Swiss voters on Sunday decisively rejected a call to require women to do national service in the military, civil protection teams or other forms, as all men must do already.
Official results. with counting still ongoing in some areas after a referendum, showed that more than half of Switzerland’s cantons, or states, had rejected the “citizen service initiative” by wide margins. That meant it was defeated, because proposals need a majority of both voters and cantons to pass.
Voters also heavily rejected a separate proposal to impose a new national tax on individual donations or inheritances of more than 50 million francs ($62 million), with the revenues to be used to fight the impact of climate change and help Switzerland meet its ambitions to have net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
ITT: people judging the vote and the voters by the magnanimous title alone.
The initiatives were worded and implemented so poorly, that it wouldn’t surprise me if the initiants wanted to lose both these votes.
- The inheritance tax would have caused mass nationalisations and it had pegged the tax proceeds to go towards climate goals instead of let’s say the federal pension fund deficit (AHV-Loch). It would be incorrect to state that the voters don’t support an inheritance tax or climate goals based on this vote.
- The “service citoyen” proposal would have made some kind of civil or military service mandatory for all, but would have essentially reduced the military to a volunteer force, which would be socially unacceptable. The Swiss have a historically repeatedly confirmed will to keep a citizen’s militia as the country’s only security force.
There is no “AHV-Loch”, we’re doing well in that respect. I’m against the second initiative too, but your rationalization is wild.
Insane that any democracy would reject an inheritance tax
Most workers have been conditioned to fight tooth and nail for their oppressors.
It’s really sad.
Because it is theft. If my parents are successful and pay their taxes why is it fair to double tax a child’s inheritance. You tax earnings and income. You don’t the same money multiple times.
It’s more important to prevent an aristocracy than it is to be fair.
Thing is the same money does regularly get taxed multiple times. You get shafted on money as it comes to you (income tax) and u get shafted on that money once you spend it to (sales tax). Hell I bought a house and will get to pay taxes on that annually for as long as I own it, despite already paying my state and fed govt taxes.
with the revenues to be used to fight the impact of climate change and help Switzerland meet its ambitions to have net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
Maybe the people wanted to have actual social services provided to them instead of climate action.
They could light the money on fire and it would still be worth impleminating
the problem how i understood is, that we are not only talking about cash money but also money that is in businesses. family owned businesess may then be forced to sell their business to shareholder owned foreign corpos, because they could not afford it due to the tax. that sparked some major fear among voters. the result was not even close, it was 78% No! thats hughe and beyond any left/right worldview, not a single canton voted yes, that alone is a clear indicator that this bill was not very well-thought-out
Not that insane. Most people only concern themselves with their own issues. And if you’re a 40 year old whose childhood home is now worth 500k or whatever and you have to pay 200k in taxes in order to inherit it, then you probably want to vote against it because otherwise the government will take it.
Okay, take all that with a grain of salt because I’m not too familiar with inheritance law, but it’s based on multiple similar stories I’ve heard from people.
I still think it should be taxed, don’t get me wrong. But I understand why people are against it.
The text indicates that it’s only on inheritances greater than 62 million dollars
Yeah, it’s true that in this case most people would never have to care about that. When I replied I was thinking about inheritance taxes in general. My bad.
Why is that insane? Wasn’t tax already paid on that money once?
It should have been.
I thought everyone had to serve. Sad.
If men have to sign up for the draft then it is only fair that women have to too. It’s unfair that only men have to risk being drafted and losing so much of their life to war.
Actually I rather if Drafting was abolished altogether
As a general rule, I oppose gender roles codified into law.
Oh give me a break, women are getting away worse in so many facets of life. When we have fixed discrimination against women we can talk about them doing mandatory civil service.
Edit: Did not know that on Lemmy we have such an issue with women’s rights.
Unfortunately a large majority of people have an issue with women’s rights 🥲
No it’s you who has an issue with equality.
Do not bring up too many arguments.
I don’t have to, you did all the dirty work for me.
If believing so makes you happy ☺️
It doesn’t sound like Lemmy has an issue with women’s rights, it sounds like you have an issue with equal rights.
So? Are we supposed to have a fair, equal society or are we playing these games of measuring each other’s cocks?
Measure whatever you want but maybe first make it slightly more equal for the ones who have been disadvantaged for decades? But no, one party always focuses on the few things man have where they are slightly worse of.
You’re right, men should just go die in a war they have no reason to fight and be happy about it.
No they should not? Nobody said that.
Also nobody who is in the army here actually believes they will ever see a war. Most people who serve just hate it and see it as a waste of time that will never amount to anything.
slightly more equal
all animals are equal but some are more equal than others (/s)
I’m a feminist and I honestly don’t understand this mentality. Mixing genders in all activities is good for our society, period.
Not if said activity is forced upon you. Women can already voluntarily join the military or civil service.
So can men, but in this instance they’re also compelled. The ask here is that if men are compelled to service, women should be too. That’s obviously equal treatment and fair.
Am I in the wrong movie? Women are at a huge disadvantage in life (Gender pay gap, workplace representation, unpaid care and domestic work, education and job positions, healthcare, part-time employment, promotion and career advancement, violence against women, political representation) and we should work to solve that but for some reason we first want to force them to also serve in the military while leaving the current system in place that puts them at a disadvantage? Oh the heavens, men have to serve for a single year…yes that is super important, not all the things they get a huge advantage in life?
While i see the theoretical point of “if bad happens to men, it should happen to women too”, i don’t think it applies to heavily bad situations, especially with all the bad things already happening in disadvantage of women, and also especially war and especially from a pacifist perspective. Like no one says “if more women are raped than men, we should rape more men to make it fair”. I know it’s not the same situation its just a abusive comparison to strongly show the pertinence of a stance like “even if it’s not fair, the most people we can get out of horrible situations the better it is”.
Is Switzerland full of sexist people who think “someday I’LL be rich so I don’t want to tax MYSELF more, hypothetically maybe in the distant future”?
The main counter argument was that this tax would make Switzerland quite unattractive to rich people, and that they would simple leave the country so that they don’t have to pay this tax. And then Switzerland would even lose tax income overall.
Afaik, Switzerland is a very conservative place. So that pretty much aligns with what you said.
They are so conservative that women got the right to vote federally in 1971. In one Canton they only got the right to vote at the local level in 1990 after a Supreme Court decision. They were the last Western Democracy to do so.
Native Americans didn’t get the right to vote until 1975… unless you are counting the 1990 thing they weren’t the last.
I want to be part of a normal species
Sexist is debatable but… yeah
But everyone worshiping the rich? Yeah, that is Switzerland in a nutshell. A decade or so ago I spent a week in Switzerland on holiday and… even the state funded museums kinda felt like “And then so and so developed a really cool technology that saved countless lives. AND THEN THEY GOT RICH!!! FRANCA FRANCA BILS Y’ALL!!! And here is what they bought with it and the house they lived in and how much paper it takes to print out their monthly statement and… Oh, the tech? Whatever, nobody cares about that”
It’s no coincidence that they are notorious for being a tax haven for unsavory individuals with shady dealings.
Does the earth revolve around the sun?
Yes. Europe isn’t the magical forward thinking land it’s made it to be lol. Well, most of it isn’t, anyway. Still a great place to spend some time though.
I don’t really see women voting to have themselves be drafted.
I also don’t see them voting to make rich people slightly less rich.
Do you not see that because you read the title of the article?
It feels very strange to be a US citizen and actually be able to judge another country for making a silly conservative decision. Woo?
I think, the initiative was rejected by all parties,but probably for different reasons. If you look at the position of the parties in this table
Edit: this is the position of the left
What is not well enough reprensented in this post is that the Service Citoyen was not only about makimg women do a mandatory service. It was to transform the outdated and regressive mandatory service for men into a more general service to the collective that treated security not as a entirely militaristic issue but as a wholistic one.
Now parliament will interpret this as a mandate to cull the existing useful civil service and force every men (and potentially women too) into the military.
There shouldn’t be mandatory military service at all
My theory is that if you can’t convince enough people to volunteer to fight for your nation, then you have failed as a nation.
With this parliament the military will stay and grow and become more and more unavoidable. Service citoyen would have countered that…
That’s an option I would accept too.
Tell that to Ukraine.
As an American, I have no room at all to judge this decision. But
proposals need a majority of both voters and cantons to pass.
That sounds amazing. Let’s do that, please.
I mean, straight popular vote would probably be better. But this could really do what the Electoral College stans say that it was made to do, without doing what it actually does.
That sounds amazing.
It sounds arbitrary and heavily weighted to favor the smaller cantons. Same problem we have with the US Senate and the filibuster. Representatives for a meager 30M voters can obstruct policy championed by the other 300M
Anything even slightly better than the idiocy we have seems amazing to me, apparently
Nazi collaborators continuing to be backwards idiots. What a surprise.
you are a massive ignorant idiot. there is so much more to this story than just that.
The term Nazi is slung around so loosely now I have become desensitized. Did the guy once post a meme about defunding some government program or did he try to burn down a Jewish synagogue, both will be labeled Nazi in 2025.
The Swiss literally collaborated with the literal Nazis.
I have become desensitized
Weird that hearing about fascism has left you incapable of identifying fascists. I never see your type have this problem with Muslims, Feminists, or Tankies.
Alright well I don’t deal in cosplay, sorry.
:-/
What’s this tabloid supposed to mean?
The takes on here are wild as a Swiss dude.
Hint: Mandatory service is a problem.
That’s a wild take …
Mandatory service is not a problem. As long as we live in a world with countries like russia mandatory service does more good than harm.
Mandatory service causes two main issues (for me): Bad, undisciplined armies and authoritization of the population.
It is. Get with the times it’s the 21st century. Modern men are equipped with better social tools and technologies to be able to tackle any problems that come their way without resorting to savagery that is violence. There’s diplomacy, economic sanctions as well as international agreements to get Russia to stop what they are doing with a strongly worded letter. The sword may seems sharp, but nay the pen is mightier than the sword. Yet, it is men’s fragile ego that prevents them from searching alternative solutions other than wanton violence. Oh Vritra, if we could eliminate all the men if the world, the world would a lot more peaceful, as the remaining people eat their crumpets and sips on their tea.
If Russians invade your country they’ll have guns, not pens, and you’ll need a plan to deal with them when they don’t feel like negotiating.
Hey! You lost this:
*Hand over a “/s”
Isreal uses its mandatory service to get teenagers to support genocide.
Bunch of morons.
