Basic income plan clearly rejected by Swiss voters

Switzerland is the only country in the world that implements direct democracy. You can really feel the difference to the rest of Europe. Swiss more often than not stand behind decisions made by their government. When talking about their politicians, the Swiss say &quot;WE decided that ...&quot; whereas e.g., Germans say: &quot;THEY decided that ...&quot;<p>If you look for a coding job in Europe, Zurich is a great place to live and is the only place where net-salaries are on par with the Bay Area: You can expect to get 7000 - 12000 CHF &#x2F; month after taxes. If you are from the EU and thinking to move, you find my email address in my Hacknews profile. Also you can read here why I moved to Switzerland to work in IT: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;@iwaninzurich&#x2F;eight-reasons-why-i-moved-to-switzerland-to-work-in-it-c7ac18af4f90#.fnug055jh" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;@iwaninzurich&#x2F;eight-reasons-why-i-moved-t...</a>

Coming from Switzerland, this is not at all surprising. No one expected this initiative to pass. It was really more of an attempt to get a conversation started, and it&#x27;s succeeded in that.<p>As a (tentative) supporter of basic income, I&#x27;m already quite happy that something like a fifth to a quarter of voters went for it.

One of the reasons why it was rejected, is because the supporters were slightly too idealistic. The elephant in the room is obviously, who would be eligible for the BI.<p>Most of the supporters and some of the initiators of the initiative, that I&#x27;ve spoken with, were strongly for a idealistic implementation, meaning everybody physically located in Switzerland would be eligible. While the number one argument against a BI was that exactly this absolute unconditionality would be a recipe for a disaster, especially given the current migration situation in the EU.<p>The Swiss are notoriously risk averse, so any proposal that does not take into account any possible side effects, usually gets rejected with a margin just like this one.<p>To have a realistic chance of acceptance, I think the &#x27;unconditional&#x27; needs to be dropped. Add a conditional on citizenship, flesh out the financing some more and just try again. The problem here is that a &quot;national basic income&quot; instantly catapults you politically very far right, even though it&#x27;s a very leftist position.

I think this is a nice demonstration of how well direct democracy can work.<p>The argument against direct democracy (referendums on any subject any sizeable group wants to put on vote) is that people will be economically irresponsible and vote themselves popular, expensive goodies with no regards of financing or cost.<p>This shows otherwise.

I wish I would live in a country where essential political decisions like that are made by the people and not by some professional political elite in a far away capital.

I got up early this morning because I&#x27;d missed the date to vote by post. Somehow it feels like your vote matters more when you go cast it in person :-)<p>20% is not a bad result, I think they expected around 15%. A lot of people would&#x27;ve gone &quot;Fuuuuuuu I voted for that&quot; if it&#x27;d been accepted.

As technology advances, I would assume that work will become more scarce. Taking this scenario to the extreme will mean that the majority of the world will at some point will be unemployed in the future. Some form of basic income will result.

I found it funny how most major news outlets made a big deal of this<p>Yeah, there&#x27;s your answer. It seems the Swiss are conservative with how they spend their money

Offical now, cantonal majority cannot be reached (12 no, 11 to go) <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.swissinfo.ch&#x2F;eng&#x2F;results-votes-june-5th-2016-in-switzerland&#x2F;42153620" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.swissinfo.ch&#x2F;eng&#x2F;results-votes-june-5th-2016-in-s...</a>

Taking a long-term view, 23% in favor is strong progress for an idea that was once considered outrageous.<p>Let&#x27;s see the trend in future referendums. You could argue that basic income may be impractical today. But over the next 10, 20, 30 years, the world will change dramatically.

It&#x27;s an interesting idea, but I don&#x27;t think the time is right just yet for basic income. When AI is to the point that most skilled jobs can be automated and humans don&#x27;t really need to work, then we can start giving people money.

Change the title? It&#x27;s misleading to imply the results are final.

Good thing for the majority to reject this ridiculous idea. There is no such thing as a free dinner.

It&#x27;s too early to say that. The urban cantons did not finish counting, especially Zurich, Basel, Bern and Geneva. I&#x27;d expect that there will be 30% yes votes, but of course there are always surprises.

Wisdom of the Crowd <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Wisdom_of_the_crowd#Problems" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Wisdom_of_the_crowd#Problems</a>

Let me start by saying this is one of the most important topics to discuss.<p>I would argue that UBI itself will have unexpectingly positive effect on productivity by removing the bias causing people to justify unnecessary work because they need to make a living. This will give individuals the confidence to take the time and pursue further more value for society. There will always be laziness, of-course, but we try to achieve freedom for a change.

It seems like the submitter meant to link to the &quot;story&quot; of the same title (<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.swissinfo.ch&#x2F;directdemocracy&#x2F;vote-june-6_basic-income-plan-awaits-voters-verdict&#x2F;42200378" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.swissinfo.ch&#x2F;directdemocracy&#x2F;vote-june-6_basic-in...</a>) rather than editorializing a voting results page.

It seems like a lot of modern politics is not &quot;we should have more&quot; but instead &quot;you guys should have less&quot;. I think the election result is an outcome of more and more people thinking along the latter lines.<p>To bad. Would have been fun watching Switzerland try something new.

This was a proposal long on rhetoric and short on concrete action steps. Future referendums that are more substantive may be treated differently by voters.

Wonder what majority Swiss will say if they want to pay taxes or not?

Would a UBI potentially hurts switzerland main businesses?

Is this d3.js?

Why is Basic Income such a popular topic on Hacker News?

Die, basic income.<p>Of course, leftist supporters of democracy will say this does not count and wasn&#x27;t &quot;democratic&quot;.

Not happy with the headline. They voted no for an &quot;unconditional&quot; basic income. I think that is a huge difference, especially when a majority of the voters also want immigration reform.

It is premature but inevitable: automation, stagnant growth, migrations and deflation are all pushing towards universal basic income. Not 2k euros&#x2F;month but enough to allow surviving and decency.

But the swiss have guaranteed health care right?<p>I&#x27;d like to see the USA get basic healthcare guarantee someday.<p>If you are a human being, you get $2000 per year in healthcare regardless of proof of income, etc. Just being a human being in need.<p>I hope the Bernie Sanders movement now focuses on the 26 states that are preventing health insurance for millions of people instead of trying to change the USA from the top down.