Swiss Set to Vote on “Unqualified Basic Income” for All Citizens

Posted on Sunday, October 6, 2013 by Post Scripts

Posted by Tina

It looks like the Swiss people have made a left turn. Either that or the socialists among them have just managed to talk a bit louder for now. The government will soon have the opportunity to vote on a referendum brought by the people that would guarantee all citizens an unconditional $2500 Swiss Francs ($2800 dollars) per month as a way to address “pay inequality”. Tapping social insurance funds was one suggested way to “pay for” the free money. This bit of folly follows legislation voters supported in March to force public company shareholders into a binding vote on executive pay. Another popular vote will occur later this year on something called the 1:12 initiative. It would limit monthly executive pay to no more than what a company’s lowest-paid staff earns in a year. The people backing these initiative must think that if they control what people earn at the top and the bottom all will be well. Man are they in for a big surprise.

I don’t know much about the Swiss. An article in a publication called National Affairs indicates the Swiss have heretofore offered a safety net through compulsory insurance but they are also tough on those receiving help. Their policies include measures that encourage rehab and self-sufficiency:

Unlike the major European welfare states, the Swiss federal government defers in much greater measure to local autonomy. But in one critical respect it has achieved what the United States and European nations traditionally defined as welfare states have not: It has all but eliminated “welfare dependency,” or intergenerational poverty, and it has done this in a strikingly different manner than other developed societies.

According to the Ralph Segalman of National Affairs, the Swiss approach to poverty streams from two questions:

What needs to be done to change the situation so that the problems will be alleviated rather than suppressed? What can be done to resolve the poverty problem, in a way that does not itself bring about unintended and counterproductive results?

Ah yes, unintended consequences. If only LBJ had thought of that when he thunk up his Great Society anti-poverty legislation. Human nature being what it is, most people will take the easy way out if it’s offered. In America we have seen the unintended (?) outcome of an imagined free lunch. The poverty level remains with some recipients forth or fifth generation.

I can’t imagine that years from now the Swiss people will be highly motivated to work harder or longer hours, or to risk their savings or potential wealth, to create a business in an atmosphere where compensation is limited. I also can’t imagine anyone trying too hard to better their circumstances if they can do the bare minimum and be guaranteed $2500 Francs a month. Nations that indulge this thinking end up with a failing economy and a lot of addicted citizens living in self indulged gratification but never experiencing real satisfaction or upward mobility…a condition that leads to despair and malaise. In the old Soviet Union an anonymous citizen is said to have said, “They pretend to pay us and we pretend to work.”

Humans never seem able to pass along the lessons of history to newer generations. Learning the hard way must be hard wired into the DNA.

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2 Responses to Swiss Set to Vote on “Unqualified Basic Income” for All Citizens

  1. Chris says:
    Sunday, October 6, 2013 at 3:39 pm

    Tina: “If only LBJ had thought of that when he thunk up his Great Society anti-poverty legislation…The poverty level remains…”

    In actuality, the enactment of the first Great Society programs in 1964 led to a rapid decrease in poverty, and the poverty rate was cut nearly in half. Since then, the poverty level has remained relatively stable, but it has never gone back up to pre-LBJ highs.

    http://www.shmoop.com/1960s/economy.html

    I don’t know if I support a guaranteed national income. I know MLK Jr. did. $2,800 a month seems like an awful lot, though.

  2. Tina says:
    Sunday, October 6, 2013 at 10:48 pm

    The goal of the Great Society plan has not been realized. The goal was ending poverty. No matter how much money we throw at it people in America remain poor, not just in wealth but in spirit, and urge, and self-respect. High school drop out rates are high, prisons are full, single motherhood is up, kids are left to raise themselves. The cycle of poverty continues.

    A Clinton era report from CATO gives some stats to consider. The stats may have changed some but the exact amount doesn’t matter…the result does and it hasn’t gotten better:

    The United States has spent $9 trillion (in current dollars) on welfare programs since President Johnson launched the War on Poverty in 1965. Critics have challenged this figure, saying it includes more than welfare alone. It does include more than Aid to Families with Dependent Children, now known (hopefully) as Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF); it also includes food stamps; Medicaid; the Special Supplemental Food Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC); utilities assistance under the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP); housing assistance under a variety of programs, including public housing and Section 8 Rental Assistance; and the free commodities program. Clearly, those are all transfer programs for the poor.

    I submit that if that money, in fact a fraction of that money, had been truly targeted to lift people from poverty within a generation or so poverty would virtually have been eliminated.

    But Johnson’s plan, indeed the plan adopted and pushed by the radicals that took control of the Democrat Party, was to increase dependency on government.

    A reasonable person might notice that a war that simply distributes money year after year and doesn’t “teach men to fish” is no war at all. It is a plan designed to keep people grateful and needy.

    More from CATO:

    In 1960, just before the Great Society’s dramatic increases in welfare programs, the out-of-wedlock birth rate in the United States was 5 percent. After 30 years of rising welfare benefits, the rate was 32 percent; young women had come to see the welfare office, not a husband, as the best provider. Welfare created a cycle of illegitimacy, fatherlessness, crime, more illegitimacy, and more welfare.

    If anything these conditions are worse today. It’s long past time to take a different approach.

    “but it has never gone back up to pre-LBJ highs.

    What has changed is the way we measure poverty according to Tim Warstall, Forbes:

    The US is now spending a great deal more on poverty alleviation (after inflation of course) than it used to but by the official measurement of poverty pretty much nothing seems to have changed.

    The reason for this is that we don’t actually count benefits in kind or aid through the tax system in our definition of poverty: although we do count just giving poor people cash money. The upshot of this is that in the old days what the poverty line was really measuring is the number of people who were poor after the things we did to reduce poverty. Today that same poverty line is measuring the number of people who are poor before all the things we do to reduce poverty.

    It’s worth noting that the four major poverty reduction programs are Medicaid, SNAP, EITC and Section 8 vouchers. And we include none of them, not one single groat of that money spent, in our current estimates of poverty.

    Poverty of spirit is still quite rampant; some would say worse. In the old days a poor person still wanted to provide for himself and his family. Attitudes today have shifted dramatically to entitlement and that doesn’t bode well for the future

    I know we talk about money a lot and the incredible waste. But the motivation behind the concern about money is the desire to see more people living the life they dreamed about as a kid…providing for themselves and experiencing the joy in that…being a contributor rather than a taker. I want to see more people living responsible, productive, happy lives…I consider the wasted money (and time) as criminal. Who would continue to do the same things while not noticing the damage all around them?

    This problem involves more than money and government programs. We are experiencing a crisis of the human spirit. Ben Stein said, “It is inevitable that some defeat will enter even the most victorious life. The human spirit is never finished when it is defeated… it is finished when it surrenders.”

    More and bigger government dependency programs just feed the inevitable…total surrender of the human spirit.

    I love people; I cannot support such plans.

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