[Wikimedia-l] Basic income & Wikimedians

[Seb35]

Hello,

I would like to speak on this list about the basic income.

For a TL;DR about the concept, the idea of an (unconditionnal) basic
income is to give each citizen of a country a sum of money in order to
fullfill their basic needs: lodging, eat, be healthy. To give an idea of
the amount, one hears often 800-1000 € in France and I heard 2500 CHF in
Switzerland. If people want to earn more, their work income will be in
addition of this basic income. You can read more on the Wikipedia articles
([1] and other languages). Be aware, this idea is as strange as Wikipedia
when one discovers it.

As a Wikipmedian, I dream of such a basic income: it would empower the
people to edit the Wikimedia projects by giving them libre time (libre as
free speech). I don’t think Wikimedia itself should support this to avoid
being involved in politics, but probably many Wikipmedians could be
interested in this idea.

For the European citizens, there is currently an official call (an ECI
[2]) to support this idea at the European level, see [3] ; this call ends
in one week (yes, the 200,000 signatures is a bit far of the million
signatures needed). In Switzerland, a popular legislative initiative
collected more than the 100,000 needed signatures in September 2013, and
this will lead to a nationwide referendum about the basic income there.

Any thoughts about that?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Citizens'_Initiative
[3] http://sign.basicincome2013.eu/

~ Seb35 [^_^]