Basic income in Switzerland?

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Basic income in Switzerland?

Poor or billionaire: Switzerland prepares for a vote on an unconditional basic income for all citizens. Here are the Pro and con arguments – and why the Referendum is likely to fail.

Whether you work or not, could be in Switzerland sometime in the near future no longer be a Problem. On 5. June go the citizens at the ballot box in a Referendum on an unconditional basic income to decide.

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The idea is not entirely new. “The solution to poverty is to abolish, is a guaranteed income”, said Martin Luther King jr.. In the year 1967 also had the Austrian Economist Friedrich August von Hayek, the idea of “a certain minimum income for all who are unable to care for themselves”.

In Switzerland, the grip of the Economist and psychologist Daniel Straub the topic. In 2012 he published, together with the author Christian Müller the book “The liberation of Switzerland. About the unconditional basic income”.

Utopia or vision of the future?

“That would be a paradigm shift. The unconditional basic income gives everyone the basis for a fulfilling life,” argues Daniel Straub. The President of the Swiss Initiative, which previously was working at IBM is convinced that people people means more productivity and creativity would develop. The people, the pressure would be taken, to get through the rounds, so Straub.

Daniel Straub continues in the future to an unconditional basic income in Switzerland

Part of the June Referendum is positive, Straub, compared with the German wave, there would be a constitutional amendment. The Initiative provides for a 2,500 Swiss francs as income to pay. The equivalent of this would be 2.250 Euro or 2.442 U.S. dollars.

The Swiss government and all the parties of the country rejected the Initiative. They criticize that the idea is harmful, dangerous, and not to Finance. To consider are also the risks of immigration, raising taxes for the financing, and the loss of products and services, when many people not for the work were ready, as their livelihood no longer would be required to earn.

In a survey by pollsters gave the vast majority of Swiss citizens that, in spite of the basic income further would work. Only two percent answered no. 54 percent of respondents said that the additional income they would use to further their education. As many would have more time to spend with family.

Long-Term Project

For seven years preparing the Initiative on the Referendum. Straub, can take his critics to a certain degree, even understand. Ten years ago, would have also he said, the Initiativei not Finance.

“We see the whole rather than long term project. The vote is only a step,” explains Straub. He is confident. For him, it’s the use for a basic income “is a political process, the many years it takes. All voices must be heard, this is the only way it is really democratic.”

To make its position clear to clarify, describes Straub a panel discussion in which a young man the critics were asked of their Vision for the future, to outline and explain how the loss of jobs by the fourth industrial Revolution would react. The answer was Silence.

“It is not a Revolution, we the current System want to abolish. The market economy has many advantages,” says Daniel Straub. But it was time to adapt the System to develop and to take the next step.