But did you make your own chairs or did you work for someone’s chairs workshop with some protection from the state regarding that relationship (protecting you against slavery, giving you access to sufficient health coverage and some nets in case things didn’t pan out? - no idea how it works in Poland so this may be a legit question). Some of these benefits would justify that some taxes are paid by the worker who’s protected by them (though I do get that taxing income does raise overhead costs, making producing goods/providing services more expensive and thus less competitive in a globalized world).
I did, and I have it, and I am glad. (See? Competition at work to shape the current balance of things: people with diverging views doing what they can to live in the society they want). Though I admit it’s going too far when engineers get global work conventions: people with low bargaining power should be protected but people in positions with responsibilities should be able to handle themselves and face competition (I am an engineer myself).
What do you think would happen in a place without state protection where people with more capital can leverage it to make their will stand on top of other’s, either through sheer necessity (“I can only get a tiny wage for slave hours but I need a wage to raise my family so these conditions are better than the death of my children”) or private armies?
Yes. How do they proceed to achieve it?
Obtaining those skills carries a cost in time, loss of salary (because of the time spent aquiring the skills) and costs that have to be frontloaded. Some people can handle those costs, some choose to, some prefer not, but some people can’t, depending on their circumstances (responsibilities and dependants).
We’re still at square one: if you have liabilities (family in no shape to help you, or even actively weighting on your life/career (I’ve seen alcoholic parents put very heavy weight on their very young children) and little to no capital (that would support you during your training) nor time (because you have to take care of your family/children/other dependants) and society doesn’t provide support either, you’re stuck.
The whole purpose of society stepping in is to make it so that those people aren’t stuck but can muster the time, energy and finances required to actually improve their skills if they want to and are dedicated to it. Such activity requires either taxation and social programs or deputizing the employers to do it in their stead by setting the maximal working hours and minimal benefits that are required to allow employees to pursue their self-betterment outside of their gainful activity (which may not suit the field their skillset would best flourish in).
Ultimately, people must be free to choose to pursue self-betterment or not and live with the consequences that derive from it but to achieve it, they need circumstances that make this choice at least apparently available (thinking of single parents who have to care for a child, for example).
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The market will regulate much automatically, but not everything. For example, I agree with Robert Shiller who said that fairness matters when setting wages but is not a component of economic models. Accordingly, minimal wages make sense to me.
There is a rich country where people lack health insurance. Or need several jobs to survive. I can recommend reading the book “Hand to mouth” by Linda Tirado. People who struggle to make ends meet are trapped in poverty.
In general, the whole topic is also more complicated than we might think. Would the Corona crisis have been worse if we had no social welfare? Would a country with zero social mobility be able to survive in an economically competitive world?
I believe that it is a society’s duty to look after its weakest. Yet some ask for a socialist Disneyland, others want to abolish social welfare for good. As always, the best approach is probably somewhere in between.
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I’m not worried about the parents, what concerns me is the children. If the mistakes of their parents, which are no fault of the children at all, impacts their prospects (of the children) negatively and I can make something that gives these children (not their parents) better circumstances so that they have a better shot at less inequality of opportunities (not outcomes), why should I not step in and do that? Part of my own ability to do so relies on luck (being born in Switzerland already being an incredibly amazing luck - that is actually pure luck - vs so many other places on the planet where my prospects would have been null).
Sorry if that’s the impression it gives, my point is rather that we shouldn’t work on a statistical basis (most people have adequate opportunity so everything is fine) but rather to aim and work toward giving everybody adequate opportunity, as long as it is socially and economically bearable.
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But first you need a matura to be able to apply for university and the majority doesn’t have a matura.
The salary during an apprenticeship/trainee is mostly not enough to live from it, except if you still live with your parents. And for a well paid trainee program you need to be accepted first and that requires some skills/university degree already.
I’d say we all have a right to do mistakes within reasonable limits, though having you pay for it in this particular case would not be a matter of supporting the alcoholics right to go forward in life but would then fall under the framework of a social costs/benefits analysis, taking in particular into account political stability and the maintainance of clean and calm streets.
The results of such an analysis could go either way depending on who is conducting it and is the exact kind of areas where political decisions have to be made and our political system put to work. I’m happy with the current balance but any citizen is welcome to challenge it through initiatives, petitioning their representatives and/or getting into politics themselves.
You just criticized the implementation, not the concept. 
So, if implemented properly, would you support minimal wages? 
Because they can’t afford it.
Or, a similar topic: Paid sick days. You don’t show up at work, you get no money. Duff McKagan describes in his autobiography how he went to work with a fever at a construction site because he simply had no choice.
I am happy that we have regulations that let people stay in bed when sick, without fearing for their existence.
The book is fascinating and shocking at the same time.
We here in the forum, probably every single one of us, are privileged in one way or the other.
It’s easy to forget that.
Let’s not become like Marie Antoinette, ok? 
Do you have a source?
This article says that the US was hit harder.
…but surely their investors should be able to have say.
In this regard, it is a misconception to assume that the entrepreneur is the only one investing in his business - and should be the only one to decide.
If we make it a it’s the state and the government that are (morally speaking) “investing” tons of time and capital into an entrepreneur’s business. By providing necessary security, resources and infrastructure for the employer to conduct his business:
- road and transport, water, sewerage and electricity infrastructure
- free or heavily subsidised education for future employees. The entrepreneur does not have to train its employees how to read, write or do basic maths, let alone more complex tasks, all by himself and on his own expenses
- security, a legal framework of, for instance, contract law and means of legal recourse against other parties breaking contracts, and law enforcement to enforce all that
- …
But the entrepreneur does compensate the government for all that by paying taxes, you say?
Well, who says that business taxes are or need to be covering all societal costs?
And the fact that a company pays something (dividends) to shareholders does not mean that the latter have no other say on business affairs, just because they’re compensated in with dividend payments.
200 CHF is an outlier.
A single mother with two children in 4055 Basel will easily pay almost a 1000 CHF per months. On the cheapest offers for compulsory health insurance.
…and some people would not be able to afford private insurance in a free market - because they’re deemed too great an insurance risk (for reasons such as health).
And I’d be the first to vote to make health insurance mandatory on a principle of solidarity.
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I see on priminfo 492 CHF/month for that concrete case and highest franchise. Kids being 11 y old. Still a lot of money though compared to other countries. Just saw yesterday that Switzerland is the second most expensive country after the US, but with one of the hightest life expectancies (unlike the US).
Otherwise, I am for a fair taxation, and I think that the topic is so complex that there is no easy solution, and definetely by one source.
Every individual should contribute up to his means, especially that in a holistic calculation, rich persons have a higher profit of a strong state and infrastructure (a logistic company profits a lot of good road + rail infrastrucure than a single worker for instance).
Therefore :
using single source for taxation is only for people who think that the world is simple. If you want to address the complexity, you have to look at different sources
there is a big gap when people are starting their lifes. Especially inheritance is a problem, and we are getting back to world shortly before French revolution, where it is not about the skills of someone, but with how much capital this person starts.
BTW, there has been a study in Germany about companies which failed because of inheritance tax. They are still searching for some company where this happened.
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Quick question, do you also think that the kid should suffer from the “mistakes” of his mother ? Child poverty in this case is a real problem, just saying.
Seriously, I hope for yourself you will never make a mistake in life. It happens quicker than you think. I did, and without help, I would not be back on my feet and being a productive member of society.
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I have to disagree on that point, you were raised in Switzerland as far as I know. You did not manage everything on your own. You took “advantage” of a social system in Switzerland which helped you.
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You profited from free education right ?
Your parents were in Switzerland, so they had access to SVA right ?
At some point you said you studied in Canada, how did you finance that ? All by your own means ? loan ? others ?
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One moment, you were freelancer at 16 after studying ?
Well some people do. Of course you can throw everyone into the trashcan who don’t. But then we would ran in some funny problems.
Nonsense for you, lifesaver for others.
How big you think of a problem is that ?
Just for reference, legal tax avoidance by shifting around profits 70 billion euros in France on the low side, social fraud is estimated on the high side to 293 million Euros, with also a lot of people (around 40%) not accessing to social welfare even if they would have the right to (no idea about Swiss numbers right now). I see the milking of the system is more on the high wealth tax payer side, by profiting off from high end educated and healthy workforce, infrastructure etc., but no will to pay up for it.
Patron, I think you’re not seeing other people as they are. Not everyone has the same abilities, the same mental health or the same psychological resilience as you seem to have.
Because you don’t really believe that other people are often totally different to you and have different inner lifes, you are thinking they will react to gov. structures the same way as you are.
Many, many people have innate or preexisting characteristics and abilities that make them incapable of leading lifes that you (or me) would want them to lead. They never chose to be lazy, irrate, neurotic, unagreeable, etc. It’s just the way they are. (If they were given the choice to become hard-working most of them would take it. But you can’t just change yourself in such a way. Or at least, not if you’re not Patron 
)
There are millions working on persons with those issues. Psychologists, doctors, teachers, politicians, insurance people, economists, sociologists, etc.
If there was an easy solution to have them behave much better than they already do, I’d imagine we’d have already found it.
This doesn’t mean doing nothing or letting people simply be anti-social. However, we should set up society in a way that optimally deals with how people are and actually behave, not how some idealised version of them would be. This might sometimes mean that we should let free markets reign and set the incentives. But sometimes it will likely also mean that we should set up structures that deal with innate or preexisting problems in people.
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You’re exactly missing the point. “People might start out different but they can change into whatever they want to become.”
The characteristics and abilities they are born with, the environment they grow up with determine to a vast degree the decisions they make during their life.
But I think the discussion would need too much attention and time for me to lead anywhere.
Fun fact: You misunderstand The Road Not Taken. It’s not about choosing the harder path, it’s about the human tendency to ascribe undue meaningfullness to the choices we took in the past.
The Road Not Taken
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,And both that morning equally lay
In leaves, no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
The first three sections of the poem are about how the author can’t really decide about which path to take, they seem equal.
The last section is an ironic take on the view he thinks he’ll have with hindsight.
Kind of like the people who think they are self-made millionaires in retrospect but benefitted hugely by there environment, natural abilities, institutional framework, etc and were mainly just really lucky (Just kidding)
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Not sure how you do that. I’m hardly getting below 600. With - admittedly I seem to have forgotten to mention above - minimum “franchise”. Which many will need or prefer if they have a condition that requires regular treatment.
Not technically. But - kind of - morally. Since you were getting into morals.
They call it a stakeholder, nowadays.
Governments collect taxes from individuals and businesses. They will not - and are not designed - to be cost-covering on an individual basis. Put differently, some businesses will be paying very few compared to the services they’re actually getting and requiring - and others will pay a lot.
Yes, really.
Once you’re older than 26, 200 CHF/month will get you a health insurance only on the very least expensive pricing schemes in the most rural areas of the country. Forget about it in any larger city.
My impression also. Hence my reference to Marie Antoinette above.
Maybe the key to some progress in these discussions is we manage to convince him that other people are not necessarily and always like him.
The same might also aplly “to the other” thread…
I don’t think we can get meaningful discussions by trying to convince people of anything. They have their views, based on their personal history, experiences and thought processes, we have ours. What we can do is exchange experiences and facts, as well as ways we deal with them and what that brings to us.
We’ve done that thoroughly. At this point, I don’t think anybody here will be convinced by what the others have to say. I’d agree to disagree and keep fact-checking the information that are brought in (thanks to those who do that!) unless new significant facts come out or the situation evolves significantly.
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