
Rather than savage cuts, Switzerland considers “Star Trek” economics - rbanffy
http://www.salon.com/2013/10/11/rather_than_savage_cuts_switzerland_considers_star_trek_economics/
======
nugget
It's not widely known but the United States was the first developed country to
promote a basic income, in the form of the Alaska Permanent Fund. Each year,
every US citizen resident in Alaska receives a dividend payment from this
fund. The amount varies based on market returns but it has hovered around
$120/month ($1400/yr) over the last decade. Children are eligible, so a family
of 4, for example, would receive $480/month.

Economists who want to study the effect of a basic income can travel to Alaska
and see the impact for themselves.

It always struck me as ironic because Alaska is one of the most conservative
states, and conservatives are not usually in favor of handouts. In this case,
however, the inflows to the fund come not from personal income taxes but from
taxes and lease-revenue on the state's natural resources, notably oil and gas.
Because of this, people view it as a birthright, similar to an inheritance,
rather than a handout, like welfare.

In 1976 Alaska's citizens just banded together and determined that (1) all of
these natural resources are shared, and the benefits from them should be
shared also; and (2) none of us trust the Government to spend this money for
us, better than we could spend it ourselves. Today, it is the most popular
Government program in the state with near absolute bi-partisan support.

So there seems to be precedent that this can work, if you have a massive
sovereign wealth fund that is fed by revenues from shared resources. There are
other countries, like Saudi Arabia or Norway, who will probably be the first
to try this on a nation-wide scale before Switzerland.

~~~
rflrob
> Economists who want to study the effect of a basic income can travel to
> Alaska and see the impact for themselves.

The problem with the states as laboratories of democracy is that, from a
scientific perspective, they're pretty crappy experiments in terms of having
any control groups. While an economist can travel to Alaska, it's hard to tell
whether any given quality in the current state is due to the experiment or
not. For instance, the price of food is quite high in Alaska; is this due to
some basic commodity inflation, or is it because there are no road and rail
links to most major population centers? Probably the latter, and you can look
at Alaska both before and after the Permanent Fund was implemented, but even
then, it's not a perfect control.

~~~
the_watcher
I think the idea of states as labs is generally a good thing, but people often
misunderstand it. States as labs shouldn't be seen as pilot programs for the
whole country, they should be seen as pilots for other states. The US is huge,
and a state like Alaska has a very different economy than Rhode Island.
However, somewhere like Montana may be able to use some of what worked in
Alaska. The advantage of state power is that allows things that are unique to
the state to have more influence on policy.

~~~
pekk
> The advantage of state power is that allows things that are unique to the
> state to have more influence on policy.

That is also the disadvantage of state power. At least, if you are a person
whose life is being controlled by the coercive power of the state government
in ways that might be harmful to you.

If you are powerful in the state, of course, it is very good for you to have
fewer checks on your own power. It also helps things like arranging elections,
like by excluding demographics less likely to vote for you.

~~~
the_watcher
That is an endemic danger to all forms of government. It's not a disadvantage
of state power, but a disadvantage of power itself.

~~~
justin66
As an ongoing exercise it's useful to study over time the number of times the
notion of state's rights is invoked in defense of a good idea, a bad idea, or
a genuinely disgusting idea. I'm not trying to impose any beliefs on you: feel
free to use your own definitions for these things.

My position is that state's rights is invoked so often in defense of bad or
disgusting policy in the United States - and frankly, used so infrequently to
test genuinely interesting policy in a meaningful way - that it's not a hugely
important thing. I feel this is an empirical observation that won't
necessarily hold true in all times or places.

When people try to state these things about how government should work purely
out of principle, it usually seems pretty unconvincing. We can judge methods
of government based on their outcomes to a large extent.

~~~
dantheman
There have been many occurrences of states rights being used for good, for
instance:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugitive_Slave_Act_of_1850#Null...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugitive_Slave_Act_of_1850#Nullification)

Or more recently medical marijuana, and in general drug legalization efforts
rely on states rights argumentation.

------
archgrove
I still have no understanding on how this sort of thing would be paid for.
Presumably, it's via some form of income, consumption, and corporation taxes.
However, the marginal income tax rate would have to be _huge_ (as you need to
recover the entire amount paid to the earner in "basic income" before you get
a cent to spend on someone else), the consumption taxes would negate the value
of the basic income, and punitive corporation taxes would just ensure no-one
actually sets up a company there.

Until we have Star Trek style technology for these free ham sandwiches, I
don't see how Star Trek style economics will actually work.

~~~
nkoren
Actually, one of the major effects of basic income is that it would _decrease_
marginal income tax rates (although it would undoubtedly raise taxes overall).
This is counter-intuitive, so let me explain.

Marginal tax rates are the taxes that you pay on additional income. Eg., if I
make (rounding numbers recklessly) £9k per year, I am taxed nothing. However
every pound I make over £9k is taxed at 15% -- that's my marginal tax rate at
the £10k income level -- then there is another step at £20k-something, etc.

For the poor, however, effective marginal tax rate include not only
escalations in progressive tax rates, but the withdrawal of social support.
Eg., let's say I am unemployed and receiving £700/month worth of benefits.
Then I get a job which pays me £800/month. The first £750 is tax free, and
I'll have to pay £8 of income tax on the remaining £50, so my total take-home
pay is £792. Fair enough, so far...

Except now that I'm earning an income, all my benefits are withdrawn. This
means that although I'm now doing £800 per month worth of work that I wasn't
doing previously, at the end of the day I'm only receiving (£792 - £700 = )
£92 pounds of additional income. Hence my _effective_ marginal tax rate on the
extra income is a whopping _88.5%_.

I'd have to think very hard about whether I wanted to keep that job, or stay
on benefits. In fact, this is a fairly generous example: many benefits
programmes are structured in such a way that they impose an effective marginal
tax rate of more than 100% upon people who increase their incomes -- in other
words, you can end up with less money by getting a job than by staying on
benefits.

This is the mechanism which turns benefits programmes into poverty traps -- by
de-incentivising people to work via astronomical marginal tax rates.
Unfortunately, people have a very difficult time understanding this mechanism,
and their intuitive reaction is often to "fix" benefits programs by increasing
conditionalities and means-testing. The problem is that the more
conditionalities and means-testing you impose, the more you increase the
marginal tax rates for people trying to get out of poverty -- so such
programmes are inevitably counter-productive.

A Unconditional Basic Income, however, is never withdrawn. This means that it
imposes no penalties for increasing your earnings -- meaning that it actually
_minimises_ the effective marginal tax rates.

In fact a very fair basic income could be funded via a flat tax: tax every
income at 50%, and then redistribute the earnings as a flat Universal Basic
Income. Mean income earners, in this scenario, would pay exactly as much taxes
as they receive back from the UBI -- so their tax rate would be zero. Non-
income earners would earn 50% of the mean (which is roughly the level that
Switzerland is proposing). Billionaires would see their income reduced by
nearly 50%. However the _marginal_ tax rate would be identical at every level
of income. No matter what your standing in the economy, you would always
receive the same UBI, and you would always pay the same rate of tax. It would
seem almost fair.

~~~
angersock
I would be happy to give up half my income if I knew it was being used to
support students trying to learn engineering or new technology, or help a
small family through a rough time, or pay for some fresh grad to get a broken
bone set--especially if I knew that that safety net existed for me as well.

It's time to start embracing the fact that as a civilization we've come beyond
the point where we're scrabbling like mad to shake loose the resources for
existence, and instead we can now start actually trying to make people,
everyone, safer and happier and more actualized.

~~~
unepipe
So why don't you give up half of your income to a family or group of students
who are struggling?

Do you feel more confident that a government entity would do a better job at
picking a family or students? Or would you only want to do it if everyone at
your income bracket was also doing it?

Serious question, not trying to be a dick.

~~~
DavidAdams
The genius of the minimum guaranteed income, and the reason that it could
possibly appeal to both liberals and libertarians is because in this case it
does precisely the opposite of what you're afraid of: the government doesn't
pick anything.

They give it to everybody. If you think that the government does a poor job of
allocating the absolutely colossal amounts of money currently spent by social
programs, or you recognize that trying to "do a good job" and prevent fraud,
and all the other social engineering requires a vast, wasteful bureaucracy,
then this is an interesting option.

This is a program that eliminates extreme poverty, but requires almost no
infrastructure. You'd only need to verify that recipients are citizens and
that they file their taxes. Since you can abolish Social Security, a stripped
down social security bureaucracy, which already prevents people who haven't
paid into social security from receiving benefits, could take over that task.

It could allow one of the largest and most sweeping reductions in the size of
government in our lifetimes.

And if you believe in freedom, but also want to live in a country where people
don't have to beg for food, then this is your best bet. You trust people to
make their own decisions about what benefits them and their family. You don't
discourage work or enterprise.

I think it's a political long shot of epic proportions, but also a great idea.

~~~
arobbins
The linked article mentions cuts in other social welfare programs as one of
the risks of a guaranteed basic income. Many who promote guaranteed basic
income do not think it should replace our existing programs.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Many who promote guaranteed basic income do not think it should replace our
> existing programs.

I have never seen anyone advocate for UBI who expressed any position other
than support for using it to replace, at a minimum, means-tested poverty
support programs, and generally they want it to replace many other targeted
social benefit programs that currently provide services, direct subsidies for
selected purchases of goods and services, or indirect subsidies through tax
credits and deductions for purchases.

The usual argument for UBI is that it eliminates the most of the
administrative overhead and duplication of function in the multiple programs
it would replace, as well as replacing the perverse incentives that occur with
means-testing.

------
agentultra
It was interesting reading this after having finished reading Bertrand
Russell's, "In Praise of Idleness." [1]

It always struck me as odd that the ghost of the Protestant Ethic is still
haunting us to this day. There are plenty of reasons why we can and should
work less and still enjoy the benefits of a decent, modern life. And in spite
of our advances there is a pervasive belief that we should _work more_.

I think this will be a very good thing and I'm interested to see how it turns
out for Switzerland.

[1] [http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html](http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html)

~~~
rbanffy
> There are plenty of reasons why we can and should work less and still enjoy
> the benefits of a decent, modern life.

Or work more, but do so because you love your work, not to cover for some
basic need. If I could retire next week, I'd probably work a little less, but
wouldn't stop.

~~~
agentultra
>> There are plenty of reasons why we can and should work less and still enjoy
the benefits of a decent, modern life.

>Or work more, but do so because you love your work, not to cover for some
basic need. If I could retire next week, I'd probably work a little less, but
wouldn't stop.

If you read the essay I linked to, Bertrand Russell makes this very point.
It's not that we should work less and be completely unproductive, but rather
that we should work less so that we may better utilize our time to pursue
those interests and lines of research that satisfy our curiosity.

I used some downtime I had a while ago during a job search to pursue such
avenues. I don't think I've ever had a more productive period. As I was
unconstrained by profit motivations I was free to think ideas I would have
otherwise dismissed due to a lack of time and energy.

------
3pt14159
To understand how this works for a relatively normal country (like Canada):
Imagine having an expense that is HUGE for your government. Like easily the
biggest expense that they have. Larger than healthcare or the military.

Then cut the government around that. School lunch programs, cut. Welfare, cut.
Old age benefits, cut. Even some parts of healthcare get cut, like having
someone care for you for free when you are bed ridden (since presumably you
would be able to spend a portion of your money on hiring a personal
assistant). Imagine laying off 30 to 60% of people that work for the
government in a "knowledge worker" role (ie, administrators, not trash
disposers). Completely scrap science grants and arts subsidies. Increase taxes
slightly. Etc.

But for all that sacrifice, we insulate our economy from political turmoil of
the continued mechanization of the economy. One day most people won't be
working. I'm not 100% convinced that BI is something we should be doing right
NOW, but I'm pretty sure we'll have it in 50 years or less.

------
Futurebot
I'm a big supporter of the GBI (see my comment history), and I think developed
countries are going to all need to adopt it at some point for a variety of
reasons. Reading this and a few other related articles on the Swiss
experiment, I couldn't find information about the following, which I consider
pre-requisites for a GBI system to be effective:

\- Union strikes for non-safety related issues have to be made illegal. You
don't get to strike for higher wages when there's a GBI.

\- Hire/fire policies need to be made completely at-will, with pretty much no
exceptions.

\- The minimum wage has to be eliminated (generally won't matter, since the
GBI will bring the wage of "bad jobs" up, rather than down.)

\- The rest of the welfare system will likely need to be largely dismantled.
The person answering the questions in the article seemed to conflate "public
schooling" with welfare, which should be decoupled; things like schooling,
health care, etc. should not be touched (and should not be considered welfare
- they are regular public goods.) If the Swiss have things like TANF, Social
Security, SNAP, WIC, etc. - those will probably need to go.

\- Opt out. Any person who doesn't want to take the money (because they
already have plenty) should be able to refuse it.

I'm glad to see a country starting to experiment with this, though. It's the
only way forward in a world where the need for human labor is going down every
day.

~~~
chli
Swiss citizen here...

A few answers :

    
    
      - Strikes are mostly illegal in Switzerland and are very rare
      - Apart from a standard 3 months notice it's easy to lay off people in Switzerland (unless they are pregnant or sick)
      - There are no standard minimal wage but there have been discussion recently of introducing one 
      - We do have quite a few "program" in our welfare system a GBI would simplify a lot of things
      - There have been no mention of a possibility to opt-out

~~~
Futurebot
Thanks chli. It sounds like Switzerland is in great shape for this, then. I'm
really rooting for their success here; it's hard to overstate how important
successful examples of these policies are going to be for the future of our
societies.

------
seanc
If no one will do a job that pays less than $2800 per month, then how will
those jobs get done?

Historically, wealthy societies that guaranteed incomes for citizens had
slaves. I'll bet if you go digging around in these proposals you'll find a
class of people who aren't eligible (new immigrants or something), who are
going to wind up doing all of the low paying jobs.

~~~
rbehrends
Your job income adds directly to those $2800; it does not replace the basic
income. E.g., if your employer pays you $500 a month, your total monthly
income will be $3300.

Note that life in Switzerland is expensive enough that $2800 is not a whole
lot more than minimum wage level in the US.

~~~
chiph
But the employer will say: "Now that they're getting the $2800, I can cut
wages and keep more for myself."

~~~
rbehrends
And that's perfectly fine. It's not like the employee would starve. You'd
still have to pay enough so that working for you is worthwhile (because people
aren't forced to work or starve). Employees would have the genuine bargaining
power of a free agent, because employment would no longer be an existential
need.

Also, it would be much easier to become self-employed or become an employer
yourself; not only is the risk of failure lower, but your payroll expenses
would shrink enormously. If there were a basic income, I'd have started my own
company long ago (or at least tried).

Note also that "keeping more to yourself" is modulo the higher and more
progressive taxes you'd need to finance a basic income.

The big question is rather: would enough people still have an incentive to
work? It depends, I think, on how close to the subsistence level such a basic
income would be.

~~~
chiph
_incentive to work_

That's my other concern. $2800 a month isn't enough for me personally to be
able to stay home and play video games all month, but it might be for a fair
number of people. And they wouldn't be contributing much to the economy (other
than to the makers of Cheetos snacks.)

~~~
Raphmedia
Here in Québec, we have "social help" where the government gives you money if
you cannot work, etc.

A lot of people I know abuse of this. Pay the rent with the social help, then
get money "under the table". A lot of people abuse of it, but I still think
it's worth it. I work hard, but I know that if all else fail, I won't be stuck
in the street.

It's also not a perfect solution. There are still homeless people (who are
often too ill to be able to ask for the social help, or don't have a permanent
address to sent it to). You can't live very well in Montreal with it alone,
but you can manage to get somewhere to live, especially if you have "sidejob".
Otherwise, there are HLM (French for "housing at moderated rents") where the
rent is actually based on your income. You can live for $350 - $900 / month in
a three room apartment in those. Especially if you live around the island on
Montreal and not on it.

People who use this service are frowned upon. They call them "BS" (Guess you
would call them SH in english, for "Social help"). The stereotype is that they
all abuse the system, take your hard earned money and live in a big appartment
with the latest computer, drink all day (no work!) and do drugs. People fail
to see that computers are not as expensive as they were before.

I actually grew up in that world. The abusers were a minority. A large, noisy
minority, but a minority nonetheless.

------
ianb
One way a country could get to this would also be revenue-neutral taxes. A
revenue-neutral carbon tax, for instance – a lot of taxes would be collected,
on the theory of limiting output, or maybe you could use the theory that you
were charging for access to the environmental load, which is a public resource
held equally by all people. To make it revenue neutral then you have to return
that tax money to people. You could cut taxes or put it some bullshit "lock
box" but that's nonsense thinking. IMHO the only reasonable way to keep it
truly revenue neutral is to directly funnel the money back to individuals. A
basic income would be the result.

People freak out that a carbon tax would be regressive, and it would, but the
return would be so progressive that it would more than undo that.

In general I think this kind of theory should be applied to more use taxes –
places where ostensibly a tax supports something like roads, making a system
self-supporting. But the use taxes only address a small part of the cost of
roads, they don't consider the opportunity cost of using land for roads and
they don't address the negative externalities. A use tax that included all of
that, and returned some portion to people, would be a fairer tax. In that
context something like congestion pricing would be fair in a way that it isn't
currently.

------
SubZero
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't Star Trek style economics no economics? I
seem to remember a distinguished bald captain talking about how society has
moved past the need for money.

~~~
hebz0rl
Economics is not money. Its about how to allocate the limited resources in the
most efficient way. Money is just a tool used for example in capitalism.

~~~
dcc1
When you have technologies like replication and warp drives and your
federation is off colonising multiple planets in an area 8000 light years wide
your civilisation is not worried about limited resources

interestingly enough in star trek they still have constraints on things like
dilithium, and of course wars are waged over territories

~~~
davidw
You're always going to have things that are scarce. They might not be the
things that are scarce today, but not everyone can have everything.

~~~
VladRussian2
>You're always going to have things that are scarce. They might not be the
things that are scarce today, but not everyone can have everything.

you forgot the Continuum - they have no scarcity at all, so no economics (yet,
surprise!, they still have politics)

------
jcromartie
What's truly remarkable about this is the simplicity of it compared to
virtually every other welfare program in existence.

------
donquichotte
"Social scientists have argued that American hatred for “welfare” is racially
coded, and that historic support for stronger social programs in Europe has
been tied in part to ethnic homogeneity and lower immigration."

Interestingly enough, this is not true for Switzerland. In some cantons, up to
60 percent of the inhabitants have a migration background. (i.e. they or their
parents were born abroad) [1]

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_Switzerland#Popu...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_Switzerland#Population_of_immigrant_background)

~~~
drone
To be fair, if you speak about racism in America, it's not based on
nationality, but on well, race... The data for Switzerland is not categorized
by race in that document, and I can tell from the list of source countries,
the vast majority of those immigrants would be considered "white" \- it's
pretty rare to see discrimination based on country of origin between white
people these days.

I think therein lies the disparity I see a lot in talking about "diversity"
between some Europeans and some Americans: here, we generally view diversity
as a plurality of races, whereas it seems (to me) in Europe it is seen as a
plurality of ethnic groups.

[EDIT: What deserves a down-vote here? Does racism not differ from ethno-
centrism? Can we not have a reasonable discussion on the point of the person I
am responding to? He points out that welfare has nothing do with racism in
Switzerland, because they're so well integrated with other races, yet does not
provide any evidence to that point. My statement was clear, not argumentative,
and as far as I can tell completely non-combative. If you disagree with my
statements, then please tell me why, so we can have a discussion.]

------
mathattack
I get the "This removes marginal disincentives to work" argument, but who pays
for this? 30K per family in payments requires 30K per family in taxes.

Lets say the US has 100mm families. 30K per family is $3 trillion.

What do we stop doing to find that kind of money?

~~~
netfire
It seems like a system like this would be designed to replace Social Security,
Medicare, Disability, Food stamps, WIC and other benefits paid to those who
are poor, disabled or not working (which would be well over a trillion dollars
-- see
[http://www.usaspending.gov/explore](http://www.usaspending.gov/explore)). I'd
imagine you'd also remove the standard deductible and other deductions and
exemptions for taxes and possibly move to a flat tax bracket that wouldn't
discourage people from earning more money or working in general. The question
is, how much more money would that bring in, if any?

Also, if you just give people money, will they really spend it on basic
necessities or spend it unwisely? Seems like it would work better if the money
were given as housing, food, and healthcare insurance vouchers that could only
be used for those purposes.

It will be interesting to see if/how this works out Switzerland.

~~~
axus
vouchers aren't fungible and then you need to pay for the whole system of
authenticating/converting them. I don't have a problem with people spending
unwisely; they will starve to death and stop collecting payments, right?

~~~
greedo
But you know that the groups that are continually pushing for expanded minimum
wages, and other benefits would never let this happen. They'd find some
paternalistic way of controlling the money, providing housing etc. And we have
the last fifty years of The Great Society to show how well that works in
fighting poverty.

------
refurb
What do you do about local differences in cost of living? $1K/mo will get you
pretty far in a lot of the US, but it won't even cover rent in SF.

So now you have to come up with a system to calculate the COL differential
between regions. You also have to come up with an enforcement mechanism to
prevent people from saying they live in SF when they really live in a small-
town.

Sounds like you'd only reduce overhead by a little.

~~~
DavidAdams
This problem solves itself. Poor people move to cities because of limited
economic opportunity where they live. You can make more money, but the cost of
living rises in proportion. If you make 28K no matter where you live, then it
makes sense for a lot of people to optimize by staying in or moving to places
with a low cost of living. Maybe a lot of them will watch TV all day, but at
least they'll be fixing up an old house so they have a decent place to live,
and contributing to their community.

You absolutely don't give people more money who live in more expensive areas.
Actually, by allowing people who don't really want to live in the Bay Area to
move someplace cheaper and simultaneously increase their standard of living,
you'd actually end up reducing price pressure in overheated real estate
markets like SF, and propping it up in super-cheap areas like Detroit.

~~~
refurb
Then you have the issue of paying for it! What would you have to pay in order
to give someone a basic standard of living in SF? $24K might fly for a young
single person, but what about the single mom with four kids? That would be
more like $50K.

So you just pay every person in the US more than the average income?

~~~
pessimizer
>You absolutely don't give people more money who live in more expensive areas

~~~
refurb
So then you tell all the low incomes folks in SF "good luck"?

They are already getting more than the supposed guaranteed income and still
there is a backlash about "kicking out the poor people".

Sounds like a recipe for social unrest.

------
tokenadult
It will be interesting to see what happens if Switzerland tries out this
policy. Thus far there hasn't been much mention in this thread of an author
who has written a whole book about how a basic guaranteed income policy might
work in the United States. Charles Murray's book _In Our Hands: A Plan to
Replace the Welfare State,_

[http://www.amazon.com/books/dp/0844742236](http://www.amazon.com/books/dp/0844742236)

goes into detail about how much a program of guaranteed income for everyone
would cost in the United States, and suggests some probable effects that would
have on everyone's everyday behavior. I read the book a year or two after it
was published.

Murray's own summary of his argument

[http://www.irp.wisc.edu/publications/focus/pdfs/foc242a.pdf](http://www.irp.wisc.edu/publications/focus/pdfs/foc242a.pdf)

and reviews of his book

[http://www.aei.org/article/society-and-culture/poverty/in-
ou...](http://www.aei.org/article/society-and-culture/poverty/in-our-hands-a-
plan-to-replace-the-welfare-state-article/)

[http://www.conallboyle.com/BasicIncomeNewEcon/MurrayReview.p...](http://www.conallboyle.com/BasicIncomeNewEcon/MurrayReview.pdf)

[http://www.richmondfed.org/publications/research/region_focu...](http://www.richmondfed.org/publications/research/region_focus/2006/fall/pdf/book_review.pdf)

[http://mises.org/misesreview_detail.aspx?control=296](http://mises.org/misesreview_detail.aspx?control=296)

may inform the discussion here. The policy proposal of a basic income
guarantee is interesting because

a) no country has ever tried it, really, so there isn't a real-world
experience case to look at yet,

and

b) a remarkable variety of people from otherwise differing points of view have
proposed it over the years.

I'm still trying to make up my mind how the trade-offs of a policy like a
basic guaranteed income nationwide would compare to the trade-offs of
"targeted" social welfare programs for elderly, disabled, and poor.

~~~
pekk
Why are your links focusing on the right-wing perspective on these ideas
(Charles Murray of Bell Curve fame, von Mises institute)?

~~~
tokenadult
What authors would you recommend who have studied the issue in depth?

------
vfclists
How has the minds of otherwise intelligent Americans been hijacked by the main
stream media and their 'conserative/christian' social conditioning?

Money is simply an abstraction used to further the production and exchange of
material resources. Yet Americans seem hostile to any form of Social Security
- which simply means printing money and distributing to be used to share
production and resources equitably, rather than channeling it into expensive
military procurement and genocidal foreign adventures. Do they know that the
money is printed by private institutions who charge interest on the money they
print, virtually out of thin air, or computer storage (whichever you prefer?),
pauperizing future generations even more?

------
tryggvib
Not adding anything to this discussion but by the looks of it, the Icelandic
government was trying to imitate this stunt but misunderstood the "Start Trek"
in "Star Trek" economics.

Here's a picture of the Icelandic prime minister and the Icelandic minister of
finance as Kirk and Spock (this is a real thing they did as part of an auction
for cancer awareness):

[http://www.icelandreview.com/icelandreview/upload/images/new...](http://www.icelandreview.com/icelandreview/upload/images/news/almennt/sigmundur_and_bjarni_pink_october_2013_auction_ari_magg.jpg)

------
schtev
Okay. So I think we can all agree that public bathrooms need to be cleaned
regularly. Its a shitty job (pun intended), but it needs to be done.

In a GBI system, where's the incentive for anyone to do this?

~~~
bencoder
I'm a bit late, but I think a GBI provides MORE incentive for these kinds of
jobs

At the moment, there's no way you could afford to live just from cleaning for
1 or 2 hours a day like many places require. But with a GBI, many more people
would be available for occasional work like this, and the costs could be lower
(no minimum wage).

------
Shivetya
The idea is interesting, why not use it to replace the myriad of benefits
programs that exist? I would bet that most large governments have so many aid
programs they truly cannot be sure of whom is getting what let alone if the
who is supposed to.

A basic income strategy can roll up most if not all of these programs into ONE
government program. The reduction in programs, persons, and the places for
them to work, would all be applied to the program increasing the savings.

The trick is to not let politicians play with it.

------
devx
I'm all for a "Star Trek economy", but I think that implies having very low
costs on stuff, too, such as replicated food that barely costs anything more
than the atoms needed to create it (energy to make it would be
free/renewable).

But from what I hear prices in Switzerland are very high, and while I'm
interested to see how this experiment will play out, I fear they will get even
higher because of it, which could make the whole minimum wage raise pointless.

~~~
userulluipeste
Oh, they can always print more money, and considering how much international
money is held in their currency...

------
the_watcher
I am generally pretty opposed to things like this, but in this case, I'm
fascinated by this. If this actually happens, we'll actually get to see what
happens when you guarantee people enough money to not need to work. How many
people will just take the money? We'll actually have a data point on whether
the incentive to survive is more important to a productive labor force than
the incentive to get more.

------
ck2
Aren't prices going to rise to what maximum people can afford?

If they do not control prices, rent will go up because profit can be made,
food, clothes, etc.

------
fthssht
It's funny because I think what the author fears in this proposal would be
ideal. Guaranteed income replaces the welfare system with all its inequities,
inefficiencies and bad incentives. Next you just need to replace the income
tax with a natural resource /land tax. Then you have an ideal geolibertarian
government.

------
plink
I don't reckon we here in the U.S. would ever cotton to such a pro-shiftless
social policy. Smacks of intellectualism to me. Even of Communism, and you
know down what slippery path that "ism" can lead: It was Joe Stalin's money
what gave us the Cato Institute.

------
wr1472
I'm not an economist, but in simplistic terms if everyone was guaranteed X
amount of income, wouldn't the price of everything go up by X amount -
inflation?

How about making things like, food, clothing, healthcare, education, housing -
basic human rights - universal for all instead?

------
otikik
Sadly, I think this will just raise inflation a lot.

If this passes, I would not be surprised that 1 kg of rice in the supermarket
suddenly starts costing $100. The reasoning being: "hey, all my customers now
have much more money than before, I can charge more for the same wares".

~~~
phaemon
What a superb opportunity! You can just set up a rice importing business and
sell rice at $50 per kilo. You'll make a fortune undercutting all the
supermarkets!

------
aluhut
Life cost in Switzerland is pretty high. Food prices are so high that people
tend to drive to Germany for their weekly shopping for excample.

I'm not sure how much the 2800$ would really be in the end.

------
tpurves
This would be an interesting substitute for both basic personal income tax
deductions, welfare, EI and disability programs. Think of how much government
complexity could be streamlined.

------
atmosx
Reading this comments, one can see the huge political and social perspective
between Americans (USA) and Europeans, which is very intriguing - especially
reading the arguments.

------
stretchwithme
We'll find out soon enough for sure, but I doubt this thing will pass.

------
Keyframe
if everyone has base income added to their income (or as a sole income),
wouldn't that raise the prices all around since people will have more money to
spend?

~~~
protomyth
That's the part I don't get. I can see doing a scaled, minimum income (payed
nightly perhaps), but I'm not really sure about the whole basic income.

I get the feeling the cost savings of removing other programs would add up.

~~~
drone
Indeed, I can't tell how inflation doesn't happen either - some people said
above it wouldn't happen unless the government prints money, but that seems to
be a very limited view of how inflation happens.

Obviously, if some people have more money than they had before - they have
more buying power, and with more competition amongst buyers to purchase
limited products, the prices of those products must rise. Added to this, the
concept being thrown about that almost no one would work a low-paying job in
such a system, you could consider a lot of your less expensive
products/services to simply disappear. Meaning you get a double-edged sword on
inflation: cheap production diminishes, and increased competition for more
expensive products.

I'm sure there are a thousand economists and theorists who would like to say
that's completely wrong, but I'd like to see it play out, and see where this
goes. (Not that I agree that it would solve the problems people refer to: what
happens when a mother spends her money poorly? We'll still say we have to bail
the kids out, because they didn't have a choice. Other social welfare programs
may shrink, but they won't go away for so long as we assume a duty to others,
and accept that others won't always behave dutifully.)

------
ffrryuu
Print money to fund startups. It's the future.

------
walshemj
dont forget that Switzerland has a high cost of living and presumably its
making the system "fairer" in that its not as discriminatory to childless
single people.

