Swiss Make BIG History

This month Swiss citizens moved one step closer to implementing a Basic Income Guarantee (BIG) of $2,750 a month for every Swiss citizen regardless of need. Advocates have collected 100,000 signatures and so, under Swiss law, the measure will be voted on nationally. Different forms of a BIG have been around for a long time:

In 1995, D, a chronically unhoused, dually diagnosed woman called me a ?poverty pimp? over a cup of coffee provided by the day program where I worked as a member of what Peter Buffet, son of Warren Buffet, recently labeled ?the Charitable-Industrial Complex.??D. said:

?You know, without me, you wouldn’t have a job. Did ya ever think about that??

And you know, she had a point.

During an interview with PRI about the Swiss initiative, Karl Widerquist, a Georgetown University professor and co-chair of the Basic Income Earth Network pointed out that if the BIG is large enough it could be possible to eliminate other programs, like food stamps and unemployment insurance. In their 2005 paper, An Efficiency Argument for a Basic Income Guarantee,?Widerquist and Michael A. Lewis, from the SUNY School of Social Welfare at Stony Brook argue that:

[Other programs]all require the government to spend large amounts of money on things other than direct payments to the poor. This is an inefficiency in itself, and it causes the second inefficiency of making errors possible by allowing people to fall through the cracks. The basic income guarantee makes a simple, effective payment system to the people who need it?without wasting funds on anything else, and it has no cracks to fall through.

Or as Jennifer Aniston says at the high society charity ball in Friends with Money, ?Why don’t they just give the money to the poor??

Edited/Published by: SB

 

I had a successful career actively working with at-risk youth, people struggling with poverty and unemployment, and disadvantaged and oppressed populations. In 2011, I made the decision to pursue my dreams and become a full-time writer. Connect with me on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.