The Swiss Reject Unconditional Basic Income but Uncontrolled Central Banking Money Printing is OK

According to ZeroHedge; This weekend the Swiss population was called upon to make a historic decision, when Switzerland became the first country worldwide to put the idea of free money for everyone, technically known as Unconditional Basic Income (of CHF2,500 per month for every adult man and woman, and CHF625 for every child, for doing absolutely nothing) to a vote.

As reported previously, the outcome of this referendum would set a strong precedent and establish a landmark in the evolution of the debate of handing out free money in a centrally-planned world. And as predicted, based on early vote projections it has been a landslide decision against the “free lunch.”

Critics have slammed the initiative as “a Marxist dream”, warning of sky-high costs and people quitting their jobs in droves, causing economic chaos.

The wording on the initiative was vague, asking for a constitutional change to “guarantee the introduction of an unconditional basic income” but with no mention of amounts.

Switzerland may be the first but it won’t be the last. The idea is also under consideration elsewhere. In Finland, the government is considering a trial to give basic income to about 8,000 people from low-income groups. And in the Dutch city of Utrecht is also developing a pilot project which will begin in January 2017.

Switzerland is therefore quite a hostile terrain for those who wish to promote “free lunches” and “no strings attached” gifts. A long history of independent thinking, of consequential analysis and of government limitation, makes it very easy for the Swiss to see past the populism-fueled empty promises and the associated publicity stunts. The upcoming rejection of the UBI proposal on June the 5th will and should serve as a reminder that the Swiss still remain the exception to the rule.

The MinCome Experiment

[Huffington Post] Between 1974 and 1979, residents of a small Manitoba city were selected to be subjects in a project that ensured basic annual incomes for everyone. For five years, monthly cheques were delivered to the poorest residents of Dauphin, Man. – no strings attached.xAnd for five years, poverty was completely eliminated.

The program was dubbed “Mincome” – a neologism of “minimum income” – and it was the first of its kind in North America. It stood out from similar American projects at the time because it didn’t shut out seniors and the disabled from qualification.

The project’s original intent was to evaluate if giving cheques to the working poor, enough to top-up their incomes to a living wage, would kill people’s motivation to work. It didn’t.

Explanation @zurichtimes;

What we find amazing about this debate and referendum was the complete lack of perspective and hijacking of the movement as something equivalent to Marxism. This attitude is especially amusing when we consider that in the Land of Central Banking where money is created out of thin air and put into circulation with interest sprinkled on top to to put generation after generation into Life long debt we are denigrating and criticising the idea of handing out money to meet your basic living expenses.

Central Bank create money from nothing and hand it out to Commercial Banks that is not called Marxism or Unsustainable, but rather good economic business models. Please here the words of one David Icke on this subject and then decide for yourself.

Paying a basic income to all also lowers the amount of wages you have to put your employees why was the economic benefit of that not taken into account. Instead of raising the basic minimum wage to $15 per hour selectively and placing an economic burden on just some business what if everyone was paid at least $15 per hour regardless of where or what they did. 

That would mean then anything over and above would be the only portion employers would have to pay to Employees to work and so then both Employers and Employees would benefit. Employers would actually lower their capital costs and the entire labour force becomes more competitive because now you are paying a wage that everyone can work and live on. Employee incentives for staying or leaving employment are things Employers and Employees would have to negotiate their way around.

This idea put another way is the same issue behind a Negative Income Tax;

A negative income tax is intended to create a single system that would not only pay for government, but would also fulfill the social goal of making sure that there was a minimum level of income for all. It is theorized that, with an NIT, the need for minimum wage, food stamps, welfare, social security programs and other government assistance programs could be eliminated, thus reducing the administrative effort and cost to a fraction of what it is under the current system, as well as eliminating the perverse incentives created by these overlapping aid programs, e.g. when a minimum wage worker who earns a little more nets out with less income because he is newly ineligible for aid. The worker is stuck in a welfare trap and has no incentive to seek higher wages.

Consider the Mincome experiment from Manitoba and the analysis of one economist;

University of Manitoba economist Evelyn Forget conducted an analysis of the Dauphin portion of the experiment in 2009 which was published in 2011. She found that only new mothers and teenagers worked substantially less. Mothers with newborns stopped working because they wanted to stay at home longer with their babies, and teenagers worked less because they weren’t under as much pressure to support their families, which resulted in more teenagers graduating. 

In addition, those who continued to work were given more opportunities to choose what type of work they did. Forget found that in the period that Mincome was administered, hospital visits dropped 8.5 percent, with fewer incidents of work-related injuries, and fewer emergency room visits from accidents and injuries. Additionally, the period saw a reduction in rates of psychiatric hospitalization, and in the number of mental illness-related consultations with health professionals.

It is amusing to label this entire movement as a “Marxist Dream” when governments are just printing money out of thin air and are lending in out on interest to banks and and then as it trickles down to the rest of the public it is converted to public debt on which the public pays endlessly with taxes. It was fraud from the very beginning yet that is the not at all problematic.

Only in a Dream like the American Dream can you come up with such thoughts because we are only dreaming when we are in a state of slumber or sleep unless you are Day Dreaming which again means you are somewhere in La La Land or Los Angeles the Land of Dreams. We are now all entranced within the American Dream and have lost our ability to even reason or discern the truth.

Sources:

• http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2014/12/23/mincome-in-dauphin-manitoba_n_6335682.html
• http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-06-05/landslide-vote-swiss-reject-proposal-hand-out-free-money-everyone
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mincome
• http://public.econ.duke.edu/~erw/197/forget-cea%20(2).pdf
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bP7L7eAomw
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax
• https://youtu.be/Zx0vrR2BFp8