Help me understand why this would be so bad?

14 comments

1. Looks a good idea to me. No money wasted, more transparency, refugees still getting everything they need. Win-Win.

2. That sounds completely fair. If refugees do not like this there are other places to go. They are not spoiled on taxpayer money. Once they get a job they can do whatever they want with their earned money.

3. The main issue is that if you are trying to integrate someone into an existing society the goal should be inclusion and not exclusion. That‘s the reason why we don‘t put refugees into social housing but help them find a regular apartment and why the focus is put on learning the language. The goal is that everyone becomes a regular part of society and people being able to communicate and live like everyone around them is a big part of that. If you start treating refugees on wellfare differently from everyone else on wellfare than I can see that being counter-productive to the goal of people standing on their own two feet and supporting themselves.
   Already refugees have to provide account statements, so the money spent is being monitored. The Swiss approach to integration is working well in comparison to a lot of countries in Europe. Making people feel more excluded will not help in any way.

4. Nice, maybe they wont buy hatchet to take a train hostage with this law.

5. I’m for it, makes it harder to spend money on things you don’t need.

   However, I guess it doesn’t make it impossible. They could still sell the “approved goods” for cash, and then send that back. At a loss of course. Maybe that’s the line of thought.

6. Because it’s a massive waste of time that does nothing other than stigmatize people and give more attention to bigots and their bigoted ideas.

   I hosted a refugee for several months. He was an older Ukrainian man with no money, psychological trauma, and (I’m convinced) an undiagnosed developmental disorder. Before he managed to get a job he was on social help, which was like 120chf a week. Try living off 120CHF and see how much you have left over to send home. It’s an absolute non-issue. Even if you live like a prisoner and send home 100 each month… who on earth cares.

   If we instead invested the effort wasted in such initiatives in providing some minimal support for these people, the returns would be much greater. The guy we hosted really wanted to work. Not to save money (he spent every Rappen) but to not be dependent on the system. He got no help from his social worker at the red cross. He got no help from the RAV. Honest to God all he wanted to do was shovel shit at a farm and the RAV gave him a list of nearby villages, where there were also farms, and was like “there are farms here”. Like if you’re not willing to help just say that…

   My wife and I set him up with German courses, which he attended diligently. We went through his homework with him and practiced. We set him up with job interviews and helped translate. We taught him to use the train and bus to get to work. His social worker met him 2 times in 8 months and only answered questions in German. Now people want to waste time with some silly cards. Ugh. These people just want to work and live like people.

7. First up it’s nothing like the RAV – that doesn’t place any restrictions on what you buy and where you buy it.

   From a human point of view it’s a bad idea: asylum seekers are not allowed to work which is dehumanising enough (can you imagine being forced to live on handouts), why make it worse by not allowing them to manage the small amount of money you give them themselves?

   From a purely capitalist perspective it’s nonsense too – if you restrict the places people can shop and the items they can buy you are creating artificial barriers to competition. The state effectively chooses a few select suppliers to enrich and sod anyone else who would have previously got that money (I wonder how they choose them… 🤔). The reduced competition likely also leads to paying inflated prices so the state pays more, the asylum seekers get less and a few rich companies get richer. That’s without even touching on the costs of setting up and running the debit card scheme (and who gets to choose who gets that contract 🤔).

   TLDR: it’s dehumanising, expensive to run and designed to enrich a few business owners to the detriment of Swiss tax payers.

8. Cash is freedom in our society. By restricting where and how they can spend money, you pretty much restrict where they are allowed to exist. People usually don’t like that. This could end up with a lot of unnecessary crime and a flourishing black market just because Bünzlis are envious of refugees with airpods.

9. „I consider myself liberal, but….“

10. Oh, they could still buy beer and airpods. All they have to do is being criminal or working illegally. You would create a bad inventive and the systen could be circumvented easily in a country where alcohol is fucking everywhere.

    Is it even good if they cannot send money back to their families? What if they are effected by hunger? It’s one of the straightest forms of development aid.

11. If you’re old, need medical / elderly care, have already sold your house to afford it and then eventually need social support (Sozialhilfe) to pay the taxes you still paid for money you had already earned, the state will also tell you what to buy and what not to buy. Why not treat everybody the same – or why would someone who has lived and worked here all live be forced to jump through all the derogatory hoops of the state and refugees not?
    I don’t get the issue on this matter.

12. If you ignore the whole refuge part of it, it’s a blatant attack on cash. It’s a slippery slope into a Central Bank Digital Currency system, which has the potential to do exactly what is proposed here: Restrict what its users are allowed to spend on.

    Only, in the full-out CBDC system, it would be for everybody, and could take any arbitrary political course. We saw how a majority were willing to segregate and coerce based on medical preferences during the covid debacle. And CO2 quotas, travel restrictions based on environmental policies is not far fetched. There’s already [a law ready to activate to restrict heating in the home](https://www.admin.ch/gov/de/start/dokumentation/medienmitteilungen.msg-id-91655.html). Authoritarian ideology is in full bloom. And CBDC system would enable turn-key totalitarianism.

    Or put in a different way: *First they came for the refugees, but I was not a refuge…*

13. Personally I think that providing bank cards for them is a good idea. Opening bank account is pretty complicated for people on refugee status who do not speak German/French/Italian yet. Not every bank works with them, often you need to already have a permit, which alone can take many months etc. Also it would be great if standart bank fees were waived, even 50-60 CHF is a big fee for them (don’t get me started on Serafe)

    But as for limiting their ability to buy things, I do not see the purpose. They often try to buy secon-hand things from Ricardo or at brockis, should it be prevented? Many Ukranian refugees came with their pets, should they be blocked from bying foid for them because it’s “unnecessary”? Even cigaretes and boose – it will just cause some complications and illegal activity, but won’t prevent any smoking or drinking (e.g. they will buy food and sell it with some discount for cash). Same with money transfer – it’s much easier to block it on operator level.

14. Sounds like a lot of trouble just for some moral controlling. The amount of money is marginal compared to other public expenditures and the bit that might be misused is even less relevant.