Staid, conservative Switzerland is one of the first developed countries to seriously discuss a universal guaranteed income.
While it appears the proposition will fail, the fact it is being debated indicates an acknowledgement of changing attitudes towards income and social security.
In many respects governments – particularly in the English speaking world – have ignored the personal social consequences of their economic policies over the last thirty years that have seen working people’s and increasingly the middle classes’ incomes fall and become more precarious.
Now those costs are being acknowledged in the face of increasing concentration of wealth with politicians and business leaders being forced to confront far less stable and cohesive societies.
It may be that the discussion of a universal guaranteed income forms the foundations of a new social compact that defined the mid Twentieth Century, increasingly it looks like something is needed in increasingly divided economies.
While a unified guaranteed income may not be the solution to addressing the economic and social needs of a substantial proportion of a workforce that is under employed and poorly paid, a discussion on what we can do needs to be had. At least the Swiss have started this.