Jun 5, 2013

The Swiss people will get to vote on an unconditional basic income

Will Switzerland trigger the basic income revolution?: by Stanislas Jourdan  (June 2013)

Will the basic income revolution come from Switzerland?


“Now they take us seriously”
“Since we reached the quotum of 100k signatures, the media regards us differently” observes Anne-Béatrice Duparc, member of the committee of the BIEN-CH. As an illustration, the leftist newspaper ‘Le Courrier’ headlined last week was: “The Basic income has emerged in the debate” 
“Now they take us seriously” Anna-Béatrice says, “all the Swiss now have the opportunity to think about the fact that the right to existence should not necessarily be linked to a work position. In itself, this is a victory for us” she concludes.

This is an article about the Swiss effort at an unconditional basic income. It looks like the people of Switzerland will get to vote on this fantastic idea (unless invalid signatures bring down the number of signatures below 100,000)


Alaska has a partial citizen-ownership democracy, with substantial payments to every resident every year (about $1000 to $2000).
Mongolia has a partial citizen-ownership democracy, with small payments to citizens.
These are countries with citizen dividend written into their laws and implemented.

There are countries that distribute cash yearly or every few years, but which do not have explicit laws about it. These include Malaysia, Macau, Venezuela, Hong Kong and Singapore.

This Swiss proposal is a lot more substantial: 2500 Swiss Franc per month for adults and less for children.

(The referendum will be in 2014 or later.)

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