I know no more than I read in the last 10 minutes, so I have a question for you:
How serious is a referendum like this? When a government pushes a major change. They need to back it up with a lot of analysis. Where does the money come from? What the major economic impacts. What do the big businesses/industries/unions/Chambers of Commerce/ etc think of it.
The referendum system sounds like a good idea for issues that are mostly moral like abortion or gay marriage. They're all about what we think is right. This one is economic, its about feasibility and tricky second order effects. So basically what I'm saying is.. has anyone really checked that this actually possible?
This is one of the question that will be central to the upcoming debate. Usually, when we vote on economic issues (like we voted on raise in VAT, more holidays, etc...), we usually have all kind of organisation explaining what their position is and why. So you obviously get the political parties opinions, but also the economic associations (the Swiss Business Federation for big companies, the Union of small-medium business), the employee unions and so on. On this topic, we'll most likely get a lot of opinion from the economics academic world as well.
Also, when you get your voting material, there is a leaflet that explains the position of the government and the parliament (in this case, they will most likely recommend a "no").
Now, the comittee that supports the basic income says that the real cost is 30 billions CHF. The rest of the 200 billions CHF comes from the part that is deduced from the salaries by the companies and from the suppression of a bunch of social programs (we already have a system where the state pays the basic necessities to the people without any other revenue, with some conditions). [1]
They also admit that the "dynamic effect" of the basic income are hard to estimate. This is likely to be the controversial part of the debate. It is such a big shift in paradigm that I think nobody, even the most brilliant economists, can predict what will happen. And it is most likely the reason why it will be refused. It's a big jump in the unknown.
Last but not least, the actual text of the initiative (translated in this comment [2]) doesn't fix the level of the basic income. 2500 CHF is just a proposition and if it is accepted, it's up to the parliament to come up with a law that regulates how this all works. So maybe it could be introduced incrementally.
How serious is a referendum like this? When a government pushes a major change. They need to back it up with a lot of analysis. Where does the money come from? What the major economic impacts. What do the big businesses/industries/unions/Chambers of Commerce/ etc think of it.
The referendum system sounds like a good idea for issues that are mostly moral like abortion or gay marriage. They're all about what we think is right. This one is economic, its about feasibility and tricky second order effects. So basically what I'm saying is.. has anyone really checked that this actually possible?