by Kate McFarland | Apr 28, 2016 | Research
On June 5th, the people of Switzerland will go to the polls to vote on a referendum to enact a basic income — marking the first time that a basic income has been submitted to the popular vote. Although the basic income initiative received little support in Parliament, about 40% of Swiss citizens support the referendum, according to a recent survey.
A new book, Voting for Freedom by Daniel Häni and Philip Kovce, lays out the arguments for a basic income in Switzerland, and explains why the referendum is a “milestone in the advancement of democracy.”
As the book’s press release describes the basic income initiative, “The proposal creates new alliances and causes old ones to fall apart. The reason: Unconditional basic income asks the right questions.”
Daniel Häni was one of the instigators of the popular initiative for a basic income; he is also CEO and co-founder of unternehmen mitte, Switzerland’s largest coffee house. Philip Kovce is a freelance writer and a researcher that the Basler Philosophicum and Witten Institute of Economics and Philosophy, as well as a member of Think Tank 30.
Prominent venture capitalist Albert Wenger (partner of Union Square Ventures) writes the forward.
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by Albert Joerimann | Feb 14, 2016 | News
Daniel Häni. Credit to: The Establishment.
Within the past two months, the well-known German magazine Der Spiegel has published two comprehensive articles about Basic Income.
The December 25th edition of Der Spiegel contains an article that discusses models of Basic Income and the current popular initiative in Switzerland, as well as some calculations on the cost of introducing it in Germany, Finland and Switzerland.
The author, Florian Diekmann, distinguishes between two basic formats: a “humanistic” approach that lets people make a free choice on the base of a real income guarantee, and a “neoliberal“ model that would get rid of a large part of the traditional social security payments as well as the social bureaucracy. The Swiss proposal is presented as an example of the “humanistic” model, and the Finnish pilot in its current design as the “neoliberal” model. For Germany, following the Swiss model would result in a Basic Income of €1,500 per month/person and following the Finnish model €664 per month/person. (Currently, most German supporters of the Basic Income talk about a BI of approximately €1,000 per month/person.) All in all, Basic Income would cost Germany €1.2 trillion per year under the Swiss model, €530 billion under the Finnish model and about €800 billion for the level proposed by the German BI supporters. In comparison, the current annual amount of social expenditures in Germany is about €850 billion.
Diekmann also compares the proposed amounts of a Basic Income to the level of all incomes in Germany for the year 2011. For the Swiss model, the BI corresponds to nearly two thirds of all private incomes; for the Finnish model, in contrast, it is barely 30%.
On January 28th, Der Spiegel published an in-depth interview with Daniel Häni and Philip Kovce, the authors of the book Was fehlt, wenn alles da ist? (What’s missing if everything is there?). (See the book review on this webpage as of November 15th, 2015)
Philip Kovce
In the interview, Häni and Kovce emphasise that one of the core motivations for a Basic Income is the social transformation from alienated work into intrinsically motivated, freely chosen activities. They believe that, if provided a guaranteed, unconditional Basic Income, most people would continue to be active and work to create value, albeit on a radically different fundament. To achieve such a change, Häni and Kovce acknowledge that a long process will be necessary, but they stress that this process is one which has been initiated already, due to recent changes in working conditions and the evolution of the economy in the second, third and now the fourth industrial revolutions. Nobody can seriously expect the return to full employment under the conditions and in the form we experienced in the 1970s.
More information at:
Language: German
Zeit Online, “Digital revolution: The boss of Deutsche Telekom is in favour of a Basic Income [Digitale Revolution: Telekom-Chef Höttges für bedingungsloses Grundeinkommen]“, December 29th 2015
Giovanni di Lorenzo, “The difference between humans and computers will be lifted soon [Der Unterschied zwischen Mensch und Computer wird in Kürze aufgehoben sein]“, January 14th 2016
Carsten Knop, “A Basic Income is helpful for everybody [Ein Grundeinkommen hilft allen]“, Frankfurter Allgemeine, January 21st 2016
by Vito Laterza | Dec 9, 2015 | News
Human Rights Day is celebrated across the world every year on December 10. The date was chosen to honor the United Nations General Assembly’s adoption and proclamation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on December 10, 1948.
Human dignity is inviolable and basic income is a human right. Make your point by changing your profile picture on social media. Choose your picture here or add new ones. And invite your friends to join!
The action started on December 5 and will end December 12. Basic income supporters around the world are participating in numbers.
The hand-bird symbol in the pictures is the official Human Rights Logo. The background is taken from the German-Swiss movie “Basic Income: a Cultural Impulse”, by Enno Schmidt and Daniel Häni – you can watch the movie with English subtitles.
For the Facebook event, click here. The main page of the initiative is basicincomeday.org.
by Michael Millar | Mar 16, 2014 | News
Image: BR / Stefan Bohrer
[Michael Millar]
A programme discussing Basic Income, with Götz Werner, DM drugstore founder, Daniel Häni, initiator of the Swiss Basic Income referendum, Dr. Verena Di Pasquale, The 2nd Chairman of the DGB Bavaria, Prof. Dr. Karlheinz Ruckriegel, economist and happiness researcher at the University of Nuremberg.
Language: German
For more information, go to: https://www.br.de/fernsehen/bayerisches-fernsehen/programmkalender/sendung-519134.html
by Yannick Vanderborght | Oct 1, 2013 | News
Photo: Daniela Marquardt / Swedish Radio
[by Karsten Lieberkind]
In this interview (in Swedish), Daniela Marquardt speaks with Daniel Häni who runs a very successful café in Basel, Switzerland, in what was previously a major bank. He is also one of the founders of the Swiss Basic Income movement. This movement has now managed to collect more than 116,000 validated signatures asking for a referendum on Unconditional Basic Income. The signatures will be handed over to the Federal Chancellery in Bern on October 4. This is made possible by the fact that Switzerland has a direct democracy.
Daniel Häni’s message is freedom. He wants us to break the traditional strong link between job and income and ask ourselves what we really want in our lives. An Unconditional Basic Income will secure the kind of freedom that makes is possible to realize whatever goal we may have. We will be able to live a decent life without a paid job or demand reasonable conditions if we do have one.
The proposal asks for a UBI of 2500 SFr a month to be financed through a sales tax and possibly other revenue sources.
Daniela Marquardt, “Är medborgarlön en ekonomisk lösning för Schweiz? [Is Basic Income a solution for Switzerland?],” Swedish Radio P1 ‘Studio Ett’ August 20, 2013
To hear this interview (in Swedish) go to: https://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=1637&artikel=5621803
