- Acceptez-vous l'initiative populaire "1:12 - Pour des salaires équitables"? In the US, income inequality has been consistently going up since the 70s. Too much income inequality creates a society in which I feel less comfortable living, but imposing a maximum ratio between the lowest and highest salary within a company looks to me like a flawed approach to alleviate this problem. Using a company as a unit is problematic; it opens the door to inequalities and workarounds. Say, a dental surgeon who has her own independent practice isn't too happy paying her cleaning lady 1/12 of her salary? Then she can just outsource cleaning and bypass that constraint. It is also not clear to me that the law would take into account stock given to executives (and increasingly other employees as well). Instead, if the goal is to reduce income equality, I'd rather look at the policies of countries with a low Gini coefficient and a healthy economy, like many of the Scandinavian countries. My vote: no. Expected: no. Result: n/a.
- Acceptez-vous l'initiative populaire "Initiative pour les familles: déductions fiscales aussi pour les parents qui gardent eux-mêmes leurs enfants"? This is a hard one, but I'll go with a yes, mostly because the arguments of the federal council are logically flawed. If the primary goal is to help families with children, why only provide this help to those who pay someone to take care of their children? Imagine you wanted to provide an incentive for people not to use their car going to work; if you were to do so by making public transportation costs deductible, you'd be discriminating against people who carpool, bike, or walk to work. (Using a deduction for such an encouragements feels flawed to me, as it disproportionately benefits people with higher salaries who are also those who need the help the least, but this is a different question.) My vote: yes. Expected: no. Result: n/a.
- Acceptez-vous la modification du 22 mars 2013 de la loi fédérale concernant la redevance pour l'utilisation des routes nationales (Loi sur la vignette autorouotière, LVA)? The suggested amount (CHF 100.-) doesn't seem unreasonable, and since this is a rather technical issue, I'm comfortable following the recommendation of the federal council and parliament.
