Basic income experiment in Rheinau

A basic income field trial is due to start in Rheinau, Switzerland, in 2019.

It was launched by the filmmaker Rebecca Panian, 39, who chose the municipality in the canton of Zurich from a large number of applicants. For one year, every one of the 1,300 residents will be able to take part in the experiment – with exceptions. Panian is aware that her film project cannot be a basic income in the true sense.

Conditions

On the qualifying date, participants must be 25 years old and already officially registered in Rheinau. Anyone who decides today to move to Rheinau – for instance for family or love, the main reasons for migration, or to take up paid work – is excluded from the basic income experiment. Presumably the municipality fears that half of Switzerland would suddenly give up its usual life and register a main residence in Rheinau for a year just to collect the basic payment. Allowing people to move there would indeed be worth an experiment.

Rheinau is partly based on the principle of minimum income support

If you already live in Rheinau and are 25, you receive 2,500 Swiss francs a month, the equivalent of just under 2,200 euros. Depending on the region, that corresponds to purchasing power of more than 1,000 euros in Austria. Anyone who also earns money, say 2,000 francs from paid work, has to pay this back or forgo the Rheinau basic income. The idea being tested is therefore based more on the principle of minimum income support than on that of an unconditional basic income (UBI). Rheinau will thus hardly allow any conclusions to be drawn about how the middle class would respond to a basic income – yet it is the middle class that will largely decide whether a UBI is introduced.

The four principles of the unconditional basic income

Unlike minimum income support, the UBI is (1) an individual basic right that (2) is meant to reach everyone, (3) with no obligation to give anything in return, (4) at a level that secures one’s existence and participation in society. These are the four points that the Austrian (German), European (UBIE) and international basic income networks (BIEN) lay down as the definition. By definition, basic income experiments cannot create an individual basic right. Nor will they ever reach everyone. At most, they can free people from the obligation to give something in return and secure their existence and participation in society for the duration of the experiment.

People are, on the whole, rather good

The empirical data speak clearly. International field trials of the UBI show that it demonstrably creates courage and room for individual action, creativity and thought. If scientists applied for funding for yet another experiment, the funding body would have to demand a new null hypothesis from the applicants. In the case of the basic income, the hypothesis would be a positive view of human nature, which would now have to be disproved.

Why are there still basic income field trials?

The Swiss popular initiative (German) for a basic income cannot be accused of a lack of optimism – on the contrary, its supporters did everything right and did pioneering work. The Rheinau field trial presumably springs from a sincere wish to follow up on the 2016 referendum, to give weight to the positive mood, perhaps to fill a certain vacuum. But what use are experiments – practising at the edge of the pool – if in the end we want to jump from the ten-metre board? The philosopher and economist Philip Kovce put it in a nutshell in the Süddeutsche Zeitung (German): “An unconditional basic income can no more be tested than democracy, the rule of law or human rights can be tested. They can only be practised by exercising them.” If we thought about our fellow human beings the way we think about ourselves, we would already have introduced the basic income.

Image source: Keystone/PeterKlaunzer