The landing page of a recently-launched website, Business for Basic Income, opens with the following words:
A universal basic income is essential for the economy of the 21st century. It creates scope for development and entrepreneurship. It’s beneficial socially and economically. It allows to cope with the rapid changes through digitization and robotics. It increases intrinsic motivation, because people have a walk-away option.
Founded by Armin Steuernagel, Börries Hornemann, Che Wagner, and Benjamin Brockhaus, Business for Basic Income has compiled an impressive list of quotes from entrepreneurs and economists who support basic income, and its site provides an easily accessible form in which business owners can add their own statements of support (available at the bottom of the home page).
The BFB website, at the time of this writing, additionally features an explanation of what basic income is (apparently drawing closely from BIEN’s definition), and a summary of many key arguments for such a policy.
Business for Basic Income is accessible at www.wirtschaft-fuer-grundeinkommen.com and www.business-for-basic-income.com, with content available in English, French, and German.
Photo CC Nguyen Hung Vu
On the credibility front, the film is honest enough to directly raise the question of who would do the unwanted hard work that is neither well paid nor appreciated. But the film gives only vague answers about paying more or finding new ways to organize work. 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. On top of all this, the Swiss referendum would confine the basic income to citizens—a neat legislative and financial sleight of hand in a country in which a quarter of the workforce consists of foreigners.