Without a reason to work no one will u knob. Look at Ox's post.

And tink of all te money that wood have bin given away 2 sum ARAB "refoogee" runnin' thru Switzerstan. U culd buy a lot of explosives with dat much $.

^No.
They dont get"$", they would get "₣"(Swiss francs). When the referendum will get Accepted, the Swiss francs currency will fall to the point that you can not bye much from it. wages rise with the inflation, but its troublesome to correct that in short amount of time...

The one effect I almost forgot is that most debts and loans will lose value. those with debts will be delited by this plan.

Edited 6/7/2016 18:06:07

It got only like 23% of votes for it. It had no chances to come trough that vote. But there were discussions about it so it wasn't completely useless.

It might theoretically work, if people still keep working. But who would do a job where he earns like 3600.- when he could get a lot of money for staying at home?

Edited 6/7/2016 18:04:54

People who are against direct dimocrasy offen say that the citersens dont have the common sense and would vote in favor to referendums like this. But the truth is difrend, and the Swiss citerzens are not a lot smarter then the citersens of other nations. Direct democasy would work in all western nations as the best type of government.

Imo you are wrong with you statement about the Swiss citizens being not much smarter than the rest. The referendum on this topic is also about freedom vs a mighty big brother state. A state which takes the liberty to freely redistribute wealth amongst it's citizens is also a state which tells it's citizens exactly how live. Other nations where the people like being pampered by the state will probably vote in favour of such socialist stuff.

Edited 6/7/2016 19:18:40

Imo you are wrong with you statement about the Swiss citizens being not much smarter than the rest.

Well, actually I think the Swiss citizens are smarter than other nation citizens, but I see the 'cause and effect' reversed:
I believe that the Swiss citizens become smarter as a result of having a direct democracy. I'm sure that if citizen truly have direct influence on the government decisions, you will think more about what the right choose(vote) is.

I think basic income is a bad solution to the risk of unemployment, especially such a high one. Instead of giving benefits to unemployed who can work, or leaving them unemployed so the market forces can bring the wages down as the capitalists desire, they should be guaranteed a job by the state.

a few positive points most of the people in this thread seem to neglect:
- people that focus more on social value would have more availability to dedicate themselves fully to it
- businesses would require smaller net profit to remain in business, providing goods and services at lower costs with higher quality
- there would be a significant drop in state expenses incurred with processing social welfare
- stress and depression caused by unemployment situations would disapear
- people would only want to work on something they truly enjoy doing, increasing quality of services

Frankly, this "basic income" is so bad, this would be a socialist strawman if it wasn't real and having folk actually shield the concept.

people that focus more on social value would have more availability to dedicate themselves fully to it

people would only want to work on something they truly enjoy doing, increasing quality of services

Do it on your own time. That's not other folk's job to fund your pig eating contests or something. It'd be nice if you could just do whatever you wanted everyday without having to work in your life, but that's just not happening.

What the government must do is shield your life, and in Switzerland, there's been a welfare fund for a very long time, doing more than enough already for folk to "focus on social value" or whatever.

businesses would require smaller net profit to remain in business, providing goods and services at lower costs with higher quality

The difference would not be significant for successful businesses. If the business is so small that it makes less than 8 400 $ each year, it doesn't need to work, and will be sold, in order for folk to do their "social values". If it makes significantly (worth it to keep it) more, 8 400 $ will be a drop in a pond, and furthermore, no grounds that prices would be lowered and quality would be highered - if anything, production would be lowered. Folk still want to make a profit, and they're not going to lower it even if they think they don't need the money. And there's absolutely no grounds that the quality would be highered, either.

there would be a significant drop in state expenses incurred with processing social welfare

You can't bring up an argument of expenses, here...this would just replace the old welfare.

stress and depression caused by unemployment situations would disapear

Switzerland has had a more-than-enough welfare for not doing anything already for something 30 years. Noone should ever have to fear going hungry, but that wasn't/isn't happening.

Edited 6/7/2016 21:51:16

Direct democasy would work in all western nations as the best type of government.

The functional illiteracy rate in Germany and the US is 14%, and those are the two primary "Western" nations.

How about you source that.

That's a bit high....I'd like a source too

http://www.thelocal.de/20110301/33431

https://sites.psu.edu/bohemians/2014/03/31/illiteracy-level-of-germany-and-france/

http://www.statisticbrain.com/number-of-american-adults-who-cant-read/

So really 300k in Germany, and for America, 14% who read "below basically".

7.5 million functionally illiterate Germans and around 40 million functionally illiterate Americans.

wel gee den letz jus giv all da P O W A to twump !!

ya

i believe you have a preconceived prejudice against the idea, not for what it is but for what it represents culturally. your arguments are all assumptions driven by economic power and social/communist witch-hunt culture. you were probably educated being told that money buys everything, anyone without a job is a useless person and the evil socialists are out to destroy your amazing way of life. i feel sad for you that you are unable to look beyond those stigmas.

basic income might not be for everyone, i give you that, but i believe it's still worth testing the model on small communities and check if it works. switzerland, for it's size and culture seemed like a very good place where it could work. but clearly it's not culturally ready to consider it seriously yet.

i'm curious to see how it works out on the finland test atleast, the test target is supposed to be a low class small village with high index of cronic alcoholiss. you have to understand that there is a small but significant part of the population just living off social welfare as cronic alcoholics in finland. they believe this new system will improve the situation for both sides, the government will spend less in processing social welfare, and the people will no longer stress over not having a job and finding ways to scheme the social welfare system to get more booze money. i don't believe they'll all stop being alcoholics with this program, but some might use the opportunity to seek new meaning in life, doing what they enjoy doing instead of wallowing in self-pity and drinking their troubles away.

Edited 6/8/2016 13:28:10

X grew up in Kazahkstan... as for me, I wasn't arguing against you here.

Ideally I believe in the principle that, if you are not working, you should be given welfare/benefits by the government so you can live (defined as: have a roof over your head, eat enough, and raise a family), and that there should be rights such as, right to free education, right to free university, and right to free healthcare. this is how it works in my country right now, and is probably the reason why we are the region with the second least poverty in the UK.



In this graphic you can also see our poverty decreased much faster because of this more socialistic government, as of 1999, devolution kicking in, and we have more control to lower poverty. We overtook SouthEast, SouthWest, and EastMidlands in decreasing poverty.



In this graphic you can see Scotland obviously being the least poor part of the UK, with not a single county having more than 20% households below the poverty line.

http://www.gov.scot/Publications/2012/06/7976/3

And from this document, you can see that since devolution, our poverty rates have decreased rapidly, with the only recent increase being from the 2009 financial crash, which hit us rather lightly.

---

So what is with all this bragging about the abundant wealth of my country? It is because, that if people are provided enough money to live, then you have people who do not have the struggles of a society where you can get into poverty easily from not being able to get into work, but there is still a huge incentive to work, because you will be able to have loads of luxuries if you do work.

Because of our benefits, you have enough to live, but not much else. If you work, you can go on holidays, buy nice houses, buy drink, get nice cars etc. ; basically enjoy the luxuries of life, through contributing to society.

However, the reason why I called this proposal "madness", is not because I disagree with a basic income, but it is because the amount of money that they proposed was ridiculous. This would give very little incentive to work, because people will have enough money to live, and enjoy luxuries.

This is bad, because in our current time-frame, this is not achievable. Perhaps sometime in the future, but if people who only have enough money to live, are suddenly given all this money, who knows what they will do with it? Remember we are talking about unemployed people. And the people that do work, they perhaps will stop it; particularly the ones that earn less than the amount of benefits that are being proposed (well above lots of jobs).

There are cases like social workers, which must have 2 jobs to get what somebody else gets out of 1, but a basic income is not the correct solution. Instead, job growth should be promoted in this field. Problem and solution is the foundation to government, and this is the incorrect solution to this problem.

Ultimately, I don't think that a basic income is a bad idea, I just think this proposal was too much for our current time-frame. They need to be gradually increased, not dished out in wads bigger than loads of jobs' salaries.