
Switzerland’s Proposal to Pay People - webjunkie
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/17/magazine/switzerlands-proposal-to-pay-people-for-being-alive.html?_r=0&pagewanted=all
======
swombat
As a Swiss citizen currently living in the UK, who is earning a fair amount of
money and planning to probably go back to live in Switzerland, I am going to
vote _for_ this proposal (unless the referendum documentation makes it look
absolutely stupid, e.g. it has some really bad implementation idea).

I hate taxes as much as the next guy, but reducing risk of destitution for
everyone in the country down to zero is one cause for which I'll be happy to
pay taxes.

Why do I want more money? To buy toys, to buy time, and to buy security. The
basic income resolves the last two items, and puts the first one well within
reach for most reasonable toys.

~~~
sp332
If you support giving money to poor people, why are you waiting for the
government to take your money and do it for you? Why aren't you already giving
money to the poor?

~~~
cylinder
This is such a weak argument. In order to make a meaningful impact on society,
you need mandated programs that require all to contribute. Do you propose that
foreign aid, military spending, healthcare all be done on a peer to peer basis
as well?

~~~
blisterpeanuts
So, all the hundreds of thousands of people here in America who donate their
time to charitable work are wasting their time because it's not "mandated"?
The billions of dollars Americans (and, no doubt, Europeans as well) donate
_voluntarily_ to charitable causes should instead be confiscated by a tax
collector and redistributed systematically to all citizens according to some
bureaucratic process which determines eligibility?

~~~
tree_of_item
No, money should be confiscated by a tax collector and redistributed
systematically to all citizens __without__ some bureaucratic process which
determines eligibility. That's what basic income means.

~~~
blisterpeanuts
So why bother? They collect my money, then send it back to me in the form of a
government check? Only, minus a few dollars for overhead and for
redistributing to some other guy who doesn't pay any taxes? Why not allow a
tax credit for donation to charity, which allows people to (1) feel good by
helping fellow human beings, and (2) help those causes they really believe in?

Note that currently the U.S. allows a tax _deduction_ but not _credit_ for
charitable giving.

~~~
swombat
The option you propose is largely what the current system looks like. The
proponents of the basic income argue that basic income is better because it
massively reduces the overhead of trying to figure out who is eligible and who
isn't, and of administering many concurrent schemes designed to solve many
specific problems.

------
SeoxyS
Like swombat, I'm also a swiss citizen living abroad (in San Francisco), and
will be voting for this referendum. Basic income is the ultimate fair and
bureaucracy-less social safety net: there is no burden of proof, and nobody
gets left out.

~~~
andreasklinger
Also i would assume that the costs infrastructure for "proofing" and managing
are high enough to put in as a factor.

------
macspoofing
Can someone explain how this is paid for?

As I understand it, the basic income involves paying each citizen $2800 per
month, or $33600 per year.

For Switzerland that would mean a total expense of $270 billion (
$269,270,400,000 ) per year. If instituted in the US, that would mean an
expense of $10 trillion ( $10,516,800,000,000 ) per year. Both numbers are
around what the total GDP of each country is.

How does this math work out? I'm missing something, and no article actually
explains it.

//EDIT

Does this mean that if you get a job that pays $34,000/year you would get no
supplemental income? Whereas if you get a job that pays $30,000/year, the
government will subside your income to the tune of $3600? That's the only way
this makes sense any sense. Right?

~~~
e98cuenc
This is only for people that are earning less than $2800. In Switzerland
that's basically only unemployed people. The unemployment rate when I was
there was ~3.5%, so it's roughly $10B / year, which looks acceptable for a
country as wealthy as Switzerland.

~~~
PeterisP
Umm, the curreent Swiss proposal of basic income (and the meaning of that
term) is not "only for people that are earning less than $2800" \- if you're
getting a salary of $2800, then the basic income would be on top of that.

~~~
macspoofing
That's the way I understand it from the few articles that I've read. But that
can't be it. The numbers just don't work out. It has to be merely a guaranteed
floor (i.e. no matter what you do you will make at least that much, if you
make more, you're on your own).

~~~
chc
The "guaranteed floor" version of a basic income has a lot of harmful effects
— for example, any work that pays anywhere close to the basic income would be
a ridiculously bad deal that no rational actor would accept. In the "actually
guaranteed" version, a job that pays 90% of the basic income would still be
worth doing because you're nearly doubling your income.

~~~
macspoofing
>The "guaranteed floor" version of a basic income has a lot of harmful effects
— for example, any work that pays anywhere close to the basic income would be
a ridiculously bad deal that no rational actor would accept.

Not necessarily. The types of jobs that people would do at wages close to the
floor are the types of jobs that they would do regardless of salary. Writers,
musicians, painters, artists, contractors, entrepreneurs, small-business
owners, stay-at-home-parents, interns would appreciate a guaranteed floor.
Seasonal jobs, sales jobs and other jobs with month-to-month variance (make a
lot some months, make little other months) would be more attractive. Any job
that has the potential of upward mobility (make less now so you can make more
later) would be be more attractive with a guaranteed floor.

Jobs in retail or fast-food, jobs that require hard-labour, or are
unattractive for various reasons would have to pay more - which isn't a
terrible thing. Now MacDonald's and Walmart would have to pay a living wage
else nobody would bother with those jobs.

So it may actually work. I'm still a believer. Besides, instead of a hard
floor, you could introduce a scaling floor to provider further incentive to
work.

~~~
chc
> _Now MacDonald 's and Walmart would have to pay a living wage else nobody
> would bother with those jobs._

They would have to pay _way more than_ a living wage — nobody's going to go
from a life of leisure to a Walmart job for a 5% increase in income. This
would drastically increase costs, would would simply spur inflation.

~~~
PeterisP
Drastically increasing costs for unskilled laborers wouldn't kill the
companies - say, McDonalds wouldn't go out of business or double their burger
prices because of that, as long as their competitors get the same labor cost
increase.

For a bunch of professions it would accelerate automation - already there are
a lot of jobs that could be better done without humans, simply minimum wage
workers are cheaper than the automation. On the other hand, such basic income
program would be also a fix for that rising unemployment.

~~~
chc
> _Drastically increasing costs for unskilled laborers wouldn 't kill the
> companies - say, McDonalds wouldn't go out of business or double their
> burger prices because of that, as long as their competitors get the same
> labor cost increase._

I have to admit I don't quite follow. How would everybody getting the same
labor cost increase prevent price hikes?

~~~
PeterisP
There would be a price hike for all companies, but it would be much, much
smaller than the increase in wages - the price of a burger (unlike, say, price
of a haircut) is mostly independent of the cook's wage, and to the extent that
it matters, there are valid avenues for automation that put a cap on it.

------
xacaxulu
Loaded title much? American news outlets always have a way of making social
safety nets and increased qualities of life sound bad.

[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2240002/Switzerland-...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2240002/Switzerland-
best-place-born-world-Britain-27th.html)

~~~
scrabble
I found it funny that the title of the article was really negative, but if you
read the article itself the end of the second page says that maybe it is also
a good idea for the US.

~~~
jamestc
The title isn't negative, though. Just radical.

~~~
gnaritas
No, that's a very negative title to a conservative; that's no accident.

------
algorias
I think this is the most important vote we will get to cast in a long time,
not just for us here in Switzerland, but for the world at large.

By and large, capitalism (as a political system) has failed the world.
Capitalism is a very efficient, even beautiful, distributed algorithm that is
very good at allocating resources in a reasonably close to optimal fashion,
more efficient than central control in many aspects. It doesn't automatically
make social justice happen, however. Its efficiency is at the same time its
heartlessness. Too many people ignore this blatantly obvious fact (see
prisoner's dilemma, tragedy of the commons, etc) because that realization is
painful and requires a deep honest look at our own position in society.

If we want to see significant social change in the world within the next 100
years, experiments like unconditional basic income need to happen at a large
scale. Switzerland is one of the few places in the world (if not the only)
with the wealth an political freedom to make that possible.

Personally, I believe that voting for this proposal is a moral imperative
rather than a choice. This is the first time in my life I feel compelled to
campaign for a cause, so I'm brainstorming about how to get the message out.
Any help would be appreciated!

~~~
bjt
How is capitalism a political system?

~~~
sambeau
Capitalism is a human-created system that stratifies and organises the
behaviour and status of people.

How could that be anything other than a political system?

Capitalism is neither eternal nor universal it is merely a system that most
humans adhere to currently.

~~~
humanrebar
Capitalism combines the right to property with the right to return on
investment. It's certainly political, but the idea that you should be able to
keep your stuff and the proceeds from your work seem universal to me.

~~~
sambeau
It seems universal to you because it is all you have ever known. If you had
lived in a time before the Romans chances are you wouldn't understand money at
all, let alone capitalism. If you grew up in any small community throughout
most of history you wouldn't have practiced capitalism but, instead, some form
of mutualism where there was a degree of shared labour and harvest (e.g.
tribes hunting together, preparing food together).

Capitalism (with a capital C) is a bit more than just "property with the right
to return on investment". I won't repeat it all here but Wikipedia has a
detailed explanation of what it is. Be sure to click around the links at the
bottom to see that there are many variants of Capitalism and Socialism that
share some ideas.

------
bilalq
The discussion of basic income has been brought up here before. The article
briefly mentions unemployment, but I think that is going to become a major
issue in the future. Advances in technology keep cutting down the need for
labor.

As automation erodes away at the need for workers, what will we be left with?
Certainly, there will always be a need for people that can maintain and
innovate our technologies, but why hire people to do the things that machines
can do better, faster, and more cost-effectively? I think unemployment is
something that is naturally going to increase in the long-term. I don't know
if basic income would work or not, but it is worth considering.

~~~
jl6
I too see unemployment (or rather, the diminishing demand for labor) as the
key political issue of the 21st century. I can imagine a point by which the
vast majority of humans simply aren't needed to provide services to the owners
of capital.

I don't have any answers.

~~~
bilalq
Yeah, it's scary to try and imagine what sort of society would come out even
further in the future. An aristocracy with an elite worker class and the
masses in relative poverty? Relative is the operative word here, of course. It
may well be that the quality of life for someone in poverty in such a future
would be better than a middle class person today.

------
tete
If you think it is a crazy idea and don't see the reason. Think about social
insurance systems and how many people are needed just for the paperwork,
support when it comes to question, doctors who (re)verify that someone is
really sick.

And then think about all the overhead you have as an entropeneer and how much
risk you have, just for trying out an idea.

And then think about the risks, if you dedicate your life to art or if you
dedicate your life to help other people.

Maybe there are systems to fix all of this, but they will be complex and have
a lot of overhead (in other words: Tax paid for paperwork).

Remving the "having bad luck" problem means more people that will actually go
for something, meaning more chances of bringing ahead giant leaps.

And think about how people can focus on the actual problem without constantly
having that "How to pay your fees next month" thought in the back of your
head, that makes you makes you wanna cry, whenever you find that that's not
the solution.... espcially when you have a family.

~~~
ricardobeat
> entropeneer

I like that word. Creators of entropy.

------
joseflavio
I believe that there is a second and more dark intention in this proposal.
Today Switzerland is part of EU but they still have quotas for "work permits"
depending on the nationality of the worker, this goes against the principles
of Schengen
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schengen_Agreement](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schengen_Agreement))
and there is lot of pressure for Switzerland to remove these "quotas" (mainly
against eastern European countries). The problem is that the wages there are
way higher than other Schengen countries, and without the quotas there would
be massive immigration to Switzerland that would lower sharply the wages for
jobs that don't require higher education. So, IMO, Switzerland wants to give a
minimum wage to create a "virtual block" to the poor countries of Schengen...
(I am French and I live near the border)

edit to clarify: if you are a Swiss citizen you would earn your wage + state
wage, and if you are an immigrant you would earn just your wage... making
virtually impossible to afford living there (considering your wage =~ state
given wage), only for very well paid jobs that this would make no difference.

edit: typo

~~~
mseebach
No, this is a separate problem. Free movement of labour is an EEA policy which
permits nationals of one EEA country to work in another EEA country on the
same conditions as that member state’s own citizens. "Same conditions"
includes the right to the same benefits.

If Switzerland accepts the basic income, they would probably have to leave EEA
or negotiate some pretty steep exceptions to its membership.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Free movement of labour is an EEA policy which permits nationals of one EEA
> country to work in another EEA country on the same conditions as that member
> state’s own citizens. "Same conditions" includes the right to the same
> benefits.

Aside from the fact that Switzerland isn't an EEA member, Basic Income is not
a condition or benefit of _working_ in the country, it is (like, e.g., voting)
a condition of citizenship _unconnected_ with whether or not the citizen is
working.

------
aclimatt
I don't see how inflation would not completely negate the effects of this
without some strict fiscal policy in tandem. If you are essentially raising
the average wage by X, would prices not rise accordingly? Those who make X
plus a salary would not be able to afford the mansions of yesterday, because
those who make X plus an even higher salary can afford to outbid them.
Likewise, basic necessities like food can easily increase in price to what
people can afford to pay.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Presumably you are taxing income to pay for this. The net result is a transfer
of wealth from people who work to people who don't.

As a result the money supply does not increase. If any inflation occurs, it is
caused solely by a shift of spending from goods/investments not measured by
CPI (or the swiss equivalent) to those that are.

(I.e., if money shifts from investment in electronics research to pizza
consumption, the price of pizza will rise and the price of of oscilloscopes
will fall. Since CPI includes the price of pizza but not oscilloscopes,
inflation will rise.)

~~~
msluyter
I'm going to elaborate on the parent's confusion a bit. Even if, as you
suggest, net inflation doesn't increase, price distribution might. That is,
yacht prices fall, while food/rent prices rise. Since the poor spend the vast
majority of their income on food/rent, much of the basic income would thus be
recaptured. In fact, while the equilibrium might be different, it appears to
me that the overall impact might be minimal, or at least less than expected.

OTOH, it might help with our aggregate demand problems.

It's quite possible I'm missing something, however.

~~~
Fuxy
You're assuming the poor don't eat. I would argue the price of food would not
be considerably affected. We all need to eat poor or not so unless their dead
their still buying food. Rent on the other hand may rise since there's people
sleeping on the streets at the moment.

~~~
sp332
When everyone, even poor people, have an extra (say) $10k, basic cost of
living could go up $10k because that's what the market will bear.

~~~
Fuxy
Are you saying the cost of production doesn't have a say in the price of the
product it's how much people are willing to buy it for?

Because if that's done with basic necessitate like food so people are force to
starve because corporations want to charge as much as possible they should all
be charged with the death penalty.

~~~
sp332
Cost of production sets a floor on the price of goods, not a ceiling.

~~~
xixi77
True, but competition among sellers sets the ceiling.

------
RyanMcGreal
Canada considered establishing a guaranteed income in the 1980s after the
MacDonald Commission Report recommended it in 1985. It would have replaced
most social welfare programs, which turned much of the left against it.
Ironically, social welfare in Canada has since been stalled, stagnated, cut
back and means-tested to the point where the guaranteed income proposal seems
impossibly _generous_ rather than parsimonious. As it happens, the Mulroney
Government that received the MacDonald Commission report embraced the
recommendation to pursue a free trade agreement with the USA and ignored the
guaranteed income proposal. The idea has bounced around a bit since then but
gained no political traction.

------
hermannj314
As a libertarian, I feel the government should stay out of people's lives, and
yet I feel this actually achieves that over the current style in the US of
needing to be deemed 'worthy poor' by the majority.

Assuming this replaces all other government payments: most tax credits, food
stamps, social security it create an amazing administrative savings.

I'm thinking through the implications for the child support model in the
United States. As I understand it, the child has a right to receive
compensation from their birth parents to pay for housing, food, clothing; but
if the government is taking ownership of all human beings, it seems the birth
parent would have no responsibility to provide support in excess of the basic
income.

Orphanages, foster parents, or current custodial guardians would just receive
the basic income and act accordingly. The implications for this sort of
program seem huge.

~~~
wavefunction
>>government is taking ownership of all human beings

I take the view that a basic income like the one proposed is actually all
human beings taking ownership of our government from the current selected few
privileged few.

------
trendoid
Similar experiments are being tried in India :
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income_in_India](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income_in_India)

[http://binews.org/2011/09/india-basic-income-pilot-
projects-...](http://binews.org/2011/09/india-basic-income-pilot-projects-are-
underway/) here is an excerpt from the 2nd link :

"These projects are similar to the Namibian basic income pilot project and to
the U.S. and Canadian governments’ Negative Income Tax experiments conducted
in the 1960s and 1970s, but the rural project adds an important new innovation
to the method: the project is being conducted on the village, rather than on
the individual, level. All residents of eight Indian villages will receive the
basic income, and their behavior will be compared with residents of twelve
“control” villages. This method will allow project designers to study village-
wide effects of the transfer.

Guy Standing, professor of economic security at Bath University (UK) and an
honorary co-president of the Basic Income Earth Network, helped to conceive
and organize the project. He argues that it needs to be conducted with
scientific dispassion. But he’s hopeful of the outcome. Asked about the
results of the Namibian pilot project—which he was also a part of—Standing
said that organizers documented many positive effects: “Child school
attendance went up dramatically, use of medical clinics went up. Those with
HIV/ AIDS started to take ARTs (Antiretroviral Therapy drugs) because they’d
been able to buy the right sort of food with the cash. Women’s economic status
improved, and the economic crime rate went down. Income distribution
improved.”"

------
rayiner
I'm trying to think how a basic income would impact say inner city communities
in the U.S. I'm not sure that the only problem in those communities is a lack
of cash. Rather, there seems to be a collapse in the social structure that
leads to crime, drug use, etc. Experiences with micro-finance abroad have
shown that such programs are most effective when the cash comes with some
social engineering. Maybe the same is true for domestic welfare. Simply giving
everyone a check won't cause fathers to stay with their kids and won't keep
gangs from filling in the power vacuum created by their absence. A check isn't
going to replace work as a framework for structuring society nor give people
the fulfillment that comes from work.

It's possible that paternalistic welfare is simply unworkable in practice. But
I think advocates of basic income ignore the fact that there is a rationale
behind paternalistic welfare that isn't addressed by basic income: that poor
people lack more than just money.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
"Simply giving everyone a check won't cause fathers to stay with their kids"

At least in the UK there are currently financial incentives in the welfare
system for single parents to a) become single parents rather than couples, and
b) be paid by the government to stay at home and raise the child rather than
the government paying for childcare while the parent works.

"A check isn't going to replace work as a framework for structuring society
nor give people the fulfillment that comes from work."

Again, current welfare systems heavily incentivize the poorest people not to
work. This is a key benefit of the proposed system, you keep most of every
extra dollar you earn, rather than facing punitive marginal tax rates because
welfare benefits are clawed back.

Your "paternalistic" welfare is often a beaurocratic trap.

~~~
gremlinsinc
That makes a lot of sense, -- Maybe our youth would grow up into better adults
IF their parents--especially single parents had the means to support them
withOUT taking a job. -- There should be the option of at least 1 full-time
parent, whether it's in a 1 or 2 parent home.

------
lazyant
See also
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mincome](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mincome) .
I don't see what's the theoretical problem of having a "socialist" minimum for
everybody together with a "capitalist" system where you can make as much as
you can.

~~~
yummyfajitas
The theoretical argument is that due to the diminishing marginal utility of
income, you get less labor supplied.

Suppose the utility loss from taking a job is X, and U(income) is a concave
function. Both of these are standard assumptions, well validated empirically.

With no basic income, people will take a job if U(job income) - X >
U(income=0), or equivalently U(job income)-U(income=0) > X.

With a basic income, people take a job if U(job income + basic income) -
U(basic income) > X.

By concavity, there are values of X for which the former inequality holds and
the latter does not. So people falling into this regime will be deterred from
taking a job by a basic income.

Society as a whole is poorer as a result by an amount equal to those
individual's marginal productivity. I.e., fewer nails are manicured, fewer
homes are cleaned, fewer restaurant meals are supplied.

Note that you can alleviate these negative effects by replacing a basic
_income_ guarantee with a basic _job_ guarantee (i.e., just like a basic
income, but you need to work for it). That also costs the taxpayer far less.

~~~
chrisduesing
You are leaving out a couple of details. First, there is already unemployment,
so there are already people not filling jobs. Second, this is a redistribution
of tax money, so society is not getting poorer that way. As for people not
filling jobs, there would be new pressures on corporations that needed
workers, McDonald's could continue to pay minimum wage (assuming it wasn't
abolished) for people that cannot live on $10k, and startups could pay
substantially less, as could not for profits or other organizations that had
missions more aligned with people's worldview of themselves. New jobs might
become possible that are not today. Who knows. The point is you cannot say the
outcome of changing one variable while holding all others constant, because
they are not constant. Also, your counter suggestion is based on the
assumption that the government can redistribute jobs instead of tax money, it
cannot.

~~~
yummyfajitas
_First, there is already unemployment, so there are already people not filling
jobs._

If you believe the Keynesians or the Monetarists, it's because they refuse to
work at a lower nominal wage than before. Unemployment/welfare/etc makes this
an appealing prospect, and Basic Income only makes the problem worse.

* Also, your counter suggestion is based on the assumption that the government can redistribute jobs instead of tax money*

I didn't propose redistributing jobs. I suggest using people on the Basic Job
for all low skill government labor, and creating additional (make-work if
necessary) jobs if necessary. Make every park sparkling clean, no litter on
any road ever, etc.

FDR got creative when he did this and we got a lot of great infrastructure out
of it.

~~~
dragonwriter
> If you believe the Keynesians or the Monetarists, it's because they refuse
> to work at a lower nominal wage than before. Unemployment/welfare/etc makes
> this an appealing prospect, and Basic Income only makes the problem worse.

How? One of the problems with qualification-based benefit programs is that
they reduce the marginal benefit of work (both unemployment and welfare
benefits go _down_ with work, which reduces the _marginal_ benefit of any
given nominal wage level, which makes people _more likely_ to seek to avoid
work at any given nominal wage level -- which also makes the benefit programs
more expensive to administer, since they then need mechanism to try to catch
people avoiding work to maintain the benefits.)

If you have unconditional basic income, you assure that work always has a
_higher_ marginal benefit for the same nominal wage than it would have in a
traditional system of means-tested benefits, which reduces the incidence of
people rejecting work at any given nominal wage.

~~~
yummyfajitas
I was wrong, and you are correct. Replacing unemployment with a basic income
could go either way, depending on the marginal taxation rates of reducing
benefits and the rates of diminishing marginal utility.

However, a Basic Job guarantee can only go one way. You never get to avoid the
disutility of labor (X in my formulation).

But I'll dispute one point: _you assure that work always has a higher marginal
benefit_

BI assures that work has a higher marginal _income_. It does not assure that
work has a higher marginal _utility_ , which is what matters.

------
manarth
Something that's not been mentioned much is the impact on the benefits system
- and specifically the cost. Presumably this would completely replace all
benefits - everyone gets $X a month, as a universal benefit. No specific claim
for housing benefit, jobseekers benefit, etc.

On the one hand, this massively reduces the bureaucracy/overhead of
administering the system, reviewing claims, etc. On the other hand, all the
public servants involved in the administration would presumably be out of
work. But then, everyone's got this extra cash, to put back into the economy
through their purchases…

Would be really interesting to see the effects at a large/national scale.

------
tehwalrus
I literally laughed out loud at the accusation of Switzerland being a
"Socialist" country. Having spent a summer in Zürich amongst the investment
banks (although not working at one I hasten to add) the US-English insult was
too much.

EDIT: Sorry, did I say investment banks? I meant Private Banks of course.

------
mseebach
The problem with this proposal is that it will change dynamics a lot, and it's
hard to predict how people will respond to those dynamics. In other words,
what will the unintended consequences be?

Will people with non-great jobs around the basic income level keep going to
work, or will they stay home and maintain their current living standard, or
will they keep going to work, and roughly double it?

If many people choose to stay home, the cost of the services they provide will
rise quite dramatically. This will have some hard to predict consequences
across the economy. Some of the services will just be foregone with little
tangible effect. Lawns will be mowed less often, street swept less often etc.
Slightly worse impact on the economy will be when busy people decide to forego
help, such as cleaners, babysitters, handymen etc. and do the job themselves,
competing with either or both work and leisure time, which impacts either or
both productivity and quality of life.

The most direct impact will be the rise in cost of services that can't be
foregone or "taken in-house". Trash-collection, several bits of the retail
supply chain etc. This will raise the cost of everything for everyone.

Also, besides these impacts, there's the human element. If a person makes the
short-term decision to not work (and not studying or working on a startup or
something similar), that person moves further and further away from ever
participating in productive labour. I'm a bit old-fashioned on this, but I
consider allowing people to go idle, long-term like that, is a grave failure
of society. Many people who start in unpleasant low-wage jobs, don't end in
them. Those who never start any job(/education/productive activity) at all
have no chance of progressing beyond them.

But the worst is that taken together, the rise in prices will create a strong
force towards getting rid of low income jobs, which will raise the bar
significantly for those at the bottom, committing many of those willing to
work to not work.

This is all speculation, and it's all dependent on the level to which low-
income people will or won't chose to work.

~~~
Kluny
"Will people with non-great jobs around the basic income level keep going to
work, or will they stay home and maintain their current living standard, or
will they keep going to work, and roughly double it?"

What would you do? Would you live a frugal life on basic, or would you use the
extra to live a fuller life?

"Some of the services will just be foregone with little tangible effect. Lawns
will be mowed less often, street swept less often etc. Slightly worse impact
on the economy will be when busy people decide to forego help, such as
cleaners, babysitters, handymen etc. and do the job themselves."

Speaking for myself, I have less than zero desire to mow my lawn, or sweep my
street. I like having a mowed lawn and a swept street though, so if I suddenly
had extra money, I would very likely pay someone to do those jobs, which
currently aren't being done at my house. What would you do?

"If a person makes the short-term decision to not work (and not studying or
working on a startup or something similar), that person moves further and
further away from ever participating in productive labour. I'm a bit old-
fashioned on this, but I consider allowing people to go idle, long-term like
that, is a grave failure of society."

Why should anyone be forced to do work they hate for the sake of proving to
those in power that they are not lazy? What would you do if you were
unfortunate enough not have a college education and some skills that allow you
to hold a good job, and your only option was working in fast food? Then
suddenly you have this basic income, and you can afford to live without
working that horrible job? Would you just start taking a lot of naps, or would
you start pursuing hobbies and skills that you never had time or opportunity
for before?

I know what I would do - I'd take a course on motorcycle repair, take up
motorcycle racing, and travel to races. Maybe that's not valuable to society
as a whole, but I would argue that it's relatively more valuable than fast
food. Plus the intangible benefit of another person in the world who's happy
and an expert in their field, rather than another unhappy, worthless minimum
wage employee. What would you do? I'm asking you to trust other people to make
decisions as good as you would make, rather than making assumptions on their
behalf.

~~~
mseebach
So you admit that you would change your behavior in response to such a policy.
That's my point: People change their behaviors in response to changed
incentives.

Now, since society is a very dynamic, it is extremely difficult to predict the
consequences of such changes in dynamics, or even to ascribe causation
afterwards. That, however is not an argument to throw caution to the wind.

> I'm asking you to trust other people to make decisions as good as you would
> make, rather than making assumptions on their behalf.

I find that very hard to do, as I have multiple, hard examples of people
making poorer decisions than me. Mostly they consist of people asking my
advice, then not following it, then failing.

By the way, by the same measure, I am guilty of making poorer choices than
other people as well, it's not a linear ranking.

------
blisterpeanuts
I'm going to go out on a limb and say this is the most ridiculous idea that
will have disastrous and unintended consequences across the board, leading to
more poverty and crime and economic stagnation than ever, at least here in the
U.S.

Once such a program is implemented, charities will dry up as the average giver
realizes that the recipient already gets plenty. The more dedicated givers,
the idealistic volunteers, will still be out there providing free meals and
helping in shelters, but the vast majority of working people with some
disposable income to share will no longer give; they'll just shrug and say, "I
gave at the office" or, more literally, "My money was confiscated at the
office".

Furthermore, this will provide a disincentive to find work, and we'll see a
surge of immigration from Latin America to fill all those low end jobs that
our comfortable native populace no longer feels a need to bother themselves
over.

The Clinton/Gingrich welfare reform efforts were intended to move families off
of public dependency and to a large extent they met with success. It's rather
"out of the box" these days to propose the diametric opposite, but by all
means, Switzerland, please use yourself as a laboratory so we can observe the
results. According to Swiss friends, that country has to import guest workers
to perform menial labor; will this mean that these guest workers will be
shipped home, or will they also receive a stipend? And if they do, will they
still have an incentive to mop floors and wash dishes?

~~~
dublinben
If you'd read the article, you would know that this only applies to Swiss
citizens, not migrant workers.

~~~
blisterpeanuts
If you'd read my posting, you would know that I was talking about citizens of
a country. I asked, rhetorically, what the Swiss would do about the migrant
workers, who, by the way, constitute 25% of the work force in today's
Switzerland; excluding them would render the policy almost pointless.

------
rjdagost
There's something fundamental I'm missing about this proposal: how will this
not cause inflation on consumer products? People who earn above the basic
income level will be hit with a double whammy: (1) They have to fund the basic
income with higher taxes (2) They have to pay higher prices for consumer
products due to the inflated supply of money being spent on consumer products

I just don't see the point, but I would be interested in seeing the practical
consequences if another nation tried it.

------
xixi77
This is a beautiful idea. Replacing the means-tested transfers, such as
housing assistance, food stamps, unemployment benefits, etc.etc. with a simple
check to everyone would provide dignity to all citizens, save on
administration costs, remove the major disincentives to work that the current
programs create, and even encourage entrepreneurship and creativity, since
people would be less worried about their ideas not working out. It would even
destroy the rationale behind minimal wage. I would gladly pay more in taxes
for all that, although I suspect a lot of the program will pay for itself --
through elimination of all the above, and through the economic benefit of
spending.

I do worry a bit though: with the system in place, given how simple and
transparent it is, what would prevent politicians from continuously raising
the basic income level, until productive work becomes completely unattractive,
and the economy collapses? How can that be prevented?

Even though the current welfare systems are horrible in comparison on
efficiency grounds, the fact that they tend to target specific small groups,
makes it easier to keep them from blowing up.

------
hikarudo
It would be great to see a discussion of this proposal from the point of view
of Austrian economics. Anyone here cares to give an opinion?

------
breischl
Interesting idea. I hope Switzerland does it so the rest of us can watch from
the cheap seats and see how it works out.

Human nature being what it is, there will still be some people who manage to
wreck their own lives. The guaranteed income isn't much, it would be fairly
easy to fritter it away on any number of vices addictions, or just garden
variety fiscal mismanagement. So when people find themselves too broke for
food or rent despite a minimum income, what then? There's an obvious argument
that they had their chance and screwed it up, so they get to live with the
consequences. But what if they've managed to drag their kids into the hole
with them, or if their really old, or otherwise sympathetic? Do we restart the
entire welfare conversation while taking a minimum income as a given?

This also seems like it would simultaneously provide a big incentive for
people to want to become citizens, and an equal reason to not let them. I
wonder how that will be handled?

------
VLM
Any discussion of a basic income on HN probably needs a captcha to prove
authors have read

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Permanent_Fund](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Permanent_Fund)

maybe by entering the annual individual payout in 2012 was (fill in the blank)
878 or $878 or $878.00 or whatever.

Most posts against it usually have a tinge of "keep the government out of my
medicare" about them.

"Somebody should try this" or "Its too dangerous to try" and all the like
almost intentionally seem to ignore this actual implementation.

~~~
graue
Even in the best year (2008, $3269) this isn't remotely enough to live on.
That's less than $9 a day, and that's an exceptionally high payout! In 2012 it
was $2.40 a day. Maybe you could live on that in India or Vietnam, but not in
the U.S.

~~~
VLM
I would disagree in that during my starving student years I occasionally
submitted tax returns vaguely resembling those kind of figures. You need
roommates and can't be too picky about food and entertainment, but its
possible. Its certainly a lot easier to live on than $0 !

This does have certain implications where either it gets indexed to some kind
of cost of living index, probably very corruptly, or it gets polarized into
some kind of coastie/non-coastie or urban/rural issue.

------
cheez
I think this is the only way governments should "assist" their people.
Further, I think portions of a minimum income should be the only way of
creating currency. Currently, it is done through debt. Money should be made by
the people, for the people.

Perhaps it can be done as follows:

1\. Institute a negative income tax 2\. Any citizens who get a refund based on
the negative income tax are paid by money that is created

This way, when the economy slows down and people are making less money, more
money is created which is what we do anyway.

------
OnACoffeeBreak
One of the previous discussions here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6532738](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6532738)

------
cl3m
Unfortunately, I don't think there is any chance this will pass. Swiss are
very risk averse and I don't think they want to mess with the successful
economy they have now. There is way to much uncertainty.

The initiative to increase the minimum holiday (4 to 6 weeks) failed already.

For those interested, there is a initiative this month to limit the maximum
salary to 12x the minimum salary in the same company (1:12) which might pass..

~~~
swombat
For the record, I voted against the 12x proposal. It's unnecessary meddling in
the workings of a free market, meant to appease ideologists. The basic income
proposal, however, is a pretty dramatic, wide-ranging change that could make a
big difference. It's not appeasing: it's incendiary.

------
CalRobert
As we increasingly move to a post-scarcity economy, at least in terms of the
most basic necessities of life, this kind of measure will be necessary to
avoid civilization becoming teeming hordes of poor with a few billionaires
(the ones who own the robots) sprinkled in.

Of course, this is all before climate change wipes out crops and antibiotics
destroy the species!

------
mangeletti
It's unfortunate that the Austrian School has taken a blow during the great
depression, which was entirely due to government influence (see
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Reserve_Act](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Reserve_Act)
(read "Putting the fox in charge of the hen house")), leading to the adoption
of a new orthodox standard of tax and spend (Keynesian) and later increase in
monetar(ism|y control and domination from above) (Friedman). Now, after the
2008 crisis, which was caused entirely by government influence (see
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Reinvestment_Act#2008...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Reinvestment_Act#2008_financial_crisis)
(read "Bad credit? No problem.")), the resurgent attack against laissez-faire
economics is regarded as something new by those who haven't read their history
books

TL;DR

The fox is in charge of the hen house, blames the hens on their problems, and
uses that as a justification to put an even large fox in charge of more hens.

------
sunseb
I live in Switzerland, I will vote for this idea, but there is absolutely no
chance this referendum will succeed. The Swiss are very conservative people
and don't want to change their model until it's proven more effective.

------
gadders
When this has been discussed previously, the objection is always raised as to
why would anyone want to do an unpleasant job if all their basic needs are
already taken care of.

The reply always seems to be "Because robots!"

------
ffrryuu
Basic income is a universal human right.

~~~
breischl
I really wish people would quit declaring anything they want as a "universal
human right."

The real universals are things you naturally have that must be taken away from
you. If you were the sole person on an island, you could speak freely,
practice whatever religion, pursue happiness, etc. You have those rights
unless someone else shows up and takes them away from you.

Things like an income, health care, and all the so-called "positive rights"
are just entitlements. You can stand alone on an island and scream about your
right to an income, but it won't matter.

Maybe the entitlements are a good idea, but no matter how good they might be
they're still not "universal human rights."

~~~
ffrryuu
You can give up that right, I'll take it away from you since you don't seem to
want it.

~~~
breischl
Actually not, since that "right" hasn't been created yet.

Which is just another indication that it's actually an entitlement rather than
a right. Rights exist without government, governments merely recognize them.
On the other hand entitlements don't exist at all without government funding.

~~~
ffrryuu
Such defeatist thinking, it won't get you far in life :) j/k

------
negamax
Everyone here should watch that Ducktales episode where everyone in the valley
gets lots of bottle caps and then there's no value to them.

It's a fallacy and shortsightedness to think there be no inflation. No country
is a closed system. People will be spending money on imported goods. This will
only leave inflating money supply as a resort; so state can fulfil its
obligation.

------
mercenario
So you pay your taxes so the government can gives you back that exact money
you payed? What's the point?

I have a better ideia, why don't government cut everyones taxes by the same
amount?

~~~
yread
You've registered an account on _HACKER_ news just to comment on a political
article in NYTimes?

~~~
mercenario
I'm a old and frequent reader, but usually don't have much to say so I never
bothered creating an account. And my english is not very good either. But the
political links here are the ones who have always encouraged me to comment.

