Netherlands: Estimates of F-35’s Costs go much higher

The Joint Strike Fighters are intended to be the successor of the F-16’s in the air force. In September Hennis already wrote that the purchase of the 37 fighter jets may cost 550 million euros more than expected. She did not adapt her budget at the time to include the new estimate, because it would mean drastic measures when it is still uncertain whether they’d be necessary.
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Utrecht to trial a ‘Basic Income’ system

It’s an idea whose adherents over the centuries have ranged from socialists to libertarians to far-right mavericks. It was first proposed by Thomas Paine in his 1797 pamphlet, Agrarian Justice, as a system in which at the “age of majority” everyone would receive an equal capital grant, a “basic income” handed over by the state to each and all, no questions asked, to do with what they wanted. …

Utrecht, one of the largest cities in the Netherlands, and 19 other Dutch municipalities, a tentative step towards realising the dream of many a marginal and disappointed political theorist is being made. …
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UBI: Switzerland, Finland, Netherlands

Switzerland has turned its back on a basic income scheme, in which the federal government would have given every resident a monthly payment – expected to be around 2500 Swiss Francs ($2,500) – “regardless of their income and assets”.

Although voters rejected the move in a referendum at the weekend, Switzerland isn’t the only country weighing up a basic-income experiment. Around 10,000 people in Finland could soon be paid €550 each month if the government goes ahead with a universal basic income pilot project.
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