I recently left the following comment on Facebook, regarding an argument by the NZZ against the initiative for basic income in Switzerland.
I’m still waiting for the future Keynes promised. Where is my 8h work week? More to the point: If we want to do anything about climate change, the economy will have to slow down. I don’t see how we can keep manufacturing and building things at the current pace. That means existing economy will shrink as less people will be able to manufacture all the things we need. All the rest cannot be musicians and dancers and painters (and look at how little most of them make). So we can call it the service industry and return to a feudal systems of master and servants that are happy to work for food and lodging, or … something.
For the moment, basic income seems like a feasible option. The alternative would be starting at the other end: increases taxes, provide more public services for free. So now we’ll try to get basic income and have to pay for it by … increasing taxes. I don’t like to increase VAT, but an energy tax makes sense to me. Specially as oil prices are down, right now. Climate change again: how will we reduce our consumption if we don’t make it significantly more expensive? Thus, I think we need to go there, and we need to find more money, and the initiative could push us.
In terms of election tactics, I’d say that the NZZ is pushing its right-wing agenda because the initiative itself doesn’t say how we will finance it. Let parliament decide once we have it in our constitution. “Das Gesetz regelt insbesondere die Finanzierung und die Höhe des Grundeinkommens.” ¹ An initiative should not specify a new law. ² It specifies an intent. Remember the Mutterschaftsversicherung was added to the constitution in 1945 and the law actually implementing it was passed in 2004. ³ Dismissing the initiative because we don’t know what taxes to raise in order to pay for it is not how this system needs to work. But it’s a good argument for the initiative’s opponents, granted.
Then again, I don’t actually think the Swiss is socialist enough to vote for the initiative no matter what. Sadly.
#Switzerland