I am catching up with posting online my articles.
Swiss citizens will soon vote on a proposal to provide a basic income for all adults of $2,800 per month. The measure was introduced by grassroots activists from the Basic Income Initiative, who collected 100,000 signatures needed for a referendum.
And now we have the same opportunity to do the same in the whole European Union but we must collect 1,000,000 signatures. It may seem a lot but in the end we have about 500,000,000 inhabitants and thus this is just 1 million signatures is just 0.2% of the total.
Now... thus maybe this is not so much in theory but the practice is a little bit different. As of today 28.10.2013 we have 116,000 votes and we have 77 days left to the deadline. Although the whole project would benefit the population it is not being supported by the people. It is going relatively slow and there is a big possibility that we will not get enough signatures.
Thus why is it ?
First of all many people hear for the first time about it and they are very skeptical. It just seems to them like a fairy story. The first question that comes to their mind is how we are going to fund such a project.
My answer to it is that if we have billions of euros or dollars to pay for guns, bombs and military then why we cannot have money for Basic Income.
Secondly people are already so disappointed with the promises of politicians that they don't believe that anything can change anymore and they simply ignore it.
Thirdly people are so busy with the struggle to survive that they have no time ( or they say it ) to dedicate it to make the voting. But this is connected with the previous point because in reality the voting takes less than 5 min.
And what are we going to do about it ?
We still have 70 days to go and we will see if we can get people to sign it. If we don't, it means that we will need to educate people more about it and we will try again in couple of years. But what I can also see is that the Basic Income movement is gathering in strength. There is activity in Canada and as I mentioned in the beginning soon there will be national referendum in Switzerland. Thus sooner or later the Basic Income will be implemented practically and if it is successful then it will be easier to convince people in other countries to implement it also.