divorce, etc.

But there is a problem with "assimilation" - it means different things to different people. I'm happy if people can either speak the language or are learning the language or have made some effort to learn the language. And I'd like people to have some understanding of the EU human rights stuff we've signed up to. And I'd prefer people not to wear a full face cover when they're providing me medical treatment. And I'd prefer schools to conform to a national curriculum.

But other people are just racist, and they'll use "assimilation" to complain about other people. They'll often talk about things that just are not true (IMMIGRANTS GET HOUSES QUICKER!!) or they'll confuse terms ("Asylum Seeker" vs "illegal immigrant" vs "immigrant" vs "migrant worker"). As a nasty example of this see the GreenWave group, set up by the far right National Front as a stealth recruiting group, campaigning on ritual slaughter and drawing people into other far right issues once they've signed up.

We address assimilation by giving people a computerised quiz: "Life in the UK".

(https://www.gov.uk/becoming-a-british-citizen/life-in-the-uk...)

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_in_the_United_Kingdom_test)

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

#307

Post by drewrv » Sat, Oct 05, 2013, 3:29 PM UTC

marknutter wrote: post #299

TelmoMenezes wrote: post #290

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 believe this would not be a problem in the long run for the following reasons: - A lot of boring low-pay work is unnecessary (dealing with the endless paper trail of over-complicated bureaucracies, lots of things that companies do, like telemarketing, just because it's so cheap, etc. etc…

I see it differently. If people are receiving a basic income their performance at a job becomes much less important. Why care if you do a good job if losing it doesn't really impact you that negatively?

It would impact you negatively, it just won't lead to utter ruin and homelessness.

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

#308

Post by DanBC » Sat, Oct 05, 2013, 3:32 PM UTC

renata wrote: post #301

rb2k_ wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also: Keep in mind that you could cut almost all social systems (unemployment insurance, the whole departments that manage that stuff currently, ...)

One thing that has always confused me with this claim in regards to basic incomes - if our current model is "We have welfare so people don't die when they can't get food, medical care, etc", then what happens when someone receiving a basic income spends it all on hookers and blow? Are we okay with letting him die now, because he had the option to pay for his basic needs and just chose not to? Or are we still going to…

i) You force people to pay for health insurance. (Taking it from their pay, for example.)

ii) You protect children, because they are innocent victims.

iii) People taking drugs might be addicts, and need health care to treat their addiction.

But other than that, once they spend the money it's gone and if they don't have food then they go to a charity or route around in bins.

We talk about the social housing in the UK, but it's hard to get social housing, and being a person who is homeless because of drink means you're going to end up in hostels at best.

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

#309

Post by tptacek » Sat, Oct 05, 2013, 3:33 PM UTC

llamataboot wrote: post #273

rayiner wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish we could deport people who throw around the "racist" label casually. There is nothing racist about believing that big, complex, interdependent societies function best when people share basic values, beliefs, and culture. It's the difference between multiculturalism as practiced in the U.S., where e.g. asian immigrants to the west coast have assimilated the basic values of american society while remaining disti…

You do realize that the "But they just can't be like us" argument has been used on nearly every minority ethnicity coming to the US - you can find similar diatribes against Italian and Irish migrants from the turn of the century before they became white.

He just explained how the opposite is true.

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

#310

Post by samatman » Sat, Oct 05, 2013, 3:34 PM UTC

marknutter wrote: post #299

TelmoMenezes wrote: post #290

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 believe this would not be a problem in the long run for the following reasons: - A lot of boring low-pay work is unnecessary (dealing with the endless paper trail of over-complicated bureaucracies, lots of things that companies do, like telemarketing, just because it's so cheap, etc. etc…

I see it differently. If people are receiving a basic income their performance at a job becomes much less important. Why care if you do a good job if losing it doesn't really impact you that negatively?

Let's presume you have a job, rather than being freelance or a founder: Would you continue to do well at it if it was, say, 60% of your income rather than all of it?