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Comment by nabla9 | Hacker News Reader

How they did come up with number that high? I know that Switzerland is expensive country, but still.

That's 2,256 EUR or 2,443 USD.

It might sound like a lot, but in the Swiss context, it's not that much. It's a really expensive country to live in, especially in the main cities like Zurich and Geneva. For you 2,256€ is great, but in Switzerland, it's considered good income for a student/intern, that's how expensive it is. (compare that to Portugal where they can pay a intern 150€/month).

Yep, I know a couple of senior engineers working at Google in Poland for the same salary (as that min in Switzerland). Not that it's great salary there, but that's the market and big companies like Google use that situation to get cheap labour.

That's shit whats worse is that those companies exploit the EU market even further by moving them around the EU while keep paying them in their home countries even with some extra payments for sustenance it's still several times cheaper than hiring local engineers in the UK, France or Germany.

I lived in Zürich for a year and remember seeing an ad on the train for work at a grocery store that paid 4k CHF ($3910) per month. The college I was attending paid 35CHF ($34) an hour to students who did work for their department. Just to put it in some perspective. The cost of living is also ridiculously high.

When the cost of living is high but the income of blue collar jobs are adjusted accordingly, isn't everything relative?

That's why when discussing income and things like that the Purchase Price Parity is used. The PPP for Switzerland is 1.6. So even after you convert from Francs to Dollars you have assume everything is 1.6 as expensive in Switzerland.

So 2250 dollars in Switzerland roughly gets you the same purchase power as 1400 in the USA.

It's half of what you'd get for flipping burger at McDonalds, working as a supermarket cashier etc.

2000.- isn't poverty level and more than wellfare would pay - but not much more.

Flipping burgers can earn you $5000 a month? Sign me up, that's more than I make.

Note that rent, food, etc is also scaled accordingly. (Not a bad deal in the end, especially considering the cashier/waiters/etc earn enough to live decently).

What if you work in Zurich or Basel, but live in France or Germany.

Some people do that. You can save more, I guess (but the housing market in fr and de is already going up due to that). (You can also live in CH and go shopping abroad if you're cost sensitive)

Not sure about flipping burgers, but all supermarket chains pay a minimum wage of 4000 CHF (4200-4400 USD) per month, with 4 weeks of paid holidays. Taxes on such a low income would be quite low (15% payroll and 10% income tax). Health insurance is around 200 CHF/month per person, with a 2500 CHF yearly deductible.

I don't think that's a high number at all for Switzerland - infact it would be quite a struggle to live on that amount after paying for rent, health insurance, utilities and food. I think the amount being proposed would still give quite a high incentive to people to work, as the standard of living on the minimum would be basic to say the least.

What if you've paid off your mortgage and now housing is essentially only maintenance and utilities. Removing rent cost would make that money last. I wonder if the people behind this have that notion.

Home ownership isn't very high in Switzerland (and at least in urban areas there aren't many apartments below 1M). And you have to pay income tax on your rent anyway (even if to yourself).

Exactly

For those lucky enough to have managed to secure a place without rent/mortage -> essentially those lucky few with ownership <- will get the best out of basic income.

Not necessarily if income tax rates are offset to compensate. Also 2k/mo might not make much of a difference for wealthy people (so they'd still need to earn money to support their lifestyle).

In Switzerland money that you're not paying in rent/mortgage because you own the property, is considered income and taxed accordingly.

Isn't it in most countries? In the US the interest paid is at least a write off. But principal payments have already been taxed as income...

No, this is different from what happens in the US.

Let's say I buy a house in the US and pay cash (no mortgage, no financing). I now own this house and decide to live in it. I will have to pay local property taxes, but I do not have to pay any income tax.

Now, let's say I instead rented out the house to someone else (and lived somewhere else), I would be making income on the rent, and therefore paying income tax on the rental income.

In Switzerland, if you live in the house that you own (the first example), you are considered to be renting it to yourself. So you have to pay income tax on the market rent for your home, even if you are both the tenant and the landlord.

EDIT: For the record, I don't know why you're being downvoted for asking for clarification.

Thanks, I see what is meant now. Don't know why I'm getting downvoted either. Seems a rather innocuous question by someone not native to Switzerland.

You're missing the point completely. Not having to deal with rent means the money from basic income can go further than for anyone who doesn't own their own housing.

Meaning it's essentially for rich kids who've inherited their own housing, or those with enough dispensable income to pay off their place. Basic Income in this scenario wouldn't help the poorest, it would help the rich enough to get further with that money.

I am not against Basic Income, but it has to be in a situation where the poor will benefit from it, not the rich enough to make the best out of the money. This seems like just another shit the modern bourgeois leftist have cooked up for themselves thinking it applies to the poorest. What a joke.

Money is money. How one uses it is up to the individual. If the person took out a mortgage and paid it off after 30 years, there is nothing immoral about it and certainly doesn't prevent another person from doing the same. A paid off home does not need to be a mansion. A modest flat affords the freedom also.

If a given person could not afford a mortgage or a down payment, adding more money to that persons income increases the chance they will save enough to do so, not reduces it.

Switzerland is also interesting in that they tax total wealth, so the more assets you have, the more you pay: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_Switzerland#Prop...

A person rich enough to inherit a house at a young age isn't going to notice the relatively tiny minimal income. They are far more likely to oppose the taxes necessary to support minimum income than they are to be a secret motivating army behind it. It's not productive to invent unreasonable stories of unfairness just to create an internal rage however exciting that may be.

If you're concerned about possible unfairness of minimum income then you would need to look at people whose medical expenses could exceed the minimum income, people who are mentally incapable of buying the right resources, people who have dependent children and unchecked market forces that would allow prices to rise beyond what the minimum income could afford.

The last one is the biggest problem as it would effectively transfer wealth from taxpayers briefly through the poorest people to the wealthy via increased profits and still leave some people unprovided for.

Switzerland taxes imputed rent? Fascinating.

I live close to switzerland's borders, and it's incredible the disparity in terms of salary/cost of living between switzerland and all it's neighbors.

I do not consider myself poor, but there's no way I can afford any sort of holiday in switzerland.

I have friends and some colleagues in switzerland: for them, a year's rent of my house would equal for roughly a single month of their salary. For those living close to Geneve, sometimes less.

It's mind-blowing, really.

Yeah, in Switzerland I live decently but I am not rich by any means. To visit friends I frequently travel to Germany and everytime I realise just how big a difference it is for many things.

In the beginning I always had the feeling of something wrong when going to a supermarket there, because for me the gap was so crazily big.

But wouldn't you also make less for the same job in Germany, making the relative ratio of income to cost not all that dissimilar?

That is true, I only wanted to share my experience and provide some anecdotal evidence for the parent post :)

Sort of, but zurich, basel, and geneva are right in the top 4-5 most expensive countries to live in on earth.

Switzerland is brutally expensive. If you go to a restaurant for a steak you'll pay like 100 USD just for the steak. If you aren't rich you'll probably become almost vegetarian just from the prices of meat. People often go to France to buy groceries if they live close enough to the border.

If you only eat Wagyu that might be true ;)

Switzerland is expensive but not THAT expensive.

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