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8 million pieces of 5 centimes
Everybody's talking about the swiss initiative! [1]
Dear friend,
Last october 4th, we have submitted 126'000 signatures in Berne. To symbolize a basic income granted to every citizen in our country, 8 million pieces were poured before Berne's Federal Palace. That event is still debated in media all around the world, which still can't believe that in our country people has the power to decide whether each of his citizens deserves an unconditional basic income, high enough to live with.
Summary
Happy reading
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This 8th november, Switzerland's Federal Chancellory announced that Federal popular initiative for an uncnditional basic income were formally accepted. After validation, 126'408 valid signatures were submitted on October, 4th. Federal Chancellory confirms: a popular vote will be held.
What's gonna happen, in the meanwhile? Federal Council will be reflecting about Basic Income and preparing a report on the topic. It has one year of time to do so. The matter will then pass to the Parliament. The people will be then asked to vote within two or three years. The question will be: should every person of this country get an unconditional financial basis, high enough to get by?
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The crowdfunding campaign of the European movement for Basic Income began on November 7. In two days its funders had already exceeded the target of € 15,000! And it still lasts until November 21.
The European Citizens' Initiative (ECI) for a basic income now needs to gather 875,000 signatures. To accelerate the pace of the collection (which ends in January 2014) and spread the knowledge about the basic income, a crowdfunding campaign was launched by our European friends. The success of this campaign reflects the public interest in the Basic Income.
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Basic Income keeps rocking the boat on the US press: Atlantic magazine published an article called « How to cut the poverty rate in half (it's easy) », the Business Insider, « Everyone's Talking About This Simple Solution To Ending Poverty By Just Giving People Free Money » and Policyshop, "What would a basic income really cost?".
On November 12th, New York Times presented the Swiss initiative for basic income and endorsed the possibility of applying such a model in the United States. Economic journalist Annie Lowrey explains that basic income is far from being a new and utopian subject. Once proposed by President Nixon, Basic Income is now back at the heart of public debate.
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« I think we could change the purpose of money and put it at the service, for instance, of the environment's healing. There will always be important, worthy activities, whose value is hard to meter, and we need to support those who do. We particularly need to support the activities we traditionally assign to women, such as staying at home and raising babies. Whether men or women, our society doesn't support them. That's crazy, because every society on earth ranks it as the most sacred thing a human being might do. But in Switzerland.. what's your parental support, four months of maternity leave? In the United States we have even less, two months or even zilch. »
See video of September, 17th 2013 night in Geneva, by Ecoattitude :
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In order to cope with today's challenges, our website gets two new languages: English and Italian, together with French and German. Although English is not one of our national languages, it gives us an international standing that might make a difference during the upcoming campaign...
Eventually, we've also been able to get the domain name corresponding to our internet acronym: bien.ch [16] ! The old name of well-ch.ch field remain active until further notice. Thanks for correcting all the email addresses: @bien.ch => @bien.ch.
p.s. We would be very thankful to all those people who will cooperate to translations :)
A huge thank you to all those who helped with time and money until now. In order to support the signature campaign, every contribution is precious. Dear [Opt1], we thank you in advance for clicking, according to your possibilities, on one of the buttons below:
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Links:
[1] http://bien.ch/en/newsletter/bien-ch/everybodys-talking-about-the-swiss-initiative
[2] http://bien.ch/en/newsletter/bien-ch/everybodys-talking-about-the-swiss-initiative#subject-1
[3] http://bien.ch/en/newsletter/bien-ch/everybodys-talking-about-the-swiss-initiative#subject-2
[4] http://bien.ch/en/newsletter/bien-ch/everybodys-talking-about-the-swiss-initiative#subject-3
[5] http://bien.ch/en/newsletter/bien-ch/everybodys-talking-about-the-swiss-initiative#subject-4
[6] http://bien.ch/en/newsletter/bien-ch/everybodys-talking-about-the-swiss-initiative#subject-5
[7] https://bien.ch/en
[8] http://bien.ch/en/story/nachrichten/citizens-initiative-formally-accepted
[9] http://bien.ch/en/story/news/success-for-the-european-citizens-initiative
[10] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/17/magazine/switzerlands-proposal-to-pay-people-for-being-alive.html
[11] http://www.businessinsider.com/giving-all-americans-a-basic-income-would-end-poverty-2013-11
[12] http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/10/how-to-cut-the-poverty-rate-in-half-its-easy/280971/
[13] http://www.demos.org/blog/11/13/13/what-would-basic-income-actually-cost
[14] http://bien.ch/en/story/media/eisenstein-we-are-here-to-give
[15] http://bien.ch/en/contact/secretariat?subject=Cooperating as a translator
[16] http://bien.ch/it
[17] https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=RTMHS5SDFH438
[18] http://bien.ch/en/contact/secretariat?subject=Registration to collaborate
[19] http://bien.ch/en
[20] http://basicincome.ch