BASIC INCOME BASIC INCOME A Radical Proposal for a Free Society and a Sane Economy PHILIPPE VAN PARIJS YANNICK VANDERBORGHT harvard university press Cambridge, Mas sa chu setts London, England 2017 Copyright © 2017 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College All rights reserved Printed in the United States of Amer i ca First printing library of congress cataloging- in- publication data Names: Parijs, Philippe van, 1951– author. | Vanderborght, Yannick, author. Title: Basic income : a radical proposal for a free society and a sane economy / Philippe Van Parijs and Yannick Vanderborght. Description: Cambridge, Mas sa chu setts : Harvard University Press, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016045726 | ISBN 9780674052284 (alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Guaranteed annual income. | Public welfare. | Basic needs. | Economics— Sociological aspects. Classification: LCC HB846 .P37 2017 | DDC 362.5/82— dc23 LC rec ord available at https:// lccn . loc . gov / 2016045726 For Sue and Greet Contents Prologue 1 1 The Instrument of Freedom 4 2 Basic Income and Its Cousins 29 3 Prehistory: Public Assistance and Social Insurance 51 4 History: From Utopian Dream to Worldwide Movement 70 5 Ethically Justifiable? Free Riding Versus Fair Shares 99 6 Eco nom ically Sustainable? Funding, Experiments, and Transitions 133 7 Po liti cally Achievable? Civil Society, Parties, and the Back Door 170 8 ÂViable in the Global Era? Multi- Level Basic Income 216 Epilogue 245 notes 249 bibliography 325 acknowledgments 373 index 375 BASIC INCOME Prologue “The money that one possesses is the instrument of freedom; that which one strives to obtain is the instrument of slavery.” —jean- jacques rousseau, Confessions To rebuild confidence and hope in the future of our socie ties, in the future of our world, we shall need to subvert received wisdom, shake our prejudices, and learn to embrace radical ideas. One of these, simple but crucial, is that of an unconditional basic income: a regular cash income paid to all, on an individual basis, without means test or work requirement. The idea is not new. Since the end of the eigh teenth century, it has oc- curred to any number of bold minds. Today, however, the conjunction of growing in equality, a new wave of automation, and a more acute awareness of the ecological limits to growth has made it the object of unpre ce dented interest throughout the world. Anyone looking into the fate of our developed welfare states can safely be expected to encounter it, as is anyone trying to figure out how to design basic economic security in the less developed parts of our finite planet. The idea of an unconditional basic income is bound to intrigue, and quite often to thrill, those who want tomorrow’s world to be a world of freedom—of real freedom, not mere formal freedom, and for all, not just for the happy few. In chapter 1, we pres ent the central case for an unconditional basic income: how it addresses the prob lems of poverty and unemployment, lousy jobs, and crazy growth; and how it can claim to provide an instrument of freedom and an essential ingredient of a sustainable emancipatory institutional frame- work. In chapter 2, we discuss a number of alternative proposals for which people attracted to the basic income concept, including ourselves, tend to BASIC INCOME feel some sympathy, and indicate why we believe basic income is to be pre- ferred. In chapter 3, we sketch the intellectual and institutional fate, from the sixteenth century onwards, of the two established models of social pro- tection: public assistance and social insurance. In chapter 4, we retrace, from the end of the eigh teenth century onwards, the fascinating history of the idea of a radically distinct third model: basic income. Chapter 5 starts with the moral case against basic income. In response, we pres ent what we believe to be its fundamental ethical justification, invoked only elliptically in chapter 1, and discuss a number of alternative philosophical approaches. Chapter 6 asks whether a substantial basic income is affordable and discusses the many ways of funding it that have been proposed. Against this background, chapter 7 assesses the po liti cal prospects for basic income by surveying the attitudes towards it adopted by po liti cal and social forces around the world and ex- ploring ways of avoiding a pos si ble backlash. Fi nally, chapter 8 considers the specific challenges that basic income faces in the context of globalization. Throughout the book, the primary focus is on proposals for affluent socie ties, but their increasing relevance for less- developed countries is also discussed in many places. After scrutinizing the idea of an unconditional basic income, one may choose to endorse it or to reject it. This book explains why we believe it should be endorsed. But this is not a partisan tract. It is in large part a comprehen- sive, critical synthesis of the fast- expanding multidisciplinary and multilin- gual lit er a ture on the subject. As such, it hopes to provide a depository of reliable information and illuminating insights that should be useful to pe ople arguing for but also against basic income, helping to correct factual errors and conceptual confusions often found in arguments on ei ther side. It also aims to address head-on the most serious objections to the desirability and feasibility of a basic income. Dodging these objections may help one win a televised debate, but it cannot secure the lasting victory of a just proposal— quite the contrary. Yes, a better world is pos si ble, and in order to achieve it, it is necessary to be imaginative and enthusiastic. But intellectually honest discussion that does not elude incon ve nient facts and embarrassing difficul- ties is just as indispensable. This is the collective effort this book invites you to join. A basic income is not just a clever mea sure that may help alleviate urgent prob lems. It is a central pillar of a fr ee society, in which the real freedom to flourish, through work and outside work, will be fairly distributed. It is an 2 PROLOGUE essential ele ment of a radical alternative to both old socialism and neoliber- alism, of a realistic utopia that offers far more than the defense of past achieve- ments or re sis tance to the dictates of the global market. It is a crucial part of the sort of vision needed to turn threats into opportunities, resignation into resolution, anguish into hope. 3 1 The Instrument of Freedom We live in a new world, remade by many forces: the disruptive techno- logical revolution brought about by the computer and the internet; the global- ization of trade, migration, and communication; a fast- growing worldwide demand running up against the limits imposed by a shrinking pool of natu ral resources and the saturation of our atmosphere; the dislocation of traditional protective institutions, from the family to labor unions, state monopolies, and welfare states; and the explosive interactions of these vari ous trends. This creates unpre ce dented threats, but also unpre ce dented opportunities. In order to evaluate these threats and these opportunities, one needs a normative standard. Throughout this book, ours will be the standard of freedom— more precisely, of real freedom for all and not just for the rich. This normative perspective will be spelled out and discussed in chapter 5. For the moment, this rough characterization will suffice. It is this normative commitment that makes us passionately want to prevent the developments listed above from igniting sharp conflicts and breeding new forms of slavery. It makes us want to use them instead as levers for emancipation. For this purpose, action is urgently needed on many fronts, from the dramatic improvement of our cities’ public spaces to the transformation of education into a lifelong activity to the redefinition of intellectual property rights. More than on any other front, action is needed to restructure radically the way in which economic security is pursued in our socie ties and in our world. In each of our socie ties and beyond, we need a sturdy floor on which we can stand as individuals and as communi- ties. If we are to stem our anx i eties and strengthen our hopes, we must dare to introduce what is now commonly called a basic income: a regular income paid in cash to every individual member of a society, irrespective of income from other sources and with no strings attached. THE INSTRUMENT OF FREEDOM A New World What makes such a radical reform today more relevant, indeed more urgent, than ever? Among the rec ord number of people who come out in favor of it publicly, many invoke the new wave of automation already on the way and predicted to keep swelling in coming years: robotization, self- driving vehi- cles, a massive replacement of human- brain workers by computers.1 It will enable the wealth and earning power of some— those who design, control, and are in the best position to exploit the new technologies—to reach new heights, while that of many more plummets. However, technological change, recent and predicted, is only one of the factors that can be expected to drive the polarization of earning power within countries.2 It interacts to dif­er ent extents in dif­er ent places and at dif­er ent times with other factors, in suffi- ciently complex ways that ascribing a precise weight to any of them is impos- sible. Globalization amplifies this polarization by offering a worldwide market to those with scarce skills and other valuable assets, while those with widely held qualifications must compete with each other worldwide via trade and migration.