Global Social Policy, a peer-reviewed journal on public policy and social development, has included a forum on basic income in its March 2017 volume.
The forum contains four short articles:
1. “Universal basic income in a feminist perspective and gender analysis” by Patricia Schulz (published previously, and summarized in Basic Income News here).
2. “Universal basic income as development solution?” by Anita Lacey (Politics and International Relations, University of Auckland, New Zealand). Lacey outlines the potential for UBI to promote individual freedom and impact social and economic relations, and briefly describes the basic income pilot conducted in Namibia.
3. “Social protection and basic income in global policy” by Moritz von Gliszczynski (LAG Soziale Brennpunkte Niedersachsen, Germany). Von Gliszczynski analyzes the lack of attention to UBI in global policy discourse, and argues that this is due to two factors: first, in contrast to alternative policies such as social cash transfers, UBI is not directly aimed at traditional goals such as “transform[ing] the poor into agents of development”; second, proposals for UBI are vague and supported by comparative little empirical evidence.
4. “Basic income: A social democratic perspective” by Andrew Jackson (Carleton University and Broadbent Institute, Canada). Jackson argues UBI is too expensive and risks jeopardizing existing programs. Additionally, raising taxing to support a large, untargeted benefit is likely not to be politically feasible.
Reviewed by Cameron McLeod
Photo CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 The Shopping Sherpa
