The Swiss Vote on Guaranteed Income Is About Rich-People’s Problems
When Americans talk about a minimum guaranteed income, they tend to focus on one of two key themes: how to deal with poverty now, and how to deal with unemployment in the future. Libertarians have homed in on an income guarantee as a low-friction, low-bureaucracy way to take care of the poor. More recently, the idea has caught on with liberals, as cash assistance has withered away and states like Kansas have made access to what remains as onerous and unpleasant as possible. That’s the poverty angle. The unemployment angle is that well-paying jobs are disappearing, either to other countries with cheaper labor or to automation, and there just won’t be enough work for everyone.
.. “The most interesting implication of the basic income,” the Swiss actress Bettina Dieterle says in the film-essay, “is that when I die I will no longer be able to say, ‘I could not do what I wanted.’ “
.. This is Marxism Lite. If the unfulfilled promise of Marxism included “from each according to his ability,” Grundeinkommen is more “from each according to how much he or she feels like putting in today.” Like traditional Marxism, it suffers from problems of credibility, and, like other grand welfare schemes, from issues of expense.
.. As far as expense goes, the plan of paying for the basic income with a hundred-per-cent consumption tax can’t go over well in Switzerland, already one of the most expensive countries in the world.
.. When the Swiss talk about basic income, they’re talking about a utopian vision. When Americans like Reich talk about it, it’s a last bulwark against national impoverishment.