Fear and fascination with a basic income

The campaign to introduce an unconditional basic income has won admirers and detractors, spawning numerous news stories along the way. swissinfo.ch visited two campaign nights to test the waters ahead of a nationwide vote on June 5. It is a warm May evening in Basel. Daniel Häni leaves a panelled conference room and heads to a nearby café in the old city. He has just presented the idea of an unconditional basic income to the local conservative right Swiss People’s Party. The result was foreseeable. None of the 60 or so participants were favourable to the controversial proposal - a unanimous verdict of the mainly middle-aged registered party members. “It was a challenge,” says the senior member of the initiative committee. “It was fun but peoples’ minds were made up beforehand. Still it was a nice democratic procedure.” Häni admits that the power point presentation could have been shorter and, in hindsight, he should have addressed the concerns of an elderly party ...