A few years ago, Switzerland voted no to Universal Basic Income (UBI). At the time, many felt the economy was strong enough and that such a measure wasn’t necessary.
Fast forward to today, and the situation looks very different.
AI-driven disruption, nearshoring, over-recruitment during COVID, ongoing wars, tariff conflicts, and a general economic slowdown have already wiped out many jobs—and many of them are unlikely to return. At the same time, the cost of living in Switzerland is at an all-time high: food prices, rents, and health insurance premiums keep rising, with little hope of relief.
Young people finishing university in the next few years may never get a real chance to start their careers, as companies have largely stopped hiring fresh graduates. Those over 40 who lost their jobs in the last couple of years are struggling to find new roles. Official unemployment figures only reflect people actively registered with RAV—once benefits run out, many are pushed to deregister, effectively disappearing from the statistics.
This creates a distorted picture of reality.
Without meaningful intervention, social consequences seem inevitable: financial stress, rising inequality, and potentially higher crime. People who are currently employed often don’t see how fragile the situation is—until they lose their jobs themselves. And for many, leaving the country isn’t an option due to family, residency status, or other constraints, making them especially vulnerable.
Elon Musk and others have spoken about Universal High Income (UHI), but even UBI alone could act as a social stabilizer. It wouldn’t make people rich, but it could prevent society from sliding into crisis.
So the question is:
Should the Swiss government or political parties push for another referendum on UBI given today’s realities?
Older generations and retirees will likely oppose it again—but demographics shouldn’t dictate the future at the expense of younger and working-age populations.
What’s the realistic remedy here?
Is UBI inevitable, or is there a better alternative Switzerland should consider?
Let’s debate.
Universal Basic Income for All – Is Switzerland Ready Now?
byu/Rich-Use1484 inSwitzerland
Posted by Rich-Use1484
25 Comments
How something like that would be funded ?
you want to start a debate on a leftist echo chamber like reddit :-)?
The 2 big questions are: how are you funding UBI? What living costs is UBI supposed to cover?
Switzerland generally let’s other countries go first with new policies and then adapt the best policies. So no, it’s too early to vote for it again as we have no clear data points
Switzerland already has this. I know many people here who have been unemployed for over 10 years and still receive a monthly income. Maybe RAV you mentioned (i am in Tessin). I mean… it’s not so important how the income is named… it is a monthly income even if you have no job.
I believe you spend too much time online…
Unemployement rate is unchanged or even slightly lower than 10 years ago.
What is also unchanged, is the fact that communism doesn’t work.
Give everybody more money and the prices of everything will go up, caused by the supply&demand cycle.
Where do you see AI disruption? Last reports show that companies aren’t adopting it so fast as taught. The hiring freeze is a momentary problem, since there was a hiring spree a few years ago, and the situation needs to rebalace itself.
Also where do you think you’ll find the money for UBI, if there’s stagnation?
You know what is great at lowering cost of living and inflation?
Pumping free money into the economy!
/s
UBI will only be viable when robots (physical or not, but importantly not simple chatbots like ChatGPT!) automate a majority of necessary work (like farming). Progress in this area has been insane, but we’re not there yet. Depending on how long the hype lasts, and thus how long companies stupidly focus on the most idiotic uses of AI, we won’t see that much progress in the useful stuff. And even after we reach the point where most things are possible, we’d still need a few years to make them efficient and reliable. Don’t hold your breath waiting for UBI.
While I agree with you. I don’t think it is feasible unless every first world country agrees to do the same. Otherwise the rich would escape.
In theory I think there is enough money circulating around for this to be possible. But then it’s like socialism all over again. And people would not have any incentive to work.
UBI / UHI all the way but we are not ready yet. Ask again in about 10 to 15 years I would say.
It may be controversial to say this, but “direct democracy” in Switzerland is structurally broken due to demographics.
Older voters participate at higher rates and tend to vote in their own short-term interests, forming a stable majority.
Younger voters participate less frequently and therefore lose on policies that would primarily benefit them.
A demographic majority could shift if voting rights or facilitated naturalization were extended to long-term migrants living in Switzerland for more than 7 years (example threshold).
Some examples:
– **AHV (13th payment):** Older voters support higher pensions or softer reforms. Costs are shifted to younger people via higher contributions and taxes.
– **Eigenmietwert:** Changes mainly benefit existing homeowners, who are mostly 55+, while younger renters and future buyers gain little or nothing.
How to turbo hyperinflation in one easy step:
A basic income for everybody will increase prices (inflation). Better to support people that really need it through specific measures.
I also think the 13th AHV pension is a mistake. The old people that really need it receive Ergänzungsleistungen.
Or at least make it more livable for people that might lose their job/don’t get hired. Public free healtcare and more public housing (or anyway reforms to keep the house price down) would be a good start. Since food you can find for free or almost in many cities that would be enough to not let people in complete misery.
Then in general i agree about UBI, we automatized many jobs and made many other more efficient, so now we are able to sustain our society lifestyle while working way less hours in total, but that should therefore means that everyone works only something like 50% while being able to live without constrains. Sadly this society instead want everyone to keep working 100% and produce extra value for some very rich people, but we are reaching a point were if people work 100% others are unemployed. So if we don’t want to redistribute the work load and we don’t want people to live in misery then I think we have to accept UBI on the long term .
No chance to pass. Even if it would pass the question would be how much. If you take 2-3k per month per person this would result in 200-300 billions per year. Consider the GDP of 850 billion per year and the current federal spending of 85 billions per year. You get the picture, even in a rich country like Switzerland there is no money for it.
How about we start with Universal health care for Swiss retirees and then cascade it downward. I am all for UBI and but hard to fund. IF we had a universal healtcare most families of 4 would have somwhere between 1200-1600 a month back in their pocket.
Take this money monthly and put it into an fund and when you retire you will have more then enough to retire on.
So I am not unsympathetic to the idea, but:
**1. Inflation:** You are injecting cash into the economy. Sure, that money is there now but just tied up in mansions and rich people investments right now. But put that in people’s hands and they spend it on stuff. What does that do to prices? It increases them. Yes, inflation. It’s real. Look at America during Covid. They literally mailed everyone checks. Inflation hit 9%. Switzerland did much less of this and had much less inflation.
**What problem are you trying to solve?** I feel like UBI sounds like a cure-all on paper but it also obscures what we’re trying to do. Do you want more employment for entry-level graduates? Taxing companies to pay for UBI doesn’t sound like a great way to do that. Is housing too expensive? That’s a specific problem that is narrower and different than overall cost of living. Health insurance? Again, specific market. Stronger long term social safety net for pensions, etc? Again, real issue but UBI may not be the solution.
**Equity:** Median income in CH is like 83k but clearly not everyone makes this much and high earners bend the curve. Do we want to give all the bankers UBI too? That doesn’t make much sense to me, but again it comes back to what problem we’re trying to solve.
My opinion:
1. Even if it was necessary, which it isn’t (yet), Babyboomers aren’t working anymore, so they probably won’t care, or accept it, and they have vast majority of voting power still.
2. It is too early. Automation is a transition. Until the transition is done, companies will need workers. There is gonna be structural unemployment. However, that means there needs to be more systems for adult education though as soon as possible, so people can change more easily, if their industry gets automated. I think the better path is to normalize, that it is okay for adults to change career again with 40, if the economy needs it.
3. Switzerland will have a difficult time in automated industries anyway, because automation benefits a lot from economics of scale, so it needs to be as competitive as it can. That means there will be many monopoly/oligopoly dynamics in the long term with first mover advantages. By the way, it has always been like this, that’s why our country is so stable and efficient, because we could never rely on having power of scale or natural ressources in history.
Beyond funding difficulties, the main problem is that it would most likely overheat Switzerland’s economy (increasing inflation. Though to be fair, Switzerland isn’t in a high-inflations state currently).
The easiest fix to improve people’s living situation is to increase federal funding to reduce health insurance premiums. With the ever aging population with increased healthcare demands, there isn’t a way to reduce premiums without more funding. Harder solutions would be scaling health insurance premiums by income/wealth directly, and making other levies (Serafe, fire department) be funded through general taxation (and thus progressively taxed). Those goals are more achievable than a UBI.
Sidenote: your post in almost certainly AI written. It’s safe to disregard the musings of Musk.
> let’s debate
How about “no”?
The irony is that your own text is mediocre AI slop
Yes, let’s pay to everyone who doesn’t work and also make taxes paid voluntarily by the ones who work. Government money doesn’t exist.
When you loose a vote at 80% vs 20%, you usually stay silent for 25 years.
Let’s be real here. The kind of people who don’t just raise legitimate concerns about how to implement UBI, but who continue to regurgitate the same old canned “nobody works under UBI” tirades in the face of rapidly growing prospects of widespread job loss due to AI; they are going to be the same exact people who are going to vote in favor of putting unemployed people into labor camps some years down the line, once the time comes where the problem can’t be ignored anymore and existing institutions begin to buckle under the growing load.
> Elon Musk
I’m sorry, why do we listen to the person who’s been doing nazi salutes?