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Switzerland's voters reject basic income plan

Discussion in 'Alley of Dangerous Angles' started by Taluntain, Jun 6, 2016.

  1. Taluntain

    Taluntain Resident Alpha and Omega Staff Member ★ SPS Account Holder Resourceful Adored Veteran Pillars of Eternity SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!) New Server Contributor [2012] (for helping Sorcerer's Place lease a new, more powerful server!) Torment: Tides of Numenera SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!) BoM XenForo Migration Contributor [2015] (for helping support the migration to new forum software!)

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    The problem with the basic income trials so far is that limited and temporary implementation will not necessarily yield the results that nation-wide long-term implementation would. People react differently under different circumstances. I don't necessarily disagree with you, just saying that until the implementation is "for real", limited trials are hardly any better than guesswork as far as I'm concerned.
     
  2. ConjurerDragon

    ConjurerDragon Ich dien ★ SPS Account Holder Veteran

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    You mean like noone ever implemented communism right and it should be tried again and again until someone actually does it "for real" in the right way, because then it would be an utopia? :deadhorse:
     
  3. Taluntain

    Taluntain Resident Alpha and Omega Staff Member ★ SPS Account Holder Resourceful Adored Veteran Pillars of Eternity SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!) New Server Contributor [2012] (for helping Sorcerer's Place lease a new, more powerful server!) Torment: Tides of Numenera SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!) BoM XenForo Migration Contributor [2015] (for helping support the migration to new forum software!)

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    Not really, since communism has next to nothing to do with basic income.
     
  4. ConjurerDragon

    ConjurerDragon Ich dien ★ SPS Account Holder Veteran

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    The similarity is to ignore human nature and economy and the former attempts that all have failed and propose it as the solution to social problems that would create a better society.
     
  5. Taluntain

    Taluntain Resident Alpha and Omega Staff Member ★ SPS Account Holder Resourceful Adored Veteran Pillars of Eternity SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!) New Server Contributor [2012] (for helping Sorcerer's Place lease a new, more powerful server!) Torment: Tides of Numenera SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!) BoM XenForo Migration Contributor [2015] (for helping support the migration to new forum software!)

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    That's a bit of a stretch, basic income usually isn't meant to be high enough to allow people to live off it exclusively, let alone is it a political system. It's effectively a form of welfare than can relatively easily be applied or reversed if it doesn't work, unlike the paradigm shift of a change from communism to capitalism, for example.
     
  6. ConjurerDragon

    ConjurerDragon Ich dien ★ SPS Account Holder Veteran

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    Then it is useless and just a new brand for welfare and exactly not "basic income".

    It is - it takes the taxes that are paid by those who work for their living and with their hardearned money are above some arbitrary line of income and hands that money to everyone without taking care if that person has ever worked, is able but unwilling or simply is content to live on a new raised welfare without ever doing anything productive. Practically it is trying to be a little communism where those who have something are punished for hard working with higher taxes to afford to pay for everyone, even those who never worked or were criminals, receive that money without any right to it.

    The SPD in Germany has suggested something similar: "Grundrente" (basic retirement payment). "Rente" is usually a product of you paying a percentage of your salary each month to get a retirement salary in your old age.
    SPD (social democrats) and CDU (christian democrats union) have both realized that in Germany quite a lot of jobs are done by people who work their entire life but get a tiny "Rente" - because a lot of jobs after the reforms of Schröder pay little money and so result in a low Rente.

    SPD suggest to give a higher Rente to people, who have worked and paid their dues for 45 years,, without checking if that person actually needs the money (even millioneers or their wifes would get it...), while the CDU requires that first is checked how much people earn so that rich people do not get their low Rente raised without being in need of it.

    Shifting from communism to capitalism is quite simple, quite a lot of people and an even growing number of states did it. And always there appear new people who have delusions that stealing the property of all people to distribute it fairly among everony (and someone being totally impartal regulating that) would work despite ever more times it fails.

    Partly in small steps (you may not own any land as a farmer and work that yourself, but you may plant vegetables in your own backyard - and then notice that human effort manages to harvest more in small backyards than in stateowned sow-, kol- or other choses, partly in huge steps after the end of the Cold War.
     
  7. Taluntain

    Taluntain Resident Alpha and Omega Staff Member ★ SPS Account Holder Resourceful Adored Veteran Pillars of Eternity SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!) New Server Contributor [2012] (for helping Sorcerer's Place lease a new, more powerful server!) Torment: Tides of Numenera SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!) BoM XenForo Migration Contributor [2015] (for helping support the migration to new forum software!)

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    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income

    Please read that, I've mentioned repeatedly that there are a number of different implementations and variants of basic income.

    No, you're wrong. Basic income would normally be paid to everybody regardless of their income or status, so those who were being taxed as you put it would ALSO be receiving basic income. It's a lot more complex than just taxing people and redistributing that, because obviously there wouldn't be enough money to go around for that when everybody would be getting it. It actively involves the state also participating financially. Whether that's sustainable or not for any given country is up for debate, but that's the theory.

    It's simple in theory but hard and with far-reaching consequences in practice. Here we still have dozens if not hundreds of large legal disputes that have been dragging on for 20+ years since our country has become independent and has started returning the property that has been nationalised under the previous political system. So no, you can't just switch from, say, communism to capitalism overnight. It's a process whose consequences in reality drag on for decades before they are fully resolved.
     
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