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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

#441
post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't just use the proposed Swiss basic income for your calculations for another country. Switzerland has a higher cost of living than most countries.

yep. A pair of Levi's that are basically 250usd (200 chf) in Zurich are 25usd at Wall Mart in DC. I live in DC and used to work for Credit Suisse in Zurich. I take US any day. My wife's soccer mom car - Land Rover LR4 - is rich bankers car in Switzerland. It's a luxury to own any car in Switzerland. Of course they think that's progress for me that's regress.

I could imagine that the pedestrians might think of it as progress.

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

#442
I expect massive inflation on particular necessities (likely rent/housing, utilities) as rent-seekers squeeze the available money.

Necessities within competitive, or border-crossing markets (likely food) might not be subject to such inflation.

The consequences for luxuries are harder to predict, but perhaps they would still be out of reach of the unemployed/underemployed. This could motivate a majority to continue work.

If this balances to the point that 'poor' people can maintain a fair lifestyle without working, wages for cheap/exploitative labour will rise wherever people don't find value in the work. This will be balanced by pressure to take on immigrants to work. (Based on my understanding of Swiss politics, it feels unlikely they will receive the same benefits)

Not without economic consequences but overall, exciting stuff. A lot of people will have vastly more freedom: risk-taking, entrepreneurialism and general creativity will boom.

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

#443

If they did that in America 50% of the population would quit working and prices would quickly shoot up to MARS! Less workers, higher wages, more money in circulation... What an inflationary mess that would be.

> If they did that in America 50% of the population would quit working

And do startups!

> What an inflationary mess that would be.

The US could use some more inflation. There's no reason this would cause an increase in the money supply though.

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

#444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you don´t need an experiment, it has happened in southern Spain. Thirty years ago it was a very poor region, land was in hands of a small group of landlords. It really was necessary to give a hand to that region. It was not a free money help, they had to work a number of days at the fields, and then they were entitled to receive a help. Fast forward 30 years, the system has been abused by the people (cheating, not ev…

This is a different issue, I think. Your point appears to be that it needs monitoring to make it work. Which may well be the case. My question is: what's wrong with people just sitting around being lazy? If the system produced a reasonable outcome for everyone in the country, but you could still see other people being lazy, would this spoil it for you?

You are right, it´s better to have a small number of lazy people (with this minimum wage) in order to have an overall better society. This would apply too to the problem of prisons in the USA. They treat inmates as if they were animals, and then they complain when they behave as such.

It´s better to be less trigger happy, to treat everybody as a person, even when there is always the guy who is going to profit of that. But the addition of all the wrong doing will be vastly inferior this way.

My point is that this kind of programs usually are motivated by ideologies, fixed ideals on how things should be, looking at the world as if it were a fixed photography. People is people, and they´ll adapt to their surrounding, so the system must adapt with them. The problem is that usually the system is set, it works at first (as it was a good idea), and then it´s as it was written in stone. Till it starts degrading and giving problems, then it´s scrapped and condemned as a bad idea, and the cycle starts again.

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

#445
post #437
post #65

FYI: You have to live 12 years consecutively in Switzerland, pass a tests and a personal hearing done by the local government to get a citizenship by naturalization. Switzerland has one of the most strict immigration rules in Europe. Source: http://www.bfm.admin.ch/content/bfm/en/home/themen/buergerre...

So apparently everybody loves this highly nationalist, some might even say racist bill.

That's really baiting. What is racist about this bill? I know the entire concept of an "country" or a "citizen" of some country is deeply disgusting to some people, but those are usually kind of weirdos. You can't seriously hold any one as really being a racist because they recognize such things.

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

#446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny you should mention that last part, because that's exactly the situation in Denmark. We have in my opinion a waaay too high basic income, and there is a growing problem, with people who'd rather live on governement payouts, than get a job. And the nationalists are getting anxious about immigration, so there is a populist party that is against immigration, that is getting bigger and bigger support. It is ove…

Denmark does not have a basic income.

Indeed that is correct, my comment wasn't fully inline with the thread topic, but since government aid, basic income, and national immigration politics are very much intertwined, I thought my comment would have value to the discussion.

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

#447
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> certain things that might disturb other inhabitants

isn't a loud shower that certain thing?

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

#448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably this would replace Social Security and most other forms of welfare (might even replace medicare / medicaid — people would just buy insurance based on the basic income). Given that entitlements are ~60% percentage of federal, this might be easier than you think.

We could also trim down the single biggest welfare program we have:the military-industrial complex. That's close to $5000 per adult by itself. Edit: Back of envelope -- $3800 per adult from cutting MIC spending from $1 trillion to $200B which is still more than any other nation. $4000 per adult from eliminating Social security including disability. $4800 per adult in total health care savings from switching from our…

How exactly does basic income solve the same problem as the military?

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

#449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny you should mention that last part, because that's exactly the situation in Denmark. We have in my opinion a waaay too high basic income, and there is a growing problem, with people who'd rather live on governement payouts, than get a job. And the nationalists are getting anxious about immigration, so there is a populist party that is against immigration, that is getting bigger and bigger support. It is ove…

The problem is not that people would rather live on government payouts, none of the unemployed people I know here want to be unemployed. The problem is that there are not jobs for their skillsets. The solution to this is retraining rather than cutting benefits. There are also people with mental health issues, substance abuse issues etc, but that is another issue. In terms of immigration, I think the bigger problem is…

Google "lazy robert", and you'll find lots of articles on a case that highlights the problem in Denmark. It is pretty straight forward problem; there isn't an incentive to pick the low (but mind you still sufficient) paying jobs. When the only job you can get is at a McDonald's, and you get more from not working at all, there is a serious problem.

For anyone in the US; In Denmark, there is practically no jobs that pay so little, as to be insufficient for keeping a humane standard. And anyone who argues otherwise, simply doesn't know how it is outside Denmark.

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

#450
As a swiss I'm quite excited about this. Even if I'm pessimistic about a successful vote.

I want to mention a side-point which I haven't encountered so far: In the 'problem of lazyness' (i.e. "who will do the boring work if you are paid anyway?") one answer that often comes up is automation. Menial/low-skill jobs will be done by robots.

It's a common image that in the future robots will clean our toilets and grill our burgers while the humans have ample time to enjoy life, build rockets and do fulfilling work.[1] However, if AI research has told us one thing it's that this view is quite wrong - the opposite is true. Things humans think of as 'easy' like walking around or doing laundry are actually very difficult engineering problems and 'hard' stuff like playing chess or doing rocket science are easier in an absolut sense.

The reason behind is simple: Evolution had millions of years to perfect walking on legs and interacting with the environment. Our bodies almost literally have an walkTo(Place) API, so the only thing 'we' (our conscious self) have to do is to call it. Abstract thinking is something new and our brains have to do it manually. It takes you less time to run over debris than to multiply large numbers and so we have a distorted picture of what is hard in an absolute sense.

The picture is true for humans but it falls apart when we want to automate it. We are still decades away of beating humans in soccer but Jeopardy is a solved problem.

I'm not convinced that 'low'-skill jobs are the first to fall into the hands of machines. [2]

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[1] Ignore for the moment the fact that unclogging toilets can also be fulfilling.

[2] This is of course a broad argument. We still have no clue what Intelligence or Creativity actually is - It may still turn out to be very complicated. But I nevertheless think there's a good chance that we will figure out hard AI before you can buy a robot which washes your socks, mows the lawn and fixes your plumbing.

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