Credits: Generation-Grundeinkommen

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. [+]

Image: Samuel Asuncion

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. [+]

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, notably: Initiative-Grundeinkommen in Basel, Agentur[zum]Grundeinkommen in Zürich, Forum-Grundeinkommen in Bern, Génération-RBI in the Romandie, TiRBI in Ticino eand BIEN-Switzerland.

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. [+]

The twenty-first edition of the interdisciplinary social science journal « A Contrario », entirely devoted to basic income, was published:

« Un revenu de base – une responsabilité citoyenne » A basic income - a civic responsibility
A contrario N°21, Serge Margel (dir.), 172 pages.

Online consultation on Cairn.info and sale on the e-readers.ch. [+]

As expected, the Council of State rejected in turn the federal initiative. Among the speeches, note that Federal Councillor Alain Berset observed that the initiative proposes to "get out of a logic of insurance to move towards a logic of existence".

The Council of States Liliane Maury Pasquier expressed his side that "The idea to grant all citizens and all citizens unconditionally and individual allocation of indefinite duration, the duration of a lifetime, is distinguished by its simplicity and its fairness. The idea, however, is running in other states, including the Netherlands. At a time when paid work is often pressurized, precarious and where almost half of the current Swiss jobs may disappear in a more or less near future, the unconditional basic income offers a possible and credible alternative horizon. A project to both social and liberal, relying on autonomy and talents of each person, a project that is neither left nor right but touches on core values. " [+]