Addressing your last point first...
That said however, I am in favor of a toned down version of it. A certain income from the government to the unemployed citizens is absolutely necessary while they are searching for a job, as unemployment is definitely not a choice for most people.
We do have social services that pay compensations under certain criteria, financed through a percentage of your salary to obligatory insurances. You need to prove your efforts of trying to find a job, or prove your medical condition that prevents you from working. It works well, though it's not without certain issues, like how some persons can feel stigmatized, or problems of abuse. The initiative gets rid of those procedures altogether.
Is it taxing? If so, doesn't that basically mean that whatever money average citizens are paying is simply returned to them?
Will it be based on a more complicated taxing system that charges the people based on their wealth? If so isn't that basically forcing a purely financial kind of charity?
There are two proposed means of funding the UBI:
- One idea is to use the money from the services that would become obsolete under the new legislation (you don't need to pay unemployment compensations when everyone receives a basic income, for example).
- The other idea is to basically restructure the way salaries work. This is what the initiative proposes: everyone gets the base amount, 2500CHF per adult and 625CHF per child (keep in mind the final amount is not fixed and will be decided by the councils), unconditionally. People who currently earn more than that amount also get the difference between the UBI and their old salary. Example: say you currently earn 6000CHF, you would therefore get 3500CHF directly from the employer and 2500CHF from the state - sum which the employer pays to the common fund used to redistribute the UBI. All thing considered, you earn as much cash as you used to.
Basically, the initiative aims at redistributing the money slightly more evenly by restructuring the system. The big issue is that we would still need some additional funding. According to the calculations of the government, roughly 84% of the basic income could be financed by the two points mentioned above. That still leaves a considerable cleft to be financed by other means, which is why the government does not support the initiative as it might mean less money for sectors like education, military etc. But a bit of fine-tuning and creative solutions might help closing that gap.
The second issue I see with this (though it is of course related to the first, being financial in nature as well) is the global debt.
I'm not sure to understand your point. We would not increase our debt; if anything, we pay more taxes, or have to cut some expenses.
Finally, it seems to be making things...easy, in a way. Don't get me wrong, I like the idea and the initiative, it shows a lot and is admirable from an ethical point of view. But, really, 2500$ a month for everyone (to talk with the numbers I've seen), isn't it a lot? My key talking point about this is the word 'everyone'. That means even unemployed people. And that amount sounds (I don't know about costs in Switzerland, so this is just speculation) more than enough to live comfortably even without working. This is not encouraging anyone to be more productive. And while normally I would disagree with the alternative policy (which is technically blackmailing people by asserting control on salaries in order to push productivity up to the limit), in a system like Capitalism, the cycle for the working class is this. In simple terms, you work, you get paid. You offer to the system to be rewarded. So, my point is that this idea doesn't really seem feasible without even bigger changes in the system.
2500CHF is enough to live more or less decently without working, at least depending on where you live. Though you need to define 'live'. According to
this website, in 2010 the median salary, all factors considered, was around 6000CHF. Poverty level was apparently considered to be salaries of 2300CHF or less. So while you can easily live with 2500CHF, as soon as you want to keep a certain living standard you will be motivated to work.
Though again, the actual amount is open. It's more the principle that I'm interested in.
There are several long term arguments in favour of the idea, though. One being that, as indicated by previous experiments, it is likely to reduce working hours and increase employment rates. More people work, and they work less; meaning also less work-related health issues, for instance.
Also, it is preparing our society to the automating of various work areas that is bound to increase in the future. Some people are afraid to lose their job to a robot. You don't really have that problem with a basic income, unless you really love your job.
A claim the initiative committee also makes is that there will be more voluntary help, since you already get money. This might counterbalance those that stop working simply because they can. Certain areas might face personnel issues, others might gain a lot. It is very difficult to predict and I can see why it is risky, but I think it will ultimately be worth it.
