Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

341–350 of 582 posts

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

#341

Post by gcb1 »

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…

you cant say a salary is good without listing the cost of living.

that salary would barely cover my cheap rent, and maybe 3 month of food...

it is like living in san francisco with a "good salary" from the outskirts of idaho.

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

#342

Post by refurb »

comicjk wrote: post #72
Daniel_Newby wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Poor Americans receive a wide range of subsidies, which have broad popular support. Obamacare is being fought because it is a byzantine bureaucratic tar pit written in secrecy by industries lobbyists and passed by the worst sort of political manipulations. If someone could manage to put forward a sensible national health system, including the necessary constitutional amendment, it would get a landslide victory.

A sensible national health system would be as simple as changing the Medicare minimum age to zero and abolishing Medicaid. Do you think this requires a constitutional ammendment? And do you think there's the slightest chance today's conservatives would vote for it?

That wouldn't really work. Most providers subsidize their Medicare patients with commercial patients.

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

#343

Post by gcb1 »

Rylinks wrote: post #281
jre wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If you have a basic income, why do you need a minimum wage?

exactly.

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

#344

Post by [deleted] »

TelmoMenezes wrote: post #290
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…

> 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…

[deleted]

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

#345

Post by gcb1 »

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?

hn commenter on job satisfaction threads: I'm motivated by challenges and working with similar minded people, not money.

hn commenter on minimum wage threads: everyone work for minimal sustenance.

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

#346

Post by acuozzo »

tpainton wrote: post #330
garg wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the ongoing automation of everything and a population reaching 7.5 billion, a basic income or a standard of living is going to be inevitable.

Right, we can't ever expect the masses to learn advanced skills that will be needed in the next cyclic revolution. This has to be the most negative thing I have heard all month. It's akin to saying, 'Our people are so incapable of moving with the times, we just have to throw them food.'

The assumption is that as automation goes up, demand for people with even "advanced skills" goes down.

That is, if all N billion of us "[move] with the times", then the jobs still won't be there for us to fill.

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

#347

Post by fnordfnordfnord »

halfninety wrote: post #332
fnordfnordfnord wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because you will still have to compete for desirable jobs. For menial labor, most of it can/will be automated. For undesirable jobs that can't be automated away, employers will have to make the jobs desirable. One way to do that will be to increase the pay, but, that is not the only means for doing so. There are many things employers can do to make employment more desirable that have a low or zero net cost. I'd even…

He says people will have less motivation to improve performance because they can afford losing the job, you disagree. Then you go on and say that people will have less pressure to comply with unethical demands because they can afford losing the job...

Yes, when your sole motivation to work isn't to provide for the necessity of survival, you can use your influence in more egalitarian ways.

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

#348

Post by prostoalex »

crntaylor wrote: post #271
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…

That isn't experimental evidence to the contrary at all, because the unpleasant jobs are done by people who don't have access to the government-mandated minimum income!

It's evidence in the sense that proponents of basic income always describe shiny future where all the low-skilled work done by robots forgetting that other countries with no such basic income still exist.

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

#349

Post by Thrymr »

arjunnarayan wrote: post #295
eli wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't you still have to go through customs and maybe pay duties since Switzerland is non-EU?

No, it's Schengen area, so no border checks. You drive across just as you would from Massachusetts to Vermont.

My understanding is that that is true for immigration, but not for customs. There are still limits on the amounts that can be imported into Switzerland, even from the EU, without duties [1]. Some products are more restricted, e.g. a limit of 0.5 kg of meat per person per day [2]. Anecdotally, this is rarely enforced, except during summer barbecue season, and customs officials have the authority to stop vehicles within 10 km of the border.

[1] http://www.ezv.admin.ch/zollinfo_privat/04342/04343/04344/04...

[2] http://www.ezv.admin.ch/zollinfo_privat/04342/04343/04349/04...

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

#350

Post by boomlinde »

xavi wrote: post #156
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…

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…

The incentive to work would finally be that work needs to be done.
Post reply on HN