Universal Basic Income Is Ahead of Its Time (to Say the Least)
If there's ever a need for a universal basic income, the U.S. can print checks pretty quickly.
Photographer: William Thomas Cain/Getty ImagesThe universal basic income is an idea whose time has not yet come. Or so say the Swiss in a referendum this weekend, in which the idea of a basic income grant was overwhelmingly rejected, with more than three-quarters of the population voting against.
My colleague Leonid Bershidsky (correctly) says that this is not surprising because Switzerland was in many ways a bad test site for a UBI, with its highly affluent population and low levels of unemployment. On the other hand, in some ways a country like Switzerland is the best possible test for a UBI: It’s got a lot of high-income residents from the finance industry, and its low unemployment rate means that a UBI will probably not discourage work as it will in places where jobs are less pleasant, or easy to come by. So why did it fail?