It's official: we'll vote on June 5th 2016

On January 27th 2016, the Swiss government announced on which initiatives we'll vote on June 5th 2016, and one them will be about the unconditional basic income. The campaign has thus officially begun!

Our networks are organizing and are constantly gaining new enthusiastic members, who want to be a part of the historic vote. Our funds, which are necessary to finance the campaign, are also growing thanks to your support. Small, like the 5 CHF/month by Duccio or big, like the 10'000 CHF by Clément, every donation counts! It's small streams that give birth to big rivers.

It's hard to say whether the referendum will be a success or not, as too many people have never heard of unconditional basic income. They are very vulnerable to the misinformation of its detractors. Our goal is that people get objective information. For this, everybody can help: talk about it, send an information mail to your friends, share our Facebook posts and invite your friends to like our page. You can also take part in our actions and participate in the campaign funding.(Buttons at the bottom of our newsletter).

First representative study on basic income

On January 27th, the day our government announced the date of the referendum, a golden fleet in favor of basic income arrived in Bern. Our activists arrived with a golden Tesla car, golden bikes, rickshaws and toy cars. They revealed the results of the study conducted by Demoscope Research & Marketing, which was conducted on a panel of Swiss citizens in October 2015.

A "Human PowerPoint" has thus debunked one of the main arguments against basic income: laziness. Only 2% the respondents would stop working with the introduction of an unconditional basic income. A mere 8% would consider this option under certain circumstances. 67% think that its introduction would eliminate people's existential fears.

A website for the campaign is born

The swiss campaign for an unconditional basic income has launched a new website dedicated exclusively to the initiative and the referendum: initiative-revenudebase.ch. With a modern and attractive interface, it presents essential information on basic income, the initiative, arguments and our support networks

Our website is available in four languages: FR, DE, IT, EN. It allows people from Switzerland and from the whole world to support the initiative. You can also access it with the short URL: rbi2016.ch, easy to remember and to share. You can copy this link in your emails, your messages on social media and other websites, in order to make it more visible on search engines.

Davos: will robots replace the human workforce?

The 46th edition of the World Economic Forum ended on January 23rd. The danger that represents the 4th industrial revolution for employment was at the heart of the debates. MIT economist Erik Brynjolfsson underlined that "we're heading towards a future with incredible amounts of wealth and little work" . His university just published a report stating that 47% of all jobs in the US could be automated within 20 years. Another study by the WEF shows that artificial intelligence will destroy 7.1 million jobs in the next five years in the 15 main world economies and will only create 2 million new jobs.

In order to emphasize the tight correlation between the spectacular progress of the modes of production and the necessity for a basic income, Generation-Grundeinkommen activists held a media action in front of the WEF in Davos. They danced with friendly-looking robot - a costume which the activists have built themselves. They showed that with an UBI, we should rejoice about the development of robotics that would allow human beings to dedicate themselves to more noble tasks.