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Basic income plan clearly rejected by Swiss voters

swissinfo.ch

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Re: Basic income plan clearly rejected by Swiss voters

#81

Post by tomp »

s3nnyy wrote: post #55
stickac wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are completely ignoring the fact that the cost of living is much higher in Zurich than the rest of Europe. (For example, the rent is around 10 times higher than in Prague). But after-all, you are a recruiter, why would anyone expect you to provide unbiased information, right?

Zurich is not comparable to London, Berlin or Prag due to the fact that it is an order of magnitude smaller than most European cities. The diameter of Zurich is just 13 km. The city itself is tiny and the "city center" is even tinier. This leads to the variance of the rent being very high: In the very center of town you might have to pay 1500 CHF for a 1-bedroom apartment, but if you can live also 5 km from the city…

> 1500 CHF for a 1-bedroom apartment

That's cheap compared to London (zone 1).

Re: Basic income plan clearly rejected by Swiss voters

#82

Post by s3nnyy »

mhb wrote: post #75
s3nnyy wrote: post #37

Switzerland is the only country in the world that implements direct democracy. You can really feel the difference to the rest of Europe. Swiss more often than not stand behind decisions made by their government. When talking about their politicians, the Swiss say "WE decided that ..." whereas e.g., Germans say: "THEY decided that ..." If you look for a coding job in Europe, Zurich is a great place to live and is the…

The price of food in Switzerland was insane when I was there.

If you're referring to restaurants, that is because the waitress makes around 4000 CHF per month; if you're referring to food in supermarket that is because the clerk behind the counter gets 25 CHF / hour and not 7 EUR like in Germany.

Re: Basic income plan clearly rejected by Swiss voters

#83

Post by raverbashing »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #51
raverbashing wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Welfare without limits is incompatible with Open Borders Remains to be seen who will want to actually do the (needed) jobs when staying at home is enough I am in favour of Basic Income, but it's not such clear cut

Given that open borders will help hundreds of millions escape dire poverty, whereas basic income will (at best) reduce some administrative costs and allow some people to live a life of leisure, how do you justify this preference? Do the prospective brown people who might want to escape dire poverty (i.e., gain access to clean running water, flush toilets, and adequate food) just not count? Even if they counted only a…

> how do you justify this preference?

One is helping the ones that are already in the country, the other one isn't.

I'm not against helping, but there is a limit.

How do you propose to help "millions" when a lot of them can't even read http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/syrian-read-englis...

> Do the prospective brown people who might want to immigrate just not count?

Sure. Let's open the doors so we have more harassment of women, homosexuals and increased Anti-semitism.

Which is funny, because some of my ancestors came from the same region that is in trouble today (maybe they were "Infidels" and were kicked out because of that, who knows)

Re: Basic income plan clearly rejected by Swiss voters

#84

Post by tgb »

_nalply wrote: post #22
tgb wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While that's how I read it, perhaps the condition would be citizenship. I.e. they don't want to simultaneously allow more people into their country and also give everyone in their country a lot of money for fairly obvious reasons. However, the article doesn't give translations of the actual measures so it's hard to say.

That's because the referendum is open ended. The referendum text: «The confederation provides for an introduction of an unconditional basic income.» It's a very short text. https://bedingungslos.ch/de/pages/initiativtext (German) The referendum committee made a non-binding proposal to give Fr. 2500 and if someone already earns Fr. 2500 they would not get additional money. The details would still need to be worked out…

Interesting, thanks.

Re: Basic income plan clearly rejected by Swiss voters

#85

Post by malloryerik »

Havoc wrote: post #18
_nalply wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The downside are populistic decisions like the Swiss minaret referendum. Now we have the sentence «The construction of minarets is prohibited.» in the constitution. ( https://www.admin.ch/opc/en/classified-compilation/19995395/... ) I think such regulations should be decreed as a law and not as a constitution norm if at all. But if everybody has a say you get bikeshedding in the constitution.

>The construction of minarets is prohibited. Hardly surprising. Nobody wants to be awoken at ungodly hours by that howling.

Not sure "ungodly" is the mot juste here... :p

Anyway I've personally always found the call to prayer quite musical and beautiful.

Re: Basic income plan clearly rejected by Swiss voters

#86

Post by ihsw »

Vaebn wrote: post #66
ihsw wrote: post #38

.

Maybe if they had money to spend, then they wouldn't be "unwashed" and in fact thus be part of an ever increasing economy. Unfortunately that would require an understanding of how an economy works, rather than a zero-sum mindset and collectivist hate of seeing "other" people have money who "don't deserve it" because their "birth coordinates were wrong", even if you were to receive exactly the same. Talk about self-de…

.

Re: Basic income plan clearly rejected by Swiss voters

#87

Post by _nalply »

areyoucrazy wrote: post #53
_nalply wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The downside are populistic decisions like the Swiss minaret referendum. Now we have the sentence «The construction of minarets is prohibited.» in the constitution. ( https://www.admin.ch/opc/en/classified-compilation/19995395/... ) I think such regulations should be decreed as a law and not as a constitution norm if at all. But if everybody has a say you get bikeshedding in the constitution.

The downside are populistic decisions like the Swiss minaret referendum... Oh, you liberals. You hide behind democracy when, in fact, you are a bunch of tyrants who would like to jam your ideas of immigration, multiculturalism, socialism etc. down the people's throats whether they like it or not. Why are you labeling direct democratic decision by majority of people as bad/downside? It seems that when people do someth…

Yes, I agree. However you should have seen the propaganda bills. http://www.dici.org/en/news/switzerland-poster-campaign-for-...

Just this leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Now as a staunchy Swiss I accept this outcome. I have to. The people have spoken. I just bemoan the construction regulation in the constitution. This goes against my juridicial instincts.

1999 we Swiss cleaned the constitution. It's the third constitution since 1848, and I am not happy to see weird rulings tainting the core regulations. It's like programming: after some time the source code gets messy.

Re: Basic income plan clearly rejected by Swiss voters

#88

Post by areyoucrazy »

alva wrote: post #57
_nalply wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The downside are populistic decisions like the Swiss minaret referendum. Now we have the sentence «The construction of minarets is prohibited.» in the constitution. ( https://www.admin.ch/opc/en/classified-compilation/19995395/... ) I think such regulations should be decreed as a law and not as a constitution norm if at all. But if everybody has a say you get bikeshedding in the constitution.

Out of interest, why is populistic commonly used as a pejorative? It seems to be the best friend of democracy.

It's used in a negative sense when liberals don't like the outcome of a direct democratic decision.

Re: Basic income plan clearly rejected by Swiss voters

#89

Post by ThomPete »

chongli wrote: post #33
Zarkonnen wrote: post #24

Coming from Switzerland, this is not at all surprising. No one expected this initiative to pass. It was really more of an attempt to get a conversation started, and it's succeeded in that. As a (tentative) supporter of basic income, I'm already quite happy that something like a fifth to a quarter of voters went for it.

Doesn't the fact that the margin on the no vote was so high put a damper on the enthusiasm for supporters? Or do the Swiss routinely vote over and over again on rewordings of the same idea?

No because you have to look at were we came from. 10 years ago people either didn't know what it even was or was against the idea. Only small groups of people here and there even thought it as a potential solution.

Now countries like Finland is looking into it.

I am pretty confident we are going to end up there, but like many other major changes in society it takes time and thats fine.

Re: Basic income plan clearly rejected by Swiss voters

#90

Post by _nalply »

_nalply wrote: post #64
s3nnyy wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zurich is not comparable to London, Berlin or Prag due to the fact that it is an order of magnitude smaller than most European cities. The diameter of Zurich is just 13 km. The city itself is tiny and the "city center" is even tinier. This leads to the variance of the rent being very high: In the very center of town you might have to pay 1500 CHF for a 1-bedroom apartment, but if you can live also 5 km from the city…

Ah that's Schwamendingen. Well known for a high foreigner percentage (37%). https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwamendingen#Bev.C3.B6lkerun... (German). To downvoters: please see my comment below. I am not against foreigners.

As a Swiss I also live in a high foreigner area. My sons are playing with children from Peru, Eritrea, Ecuador, Czechia, Sri Lanka and Italy. It's a really nice place to live, there are many children. Additionally, my wife is Asian.
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