Basic Income: A Radical Proposal for a Free Society and a Sane Economy

Product Description

“Powerful as well as highly engaging―a brilliant book.”―Amartya Sen
A Times Higher Education Book of the Week
It may sound crazy to pay people whether or not they’re working or even looking for work. But the idea of providing an unconditional basic income to everyone, rich or poor, active or inactive, has long been advocated by such major thinkers as Thomas Paine, John Stuart Mill, and John Kenneth Galbraith. Now, with the traditional welfare state creaking under pressure, it has become one of the most widely debated social policy proposals in the world. Basic Income presents the most acute and fullest defense of this radical idea, and makes the case that it is our most realistic hope for addressing economic insecurity and social exclusion.
“They have set forth, clearly and comprehensively, what is probably the best case to be made today for this form of economic and social policy.”―Benjamin M. Friedman, New York Review of Books
“A rigorous analysis of the many arguments for and against a universal basic income, offering a road map for future researchers.”―Wall Street Journal
“What Van Parijs and Vanderborght bring to this topic is a deep understanding, an enduring passion and a disarming optimism.”―Steven Pearlstein, Washington Post

Review

“A meticulously comprehensive, frequently persuasive accounting of [universal basic income’s] superiority by measures economic, philosophical, and pragmatic.”
―
Nathan Heller
,
New Yorker

“
Basic Income provides a rigorous analysis of the many arguments for and against a universal basic income, offering a road map for future researchers who wish to examine policy alternatives.”
―
Marc Levinson
,
Wall Street Journal

“Although their goal is utopian, Van Parijs and Vanderborght aim to infuse it with economic and political realism…What Van Parijs and Vanderborght bring to this topic is a deep understanding, an enduring passion, and a disarming optimism.”
―
Steven Pearlstein
,
Washington Post

“Van Parijs and Vanderborght go deep, focusing exclusively on a universal guaranteed income and examining a range of philosophical, practical and political arguments for and against it. In considered, often enlightening, prose, they delve into John Rawls, Ronald Dworkin and Amartya Sen. They look at a number of alternative schemes; they discuss various objections to guaranteed income programs, including those over cost, free riding, and the possibility of diminished incentives.”
―
Akash Kapur
,
Financial Times

“Van Parijs and Vanderborght have done the discussion of a universal basic income a great service. They have set forth, clearly and comprehensively, what is probably the best case to be made today for this form of economic and social policy.”
―
Benjamin M. Friedman
,
New York Review of Books

“What matters―what will lift the heart of every reader of
Basic Income―is that Van Parijs and Vanderborght have enlisted the rigor and scruple of first-rate social science in the service of a generous social vision that is at least as old as Saint Ambrose and as up-to-date as Pope Francis. Our sensible and humane descendants―they are bound to be sensible or humane, since humanity would otherwise have long since succumbed to nuclear or environmental catastrophe―will doubtless wonder, with the easy impatience of posterity, what we were waiting for. They may, in fairness to us, decide that we were waiting for books like this.”
―
George Scialabba
,
Commonweal

“Provid[es] argument after argument as to why [basic income’s] introduction would be ‘economically clever’ and why it is the next logical step to take in a long history of social policies aimed at reducing poverty and inequality. Their proposals are not only clear but also extremely pragmatic…The value of this book is that, more comprehensively than any other study yet, it explains why an obligation-free income for all would be so beneficial, and it also charts how this could be incrementally attained.”
―
Danny Dorling
,
Tim