by Claudio Grass , SafeHaven:
In early June the Swiss will be called upon to make a historic decision. Switzerland is the first country worldwide to put the idea of an Unconditional Basic Income to a vote and the outcome of this referendum will set a strong precedent and establish a landmark in the evolution of this debate.
The Swiss Basic Income Initiative in a demonstration in front of parliament. As we have previously reported (see “Swiss Parliament Shoots Down Socialist Utopia” for details), Switzerland’s parliament has already rejected the idea, with even the socialists voting against it (proving that they are still in possession of most of their marbles and quite likely in possession of an abacus as well).
The Swiss public will have to approve or reject a change in the constitution that would allow for the introduction of an Unconditional Basic Income (UBI), or a preset, monthly minimum income to be paid out by the government to every adult and child in the country if their income falls below a specific threshold. Even though details of this proposal have been few and far between, the most commonly cited amount of this guaranteed income would be 2,500 Swiss Francs for adults and 625 francs for children.
The architects of the proposal stress that this government-guaranteed payment, unlike the current benefit programs, will be entirely “no questions asked”, i.e., it will not be means-tested and will apply to every person legally living in Switzerland.
Currently, these are all the details that the Swiss have at their disposal to make their decision. No plan has so far been put forward to specify how such a proposal would be financed, whether an increase in income tax or VAT will have to be enforced, which specific existing welfare programs it would replace or how the glaringly obvious exploitation possibilities of such a plan would be avoided, without any kind of means test – or without “asking any questions”, according to one of the campaign’s catchphrases.
The main argument of the supporters of this initiative is that it would support the people that will, or already do, lose their jobs to automation and technological progress; a defensive move against “the rise of the robots” as they put it. They also claim that such a measure will give people the opportunity to grow, to learn and to pursue skills or professional goals that are now rendered prohibitive by their current meaningless and mundane jobs, that they are forced into in order to simply pay their bills. “What would you do if your income were taken care of?” asked the pro-UBI campaign in Geneva, with a poster that officially made it into the Guinness Book of Records as the world’s largest.
Meet the world’s largest poster ever. As to the answer to the question, a number of people would likely immediately proceed to party. The poster unfortunately fails to ask “who is going to pay for it?” – or better said, who will be robbed at gunpoint to pay for it.
The Free Lunch – A Fantasy as Old as Methuselah
The promise of a free lunch is by no means a new thing in politics. Getting “something for nothing” is an age-old shiny trinket that has been dangled before the eyes of the public since time immemorial. In fact, it has appeared so excruciatingly often in our political history, for centuries on end, that one would think that it wouldn’t work anymore; not in 2016, surely. And yet it does. UBI is the proof that there are still people who choose to believe that “no strings attached” freebies and gifts are promises one can rely on and build an economy on, especially when they are coming from their government and rulers.
However, there are always some strings attached to such gifts and if history has taught us anything on this matter, it is the distinction between a gift and a bribe. Unsavory political ideologies and catastrophic cultural philosophies often tend to make their debut in front of the public hidden inside a Trojan gift horse. Unrealistic yet enchanting promises have always been a reliable political tool and it has never been a big strategic challenge to corrupt the people by granting the majority something that was stolen from minorities.
Another recent demonstration by UBI supporters in Switzerland – this one suggests that “robots” will actually pay for it all. This is based on a combination of the popular Luddite error that “machines will make us all jobless” (an idea proven consistently wrong since the early 19th century when the original Luddites went around to break machines, but who cares about evidence when changing the world is at stake!) and the fantasy that the world of Star Trek has already arrived, and machines will simply produce everything we need and want “for free” at the push of a button, in a kind of economic perpetuum mobile. Thus, we can now get serious about erecting the long dreamed of socialist Utopia – and this time, we’re going to get it right, you just wait and see!
We can easily spot the parallel in the promotion of Basic Income: Even though the architects of UBI in Switzerland, quite wisely, omit any reference to the realistic and structural aspects of their scheme, at the end of day, someone will have to pay for it. “Tax the 1%!”, argue their international fellow travelers, which, rather predictably, makes UBI even more attractive to a large portion of the public. This whole discussion about UBI reminds us of the following quote by Thomas Jefferson:
“A government big enough to give you everything you want, is a government big enough to take away everything that you have.”
from SGTreport - The Corporate Propaganda Antidote - Silver, Gold, Truth, Liberty, & Freedom http://ift.tt/1OSq9rE
