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Comment by greendesk | Hacker News Reader

My understanding is that basic income can only be "unconditional." If there are conditions attached to it, what might be they?

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While that's how I read it, perhaps the condition would be citizenship. I.e. they don't want to simultaneously allow more people into their country and also give everyone in their country a lot of money for fairly obvious reasons. However, the article doesn't give translations of the actual measures so it's hard to say.

That's because the referendum is open ended. The referendum text: «The confederation provides for an introduction of an unconditional basic income.» It's a very short text.

https://bedingungslos.ch/de/pages/initiativtext (German)

The referendum committee made a non-binding proposal to give Fr. 2500 and if someone already earns Fr. 2500 they would not get additional money. The details would still need to be worked out by the parliament. In Switzerland being founded on consensus this means that after a «yes» a huge discussion would start how to implement the basic income. But it seems that the referendum is going to be rejected.

Interesting, thanks.

That is exactly what I had in mind re: my original comment. Seeing from other comments there would be an earnings threshold. That, to me, is not "unconditional."

I'm probably running afoul of language/translation shear...

No you are right. For me it's not «unconditional» neither. However the commitee's proposal is not legally binding. Parliament would have needed to work out the exact details.

They might have conditions on income, property ownership, citizenship etc. In Cyprus (where I live) the recipients must agree to give unrestricted access to their bank accounts and the application form is quite long (15 pages IIRC). There are people (elderly mainly) that are unable to complete the application.

It's conditional yet it's still called "Minimum guaranteed income".

One basic-income like proposal is that it's available to those who are willing to work for others. I.e., society owes you enough income to survive, but in turn you owe society the fruits of your labor.

The values of those obligations may not match up - i.e. unskilled people maybe paid $7.25/hour for labor worth only $3 - but at least it's a reciprocal situation with shared obligations. I.e., we're all in this together.

We are not there yet. If we had perfect law enforcement and security then maybe. There is a reason real estate in the middle of some cities is cheap (crime). Of course perfect law enforcement has its own problems (like when nazi's in power).

But yeah, I don't understand why we need protectionism on the internet.

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