
Basic Income: An Anthology of Contemporary Research
Basic Income: An Anthology of Contemporary Research presents a compilation of six decades of Basic Income literature. It includes the most influential empirical research and theoretical arguments on all aspects of the Basic Income proposal. According to the publisher, it presents the best theoretical and empirical arguments for and against Basic Income. It includes unpublished and hard-to-find articles. It is the first major compendium on one of the most innovative political reform proposals of our age. It explores multidisciplinary views of Basic Income, with philosophical, economic, political, and sociological views. It features contributions from key and well-known philosophers and economists, including Tony Atkinson, James Buchanan, Milton Friedman, Erick Fromm, Andre Gorz, Claus Offe, Philip Pettit, John Rawls, Herbert Simon, Philippe Van Parijs, and many more.
Karl Widerquist, Jose Noguera, Yannick Vanderborght, and Jurgen De Wispelaere (eds.), August 2013. Basic Income: An Anthology of Contemporary Research, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell
The publisher’s U.S. webpage for this book is: https://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-1405158107.html
The publisher’s E.U. webpage for this book is:
https://eu.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-1405158107.html
About Karl Widerquist
Karl Widerquist has written 983 articles.
Karl Widerquist is a Professor of political philosophy at Georgetown University-Qatar. He specializes in distributive justice—the ethics of who has what. Much of his work involves Universal Basic Income (UBI). He is a co-founder of the U.S. Basic Income Guarantee Network (USBIG). He served as co-chair of the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN) for 7 years, and a member of the BIEN EC for 14 years. He was the Editor of the USBIG NewsFlash for 15 years and of the BIEN NewsFlash for 4 years. He is a cofounder of BIEN’s news website, Basic Income News. He is a cofounder of the journal "Basic Income Studies."
Widerquist has published several books and many articles on UBI both in academic journals and in the popular media. He has appeared on or been quoted by many major media outlets, such as NPR’s On Point, NPR’s Marketplace, PRI’s the World, CNBC, Al-Jazeera, 538, Vice, Dissent, the New York Times, Forbes, the Financial Times, and the Atlantic Monthly, which called him “a leader of the worldwide basic income movement.” Most of Karl Widerquist's academic writing is available at his research website (Widerquist.com). For more information about him, see his BIEN profile (https://basicincome.org/news/2016/12/bien-profiles-karl-widerquist-co-chair/).
I find this publication quite embarrassing. How can a group of scientists with a political stance – if not aim – agree to have a book published with such a preposterous price tag – all that in the age of Open Access (also a very important political project)? You must be kidding.
The editors of this book are very happy with it, and far from embarrassed by its publication. Part of the reason this book is expensive is that it is an anthology of mostly previously published and therefore copy-righted material. The publisher has to pay all the rights holders for permission to reprint the chapters. Another part of the reason is that the publishers price the book at a high rate to recoup their investment in a small print run. The expectation is that, for the most part, only libraries or university libraries will buy the current hardcover volume, with hopefully a much cheaper paperback version following soon. We recommend people read the book at a library: it’s the old fashioned version of open source, and it’s what makes it possible to bring together a large selection of key texts on basic income into one single volume. If your library doesn’t have a copy, please recommend it to them.
-Karl Widerquist, Jose Noguera, Yannick Vanderborght, and Jurgen De Wispelaere
How long till the paperback version? any news?
We doubt they’ll make a paperback.
What about e-book version? 🙂