Basic income experiment to be conducted in Swiss village Rheinau

Harold Cunningham/Getty Images

• A Swiss filmmaker is raising money to start a basic income
  experiment for hundreds of residents in the town of Rheinau.
• Participants age 25 and older will receive $2,570 per month
  for a year.
• In a 2016 referendum, 77% of Swiss voters said they did not
  support a universal basic income. 

Two years ago, voters in Switzerland overwhelmingly
rejected a referendum on universal basic income, with over
two-thirds of voters saying they did not support a program giving
citizens unconditional cash payments every month.

Nonetheless, the basic income proposal appealed to Swiss
filmmaker Rebecca Panian. In light of the threat of automation
replacing a growing number of jobs, she decided to launch her own
experiment. She told Business Insider that the election of
President Donald Trump also contributed to her decision. 

“Before that I have to admit that I often wanted to do something,
but I didn’t dare because there was always the voice in my head
telling me: “What can you do, honestly? And who are you anyway,'”
Panian wrote in an email. “But with Trump becoming president of
the U.S., I told myself: if this person gets there, if a ‘Trump’
is possible, I can very well look for a village to test the UBI.”

Panian has chosen the village of Rheinau to conduct a study in
which participants age 25 or older will receive 2,500 francs
($2,570) at the start of each month for a year, regardless of
employment status. Those between the ages of 22 and 25 will
receive 1,875 francs ($1,950) a month, with lower amounts for
children and younger adults. 

After
selecting the town from a list of about 100 that had
expressed interest, Panian needed at least half of Rheinau
residents to sign up for the pilot. 

About 880 of the village’s 1,300 residents signed
up. Participants whose income is higher than their monthly
basic income will need to pay back their basic income at the end
of the month. Panian said these residents will help finance the
experiment. 

“In reality, the basic income has to be financed by some sort of
redistribution of money,” Panian wrote in an email. “If you would
pay everyone MORE you actually needed to create more money, which
would end in an inflation and with that the whole UBI-thought
wouldn’t make sense because the amount of the UBI couldn’t
secure a person to live on it!”

Residents’ responses will be used to determine how much money
needs to be raised before starting the experiment. Panian said
that crowdfunding will likely begin in mid-October.

The national proposal rejected by Swiss voters would have been
funded through people’s taxes, but the Rheinau experiment will be
privately funded. Panian needs to crowdsource the necessary
funds, and if she is successful, she will film a documentary and
work together with sociologists, an economist, and a media
linguist to analyze the outcomes,
The Local reported. 

Switzerland is
one of the wealthiest countries in the world, and Panian told
Business Insider that she does not want to focus the
experiment on fighting unemployment or poverty. Instead, the
experiment is meant to show how a universal basic income can
affect a community, she said.

The Swiss experiment adds to a growing list of basic income
trials around the world. In the United States, a pilot focusing
on low-income black women will soon start in
Jackson, Mississippi, giving $1,000 to 15 single mothers. In

Stockton, California, an 18-month trial beginning in February
2019 will provide 100 people with $500 a month.

Other recent trials have not gone so smoothly.

 Y
Combinator delayed its basic income study until next year
after a pilot in Oakland, California, took longer than planned.
The provincial government of
Ontario, Canada, meanwhile, canceled a three-year basic
income pilot with 4,000 participants. Despite the premier’s
promise to let the program keep running, participants will stop
receiving monthly cash payments in March 2019, one year early.

In Europe, a prominent two-year trial in
Finland is ending in a few months despite researchers’
interest in expanding the pilot beyond just those who are
unemployed.