by Kate McFarland | Jan 15, 2017 | Research
The quarterly Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare (based at Western Michigan University) published a symposium on the basic income guarantee (BIG) in its September 2016 issue.
The symposium includes five articles on the topic, plus an introduction written by two members of BIEN: Richard K. Caputo (Wurzweiler School of Social Work at Yeshiva University) and Michael Lewis (School of Social Work at Hunter College, CUNY). The first three articles present arguments for the adoption of a BIG in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, respectively. The fourth argues that a BIG is more politically feasible in the United States than alternative approaches to economic security, such as a Swedish-type welfare state. The fifth proposes a feminist argument for a BIG, although cautioning that more empirical work is needed.
Titles and abstracts, with brief descriptions of the authors, are given below. Links to manuscripts are provided where available.
Jennifer Mays and Greg Marston – “Reimagining Equity and Egalitarianism: The Basic Income Debate in Australia”
“Reimagining equity and egalitarianism calls for rethinking traditional welfare responses to poverty and economic security in Australia. Similar to other advanced Western democracies, Australia has pursued policies underpinned by neoliberal economics in an effort to curtail perceived excesses in public expenditure over the past three decades. In response to these policy settings, commentators and policy activists have increased their attention to the potential of a universal and unconditional basic income scheme to address economic insecurity. This paper positions basic income within the context of Australia’s welfare state arrangements and explores the potential of the scheme to respond to economic insecurity, particularly precarious employment and poverty traps created by a highly targeted social security system.”
May is a Course Coordinator in the School of Public Health and Social Work at the Queensland University of Technology, and Marston is Head of School at the School of Social Science at the University of Queensland.
Mays and Marston are both active members of Basic Income Guarantee Australia (BIGA), BIEN’s Australian affiliate, and were co-editors (with John Tomlinson) of Basic Income in Australia and New Zealand: Perspectives from the Neo-Liberal Frontier (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).
James P. Mulvale and Sid Frankel – “Next Steps on the Road to Basic Income in Canada”
“Canada has had recurring debates about guaranteed or basic income over several decades. This article outlines reasons for implementing basic income in the Canadian context–reducing poverty and inequality, addressing precarious employment, and building an ecologically sustainable economy. Recently there has been a strong renewal of interest in basic income in Canada. Expressions of interest have come from the Liberal federal government elected in 2015, from provincial governments, from political parties not in power, and from municipal governments. Support for basic income also is found in a growing range of prominent individuals and organizations. While basic income advocates are encouraged by recent developments, several large and complex questions remain on how this approach can be implemented in Canada. These questions encompass the specifics of design, delivery, funding, and political support. How can basic income build on existing income security programs and leave Canadians better off in the end? How can we ensure that basic income is not used as an excuse to cut vital services such health care, social housing, early childhood care and development, and social services for those with disabilities and other challenges? How can basic income be set in place in Canada,given its complicated federal-provincial nexus of responsibility for, delivery of, and funding for social programs? The article concludes with principles that might help guide the implementation of authentically universal, adequate, and feasible basic income architecture in Canada.”
Mulvale is Dean and Frankel an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Social Work at the University of Manitoba — the site of the 2016 North American Basic Income Guarantee (NABIG) Congress, which they helped to organize.
Keith Rankin – “Prospects for a Universal Basic Income in New Zealand”
“New Zealand is a small liberal capitalist country with a history of egalitarian values and political reform–including the early introduction of universal welfare benefits–and with an uncomplicated relatively flat income tax structure. As such, it has sometimes been seen as a “social laboratory,” a theme of writing about New Zealand and of New Zealand social historians. It therefore has all of the elements in place that could make New Zealand a candidate to become a world leader in integrating income tax and social welfare regimes into a form of universal basic income. Nevertheless, through a combination of intellectual inertia, media cynicism, and the requisite elements not all coming together at the same time, the outlook for an open and healthy discussion around public property rights and unconditional benefits remains constrained. Despite this unpromising intellectual environment, New Zealand may yet stumble upon such reform as a political compromise, as it might have done in 1988.”
Rankin is a Lecturer of Business Practice at the Unitec Institute of Technology in Auckland, New Zealand.
Almaz Zelleke – “Lessons from Sweden: Solidarity, the Welfare State, and Basic Income”
“Progressive critics of a universal basic income argue that most nations face a budgetary choice between a full basic income and investment in public goods, including universal health care, free and well-funded education, and universal pensions, and have prioritized a robust welfare state, or the “Swedish Model,” over basic income. But examination of Swedish economic policy reveals that the welfare state is only one of the ingredients of the Swedish Model, and that another is an interventionist labor market policy unlikely to be expandable to larger states without Sweden’s cultural and demographic characteristics. Indeed, evidence suggests that Sweden’s own recent diversification–not only of race and ethnicity but of occupational strata–will make the Swedish Model less stable in its own home. What lessons can be applied to the case for a basic income in the U.S. and other large and diverse nations or regions?”
Zelleke is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Political Science at New York University’s campus in Shanghai. She has written multiple journal articles and book chapters on basic income, and has been an active member of BIEN.
Sara Cantillon and Caitlin McLean – “Basic Income Guarantee: The Gender Impact within Households”
“The potential of a Basic Income Guarantee (BIG) to contribute to gender equality is a contested issue amongst feminist scholars. This article focuses on the nature of BIG as an individually-based payment to explore its potential for reducing gender equality, specifically intra-household inequalities in material or financial welfare; economic autonomy; psychological well-being; and time allocation, especially leisure time and time spent in household and care work. We employ a gender analysis of existing BIG pilots/schemes as well as close substitutes (e.g., universal child benefits) to assess some of the key claims about the effects of a basic income (BI) on gendered inequality. We also present findings from empirical work on intra-household allocation and decision-making which underscore the role of independent income. The article finds some support for BIG as a feminist proposal with respect to mitigating intra-household inequality, but concludes that further empirical research is needed to argue persuasively for BIG as an instrument for furthering gender equality.”
Cantillon is Professor of Gender and Economics at Glasgow Caledonian University. McLean is a lead researcher at the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment at the University of California at Berkeley.
Reviewed by Genevieve Shanahan
Cover photo by Christopher Andrews, CC BY-NC 2.0
by Kate McFarland | Jan 12, 2017 | News
Economist Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum, expressed optimism about unconditional basic income (bedingungsloses Grundeinkommen) in an interview with Hamburger Abendblatt, a daily newspaper in Hamburg, Germany. Schwab called the idea “basically plausibly” and predicted that discussion about it would develop over the next decade.
The Hamburger Abendblatt interview covered a range of topics related to globalization and digitalization. At one point, the reporters asked Schwab about his assessment of US President Donald Trump’s contention that he will bring back jobs from Asia and Mexico. In reply, Schwab pointed out that some industry might return to the US in the form of “digitized factories”.
Schwab then broached the idea of unconditional basic income in response to a follow-up question about the future of work: if industry is becoming digitized, what should be done for “those for whom there is no longer any work”?
In Switzerland, there was recently a referendum about the unconditional basic income. At least 23% of the citizens voted for it. Even I assent the idea for a basic income is basically plausible. Furthermore, I believe in 10 years the discussion about it will be far more ahead than now.
In response to a question about the effect of a basic income on attitudes toward work, Schwab asserts that a basic income could be seen as recognition for certain types of work, such as care work, that are important to society but currently paid relatively low wages:
I deny that people would then put their hands in their lap and sit lazily at home. A nurse in Germany with 2000 euros gross pay might today feel worn out. If, however, she were to receive a basic income, she might see it as recognition, and she would have a different basic attitude towards her work. In the future, if jobs are swept away due to digitalization, we need on the other hand a humanization of society. Industrial jobs will be gone, but there will be more social work to be done, like medical and health care.
The World Economic Forum is best known for its annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland. Held each year in January, the Davos meeting brings together approximately 2,500 invited guests, comprising top business executives, political leaders, and distinguished academics, for a series of panels and discussions of pressing global economic, political, and social issues.
The Davos meeting itself has already proven receptive to discussions of basic income. This year, the event will include a panel on basic income, featuring BIEN cofounder Guy Standing. Last year, the event held a forum on a “world without work”, in which Nobel laureate Sir Christopher Pissarides expressed support for a basic income guarantee, and was the site of the dancing “robots for basic income”.
Full interview with Schwab (in German):
Hannes Koch and Jörg Quoos “Schwab: ‘Gewinner müssen mit Verlierern solidarisch sein’,” Hamburger Abendblatt, January 9, 2017.
Translation assistance by Ronald Heinrich. Reviewed by Danny Pearlberg.
Photo CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 World Economic Forum
by Kate McFarland | Dec 31, 2016 | Opinion, Testimonies
This year, BIEN celebrated the 30th anniversary of its birth. In commemoration of the occasion, founding members reunited at its birthplace–the Université Catholique de Louvain in Louvain-la-Neuve, Beglium–for a series of talks on the past and future of BIEN and the basic income movement.
At the end of the year, all Life Members of BIEN were invited to reflect on their own personal histories with the organization and movement. Read their stories here:
• Hyosang Ahn (Director of Basic Income Korea Network; South Korea): “The first time I encountered the idea of basic income was the summer of 2007. I was at the time the vice president of a small party on the left, rather imaginatively named the ‘Socialist Party’, and was preparing for the coming presidential election…”
• Jan Otto Andersson (Life Member; Finland): “… In 1986 I took part in the international congress on Basic Income in Louvain-la-Neuve. My contribution was called “Basic Income in Three Social Visions”: a Red-Blue mixed society, a Blue-Green dual society and a Red-Green combined society. …”
• Christopher Balfour (Life Member; UK): “… Having been adopted as a Conservative Parliamentary Candidate in the mid-1960s…, I began to talk with already-elected Members of Parliament who shared my concerns. In this way I met Brandon Rhys Williams and then his mother, Dame Juliet. They introduced me to this concept of a small payment as of right, no strings attached, to all citizens. …”
• Richard Caputo (Life Member; US): “… I was not taken in by the idea of an unconditional basic income (UBI) guarantee whole cloth. It did not square well with my sense of social justice, nor with my concerns about poverty reduction, though it did address what I saw as the diminished value of wage-based labor in an increasingly global economy and seemed compatible with the social work value of self-determination. …”
• André Coehlo (News Editor-in-Chief; Portugal): “For me to contribute to BIEN…was kind of a natural progression in my personal activism, after the Zeitgeist Movement. I naturally accepted the basic income concept, after defending a resource based economy, as the former can be seen as an intermediate step towards the latter. …”
• Louise Haagh (Co-Chair of BIEN): “I first came across basic income in summer of 2001 when instructed about it by Workers’ Party Senator Eduardo Suplicy, at his home in São Paulo. I was doing research on workers’ rights, at the same time undertaking a survey of economic security among residents in poor and middle-income district …”
• Michael Howard (Coordinator of USBIG Network; US): “I can remember the moment when I first took a keen interest in basic income. I was familiar with the idea, having spent a research leave at the European University Institute in Fiesole, when Philippe Van Parijs was there writing Real Freedom for All. …”
• Julio Linares (“Life Member 252”; Guatemala): “I first heard about BIEN at a conference in Switzerland about the future of work and basic income. I went to that conference because of a hunch. …”
• José A. Noguera (International Advisory Board of BIEN; Spain): “I still remember quite clearly the first time I read something about the idea of a Basic Income: it was back in 1991, when I was finishing my degree in Sociology in Barcelona, and spent most of my time reading abstruse texts of social theory. …”
• Steven Shafarman (Coordinating Committee of USBIG; US): “My drive to enact a basic income – and most of my ideas about how to attract, educate, organize, and mobilize allies – arose from exploring the way young children learn to walk and talk. …”
• Malcolm Torry (Director of Citizen’s Income Trust, Co-Secretary of BIEN; UK): “Almost exactly forty years ago, I left university, got married, and started work in Brixton, in South London, administering means-tested benefits. … [I]t didn’t take long to understand how inefficient, degrading, and disincentivising means-tested benefits were. …”
• Jenna van Draanen (Outreach Coordinator and News Editor; Canada): “Working with BIEN has been a wonderful experience for me. Not only are there extremely dedicated people here, but they are also talented and kind. …”
• Philippe van Parijs (Co-Founder of BIEN; Belgium): “It is hard for young people today to imagine what it meant to run an international network when all communication between its members had to happen through the post. The newsletter needed to be typed, then printed, then photocopied, then stapled. …”
• Martine Mary Waltho (Life Member; UK): “I first came across the idea of a basic income when I was at university in 1984. There was an article in a magazine; it might have been the New Society. …”
• Karl Widerquist (Co-Chair of BIEN; US): “When I first attended a BIEN Congress in 1998, I’d already been a Basic Income supporter for 18 years, but it was exhilarating for me just to find out that there were enough dedicated Basic Income supporters to fill an auditorium. …”
• Toru Yamamori (News Editor; Japan): “My encounter to the idea of a basic income was around 1991-2. I was involved in solidarity activism with a casual worker’s trade union, in which many of the members were homeless construction workers. …”
Photo: Participants at BIEN’s 2016 Congress in Seoul (bien2016.org/en).
by BIEN | Dec 30, 2016 | Bios & background Info, Opinion, Testimonies
Richard K. Caputo (Professor of Social Work)
My colleague Professor Vicki Lens recommended that I check out the US Basic Income Guarantee (USBIG) Network which was planning its first annual Congress for March 8-9, 2002 in New York City. Professor Lens was familiar with much of my scholarship on low-income families and economic well-being and thought my interests overlapped with the likes of Stony Brook School of Social Welfare Professor Michael Lewis (who coauthored Economics for Social Workers with Professor Karl Widerquist, the Congress organizer and one of the USBIG Network’s founders), among others.
I submitted an abstract based on the research I had done about the Nixon administration’s Family Assistance Plan while writing Welfare and Freedom American Style II. My abstract, “FAP Flops: Lessons Learned from the Failure to Pass the Family Assistance Plan in 1970 and 1972,” was accepted. I presented the full paper on Friday, March 8th, though somewhat intimidated by such knowledgeable notables as Sociologist Professor Fred Block and independent scholar Allan Sheahen (author of Guaranteed Income: The Right to Economic Security), among others. Thus began what turned out to be my ongoing associations with the USBIG Network and BIEN.
Though intrigued by my participation in First Congress of USBIG, I was not taken in by the idea of an unconditional basic income (UBI) guarantee whole cloth. It did not square well with my sense of social justice, nor with my concerns about poverty reduction, though it did address what I saw as the diminished value of wage-based labor in an increasingly global economy and seemed compatible with the social work value of self-determination. As I learned more about the idea and its implications, I was quite taken by what seemed to be the sharp contrast about capitalism and about freedom. At the time, in late 2003 and early 2004, I had been working on an essay, “The ethics of poverty,” for Salem Press, while also thinking about a paper for presentation at the USBIG conference that was to take place February 22-22 in Washington, DC.
I had asked the USBIG primary coordinator at the time, Karl Widerquist, if he knew of any related secular literature dealing with the ethics of poverty. He directed me to the works of Philip Van Parijs (Real Freedom For All: What If Anything Can Justify Capitalism?), one of the two contemporary UBI intellectual heavyweights, the other being Guy Standing (Beyond the New Paternalism: Basic Security as Equality). In my reading of their works, Professors Van Parijs and Standing went head to head about the relationship between capitalism and UBI. For Professor Van Parijs the productive, wealth-generating capacity of capitalism made the UBI possible, enhancing the prospect of each person’s freedom, whereas for Professor Standing capitalism made UBI necessary because of its capacity to eviscerate labor, portending human misery and social unrest. Capitalism as a force for individual and social good vs. capitalism as a force for adverse individual and social consequences made for an interesting mix of scholars and activists who participated in BIEN and USBIG Congresses.
Professors Van Parijs and Widerquist also seemed to be at odds about the idea of freedom. Professor Widerquist, who asked me to comment on an early version of what became his 2006 dissertation from Oxford University (“Property and the Power to Say No: A Freedom-Based Argument for Basic Income”) and the basis of his book Independence, Propertylessness, and Basic Income, dichotomized freedom as a status attribute of personhood, one either had it or did not, implying that a UBI would have to be at a level sufficiently high to enable anyone to reject a job offer s/he deemed unsuitable for any reason while living reasonably well financially. Professor Van Parjis’ idea of freedom was more like a gradient, one had varying degrees of it, enabling him to view any UBI level as an acceptable alternative to not having a UBI at all. I took issue with both, thinking status freedom too narrow if based only on one’s economic circumstances, and a gradient insufficient if the level of UBI had little or no significant impact on the lives of poor individuals and families.
Finally, while drafting the ethics of poverty essay and thinking about a paper for the 2004 USBIG Congress, I also noticed an announcement for the former Yeshiva University Political Scientist Professor Ross Zucker’s Democratic Distributive Justice (2000), which also had a proposal for a guaranteed income. Professor Zucker’s justification for UBI differed from Professor Van Parijs, focusing less on freedom and more on the consumption aspects of making more money available to everyone as consumers.
What I initially learned from my reading of UBI related materials resulted in three articles: (1) “Redistributive Schemes That Skirt Poverty: Reconsidering Social Justice in Light of Van Parijs and Zucker,” published in the Journal of Poverty (2005); (2) “The Unconditional Basic Income Guarantee: Attempts to Eclipse the Welfare State,” published in International Social Work (2008); and (3) “Standing Polanyi on His Head: The Basic Income Guarantee as a Response to the Commodification of Labor,” published in Race, Gender & Class (2008). These articles formed the basis of presentations as several BIEN and related conferences.
While participating in these conferences and meeting international scholars with varying viewpoints and insights about the merits of UBI schemes, I also got the idea for a book documenting how related proposals were faring politically across the globe. With support from Philippe Van Parijs, Yannick Vanderborght, Jurgen De Wispelaere, Michael Lewis, and Eri Noguchi, I applied for and was awarded an $8,000 Summer Research Fellowship from the Rabbi Arthur Schneier Center for International Affairs at Yeshiva University in May 2006, based on the proposal, “Achieving a Basic Income Guarantee: Efforts-to-Date Around the World.” Essentially, I classified the countries I examined into two groups, those, which for all practical purposes rejected UBI schemes (South Africa, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Columbia) and those which sought to build upon or expand other social welfare provisions with the eventual aim of achieving UBI (e.g., a child allowance in Argentina, the Bolsa Família Program in Brazil, a child tax benefit in Canada, guaranteed minimum pension income for low-income persons in Chile, expanding the non-means-tested child benefit in Ireland, and baby bond proposals in the US).
I was taken to task somewhat when I presented the preliminary findings at the 2007 Congress of the USBIG Network in New York, though I had retitled the paper, “The Death Knoll of BIG or BIG by Stealth” for dramatological purposes. Few Congress participants were willing to accept that basic income guarantees were dead-on-arrival policy options anywhere. One session participant, Conference of Religious Ireland (later Social Justice Ireland) Co-Director Father Seán Healy, contended that there was more going on in Ireland than what was visibly available online and in the BIEN Newsflashes and USBIG Newsletters, implying also that my research would benefit from more extensive collaboration with those on the ground who could provide greater nuances about UBI-related politics involved in each country.
I took Father Healy’s and likeminded comments from others to heart, realizing that a single-authored book on the topic was unfeasible, perhaps even foolhardy on my part, given the country-by-country variability of the politics and efficacy of advocacy efforts involved in getting the idea of a basic income guarantee on the public agenda.
Over time, I gathered a group of scholars to contribute to my edited volume, Basic Income Guarantee and Politics: International Experiences and Perspectives on the Viability of Income Guarantee, published in 2012 in the Palgrave Macmillan series Exploring the Basic Income Guarantee.
One of the things that impressed me about the BIEN and USBIG Congresses overall was the tone set by Professor Van Parijs. I found Professor Van Parjis quite personable and open to criticism, some of which came from me, though the most challenging perhaps from Rutgers University Law Professor Phil Harvey who clearly preferred job guarantees over income guarantees. I always felt welcome, as I suspect Professor Harvey did, given the number of papers we presented over the years at BIEN and USBIG Congresses. On several occasions, I heard Professor Van Parijs iterate that the primary role of BIEN was to promote discussion about the merits of the idea, about ethical and practical considerations that one might argue for and against UBI so that our collective thinking about it would be enhanced.
The prospect of UBI remains a scholarly interest of mine, though UBI seems a difficult sell politically in the US. Even the self-identified libertarian Charles Murray, one of UBI’s major proponents, acknowledged that UBI was a political nonstarter. Some traction can be found in the tech sector, as Professor Michael Lewis and I noted in our introduction to the special symposium on UBI in the Autumn 2016 issue of the Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare. I also included UBI as a policy option in the closing chapter of U.S. Social Welfare Reform. On occasion, I also continue to assign related readings for my social welfare policy classes.
Richard K. Caputo is professor of social policy and research at Yeshiva University’s Wurzweiler School of Social Work in New York City. This retrospective is adapted from a chapter in his forthcoming academic memoir, Connecting the Dots: An Intellectual Autobiography of a Social Work Academician.
At the end of 2016, the year in which BIEN celebrated the 30th anniversary of its birth, all Life Members were invited to reflect on their own personal journeys with the organization. See other contributions to the feature edition here.
by BIEN | Dec 3, 2016 | Bios & background Info
Karl Widerquist in 2014
Karl Widerquist was vice-chair of BIEN from May 2017 to August 2018, after serving as co-chair from October 2010 to May of 2017, and as a member of the executive committee from 2004 to 2010. He is a political philosopher and economist at Georgetown University-Qatar. He is the co-founder of the U.S. Basic Income Guarantee (USBIG) Network, which he chaired from 1999 to 2008.
Widerquist is best known as an advocate of Basic Income. But he is also an interdisciplinary academic writer who has published in journals in fields as diverse as economics, politics, philosophy, and anthropology. He is a consistent critic of propertarianism (also known as right-libertarianism or libertarianism), Social Contract Theory, and the Lockean proviso. 8, and he cofounded in 2011. He has been a commentator on several television, radio, and print networks.
Contents
- Biography
- Advocacy of Basic Income
- Empirical and anthropological criticism of contemporary political theory
- Other political and economic theories
- Bibliography
- Media appearances
Biography
Karl Widerquist as a grad student-musician in 1993
Karl Widerquist was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1965. His family moved to Cassopolis, Michigan in 1969, and he grew up there. He completed a Bachelor’s Degree in Economics at the University of Michigan in 1987. For several years Widerquist pursued both music and economics. He was the original bass player for Michael McDermott, and play in several indie bands in New York in the 1990s.[i]
Widerquist completed a Ph.D. in economics at the City University of New York in 1996, later working at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College and the Educational Priorities Panel. He was a Hoover Fellow at the Université catholique de Louvain where he worked with Philippe Van Parijs.[ii]
Widerquist received a second doctorate in Political Theory at the University of Oxford in 2006, and then worked as a Fellow at the Murphy Institute at Tulane University and as a Visiting Professor at the University of Reading in the United Kingdom. Since 2009, he has been an Associate Professor at Georgetown University-Qatar.[iii]
Advocacy of Basic Income
Widerquist claims to have been a supporter of some form of Basic Income Guarantee since he heard the topic discussed on an episode of Milton Friedman’s television show, Free to Choose, in 1980, when he was only 15 years old.[iv] But he did not start writing, working, or publishing on the topic until the late 1990s.[v]
Michael A. Lewis, of Hunter College and USBIG
Widerquist has worked on Basic Income as an economist, a political theorist, a public policy analyst, and organizer. In 1999, Widerquist cofounded the U.S. Basic Income Guarantee (USBIG) Network along with Michael A. Lewis, Fred Block, Charles M. A. Clark, and Pamela Donovan. Widerquist chaired the organization until 2008 and edited its email NewsFlash until 2014.
Widerquist has been the co-chair of the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN) since 2008. In 2011, Widerquist and Yannick Vanderborght cofounded BIEN’s news website, Basic Income News, and severed as its principle writer and editor until 2014, and he still writes for it occasionally. He and BIEN’s other co-chair, Louise Haagh chartered BIEN as a non-profit organization in 2016 and oversaw the expansion of BIEN’s activities.[vi]
Widerquist’s writing on Basic Income includes several articles reexamined the results of the Negative Income Tax experiments conducted in the United States and Canada in the 1970s.[vii] He and Michael Howard co-edited two books on Alaska’s Permanent Fund Dividend, addressing it as a small model of a Basic Income.[viii][ix]
Michael Howard holding umbrella and Karl Widerquist in the rain, New York in 2017
He has been critical of the “reciprocity” or “exploitation” objection to Basic Income. Under these objections people who receive Basic Income without work are said to fail in the duty of reciprocity by accepting social benefits without contributing to their production and thereby they are said to exploit workers who do produce those benefits. Widerquist’s responses hinge on the distribution of ownership of resources, which according to him, violates the principle of reciprocity because the law gives ownership of the Earth’s resources to a limited group of people without compensation for the loss of the commons for others. Therefore, Widerquist argues, to be consistent with reciprocity those who hold resources must make an unconditional payment to those who do not.[x]
If this argument works, instead of violating reciprocity, Basic Income is required by that principle. Widerquist further argues that Basic Income, so conceived, does not not exploit workers because it does not matter how one gets control of resources (through work, inheritance, or any other means). What matters is that anyone’s ownership of resources must not be part of a system that imposes propertyless on others.[xi] The absence of propertylessness is important not only to ensure that the privatization of resources is consistent with reciprocity but also to protect all workers from vulnerability to exploitation by their employers.[xii]
This view of property rights as something that both protects owners from interference and imposes interference on nonowners is a running theme throughout much of Widerquist’s writing and his arguments for Basic Income. This idea is closely related to left-libertarian or Georgist views of property, which are based on the principles of self-ownership and some principle of equal access to natural resources.[xiii] Left-libertarians argue that this view of resource rights is more consistent with negative freedom than any other view because the establishment and enforcement of property rights inherently interferes with non-owners in very substantive ways and in a very negative sense of the term.[xiv]
The first of two books laying out Widerquist’s theory, “Justice as the Pursuit of Accord.”
Widerquist does not endorse the whole of either of those theories of justice. Instead he presents his theory of justice as a separate ideology, which he calls “justice as the pursuit of accord” or “indepentarianism.” The central difference between this theory and more mainstream left-libertarianism is that it rejects the left-libertarian view that equal access to resources entitles people to an equal share of the market value of natural resources.[xv] Widerquist instead argues that disadvantage might be entitle to greater redistribution larger than what would be required to equalize the income generated by natural resources.[xvi]
He makes several arguments for this position, the most important of which is that respect for equal freedom requires that any legitimate authority protects individuals from the most substantively important interference. This principle, Widerquist argues, requires respect for individuals’ status free individuals, which in turn requires economic independence. They need access to enough resources to ensure that they are not forced by propertylessness to serve the interests of people empowered to give them access to resources. Widerquist calls this concept, “freedom as independence,” or “freedom as the power to say no.” He argues that respect for independence in the present socio-economic context requires redistribution to come at least in part in the form of an unconditional Basic Income and that it must be at least enough to meet an individuals’ basic needs. He also argues that Basic Income protecting vulnerable individuals from exploitation and other forms of economic distress better than traditional conditional welfare state policies.[xvii]
Philippe Van Parijs at TEDx Ghent
Widerquist is not the first to recognizing the poverty effectively forces individuals to work in service to more advantaged individuals, nor is he the first to argue that Basic Income can relieve that effective force. The unique feature of his theory is the central role that it gives to “the power to say no” in an individual’s status as a free person.[xviii] This line of argument seems to have recently become more important to the movement for Basic Income with even Philippe Van Parijs, one of the movement’s long-term leaders, arguing along these lines in his recent TEDx Talk, “The Instrument of Freedom.”
Empirical and anthropological criticism of contemporary political theory
Prehistoric Myths, this book mentions Basic Income only once–on the last page
Widerquist’s criticism of right-libertarianism began in 2009 when he published both an encyclopedia entry on libertarianism and an article criticizing libertarianism. The article argues that the central principles that are meant to determine the just distribution of property in a right-libertarian economy can justify government ownership of the powers to tax, regulate, and redistribute property just as well as they can justify private ownership of property. It argues that there are no historical or principled reasons to believe that private owners holdings of their powers are any any better justified than government holdings of their powers.[xix]
Karl Widerquist began collaborating with anthropologist Grant S. McCall with the publication of two articles in 2015 and a book entitled Prehistoric Myths in Modern Political Philosophy released in January of 2017.[xx][xxi][xxii] The book uses anthropological evidence to debunk claims in contemporary political theory. It shows how, since the 1600s, most forms of social contract theory and natural property rights theory—especially those in the propertarian or right-libertarian tradition—have relied on the false empirical claim that Widerquist and McCall identify as “the Hobbesian hypothesis. That is, everyone is better off in a state society with a private property rights regime than everyone is, was, or would be in a society with neither of those institutions. The book shows how this claim became a central feature in the social contract justification of the state with Thomas Hobbes’s publication of Leviathan in 1651. Very much the same claim entered property rights theory a few decades later when John Locke made the fulfillment of his famous “proviso” central to his justification of the private property rights system. The book shows how the Hobbesian hypothesis has reappeared throughout the history of political thought since then and that it continues to be passed on in twenty-first century political theory.[xxiii]
Grant S. McCall of the Center for Human Environmental Research
The book argues, few of the philosophers who pass on the Hobbesian hypothesis offer any evidence to support it. Early philosophers relied on the colonial-era prejudice that any civilized man must be far better off than any savage natives. Later philosophers have simply relied on how commonly this claim is repeated to give it the air of obviousness. Yet, it is not the type of claim that can be obvious. It involves a comparison between the least advantaged people in modern, capitalist states with people who live in small-scale, stateless societies very remote to most modern writes in time and/or in place.[xxiv]
Widerquist and McCall present several chapters of evidence making that comparison and showing that the Hobbesian hypothesis is false: contemporary society has failed to fulfill the Lockean proviso. The least advantaged people in contemporary state society are actually worse off than the remaining native peoples who live outside the reach of the authority of the state or the property rights system. Therefore, if either of the two theories is to successfully justify the state and/or the property rights system, societies have to treat their disadvantaged individuals much better than they do now—whether that be by providing a Basic Income or by some other means.[xxv]
Other political and economic theories
Widerquist coauthored a textbook entitle, Economics for Social Workers.[xxvi] He has argued that Piketty’s observation that the rate of return on capital tends to exceed the growth rate in the economy should be seen as an outcome of the institutional setting rather than as a natural law of capitalism.[xxvii] Widerquist has also examined the effect that relaxing public choice theory’s assumption of self-interested behavior. He shows that many public choice problems exist as long as political actors are rational and disagree about what government should do, even if their disagreement stems from adherence to competing ethical theories rather than from competing self-interested wants.[xxviii]
Although Widerquist’s work uses some sufficientarian assumption, he criticized other aspects of sufficientarianism.[xxix] He has done historical work examining the many different (and often contradictory) ways that Lockean appropriation theory has been interpreted and revised.[xxx] He has written critically about wage subsidies as a redistributive strategy.[xxxi]
Media appearances
Karl Widerquist has frequently appeared in print, radio, and television news networks, including:
Click here for an updated (hopefully updated) list of Widerquist’s media appearances.
Publications
Books
Michael Anthony Lewis and Karl Widerquist, 2002. Economics for Social Workers: The Application of Economic Theory to Social Policy and the Human Services, New York: Columbia University Press
Karl Widerquist, Michael Anthony Lewis, and Steven Pressman (eds.), 2005. The Ethics and Economics of the Basic Income Guarantee, Aldershot, UK: Ashgate
Karl Widerquist and Michael W. Howard (eds.) 2012. Alaska’s Permanent Fund Dividend: Examining its Suitability as a Model, New York: Palgrave Macmillan
Karl Widerquist and Michael W. Howard (eds.) 2012. Exporting the Alaska Model: Adapting the Permanent Fund Dividend for Reform around the World, New York: Palgrave Macmillan
Karl Widerquist, March 2013. Independence, Propertylessness, and Basic Income: A Theory of Freedom as the Power to Say No, New York: Palgrave Macmillan
Karl Widerquist, Jose Noguera, Yannick Vanderborght, and Jurgen De Wispelaere (eds.), July 2013. Basic Income: An Anthology of Contemporary Research, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell
Karl Widerquist and Grant McCall. Prehistoric Myths in Modern Political Philosophy, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, January 2017
Journal Articles
Karl Widerquist, 1999. “Reciprocity and the Guaranteed Income” Politics and Society, 33 (3): 386–401
Karl Widerquist, 2001. “Perspectives on the Guaranteed Income, Part I” the Journal of Economic Issues 35 (3): 749–757
Karl Widerquist, 2001. “Perspectives on the Guaranteed Income, Part II” the Journal of Economic Issues 35 (4): 1019-1030
Karl Widerquist, 2003. “Public Choice and Altruism,” the Eastern Economic Journal 29 (3): 277-278
Karl Widerquist, 2005. “A Failure to Communicate: What (If Anything) Can we Learn from the Negative Income Tax Experiments?” the Journal of Socio-Economics 34 (1): 49–81
Michael Lewis, Steven Pressman & Karl Widerquist, 2005. “The basic income guarantee and social economics,” The Review of Social Economy 63 (4): 587-593.
Karl Widerquist and Jurgen De Wispelaere, 2006. “Launching a Basic Income Journal” Basic Income Studies 1 (1): 1-6
Karl Widerquist and Michael A. Lewis, 2006. “The Basic Income Guarantee and the goals of equality, efficiency, and environmentalism,” International Journal of Environment, Workplace and Employment 2 (1): 21-43.
Karl Widerquist, 2006. “Who Exploits Who?” Political Studies 54 (3): 444-464
Karl Widerquist, 2006. “The Bottom Line in a Basic Income Experiment” Basic Income Studies 1 (2): 1-5
Karl Widerquist, 2008. “Problems with Wage Subsidies: Phelps’s economic discipline and undisciplined economics” International Journal of Green Economics 2 (3): 329-339
Karl Widerquist, 2009. “A Dilemma for Libertarianism,” Politics, Philosophy, and Economics 8 (1): 43-72
Karl Widerquist, 2010. “The Physical Basis of Voluntary Trade,” Human Rights Review 11 (1): 83-103
Karl Widerquist, 2010. “Lockean Theories of Property: Justifications for Unilateral Appropriation,” Public Reason 2 (3): 3-26
Karl Widerquist, 2010. “How the Sufficiency Minimum Becomes a Social Maximum,” Utilitas 22 (4): 474-480
Grant S. McCall and Karl Widerquist, 2015. “The Evolution of Equality: Rethinking Variability and Egalitarianism Among Modern Forager Societies.” Ethnoarchaeology 7 (1) March: 21 – 44
Karl Widerquist, 2015. “The Piketty Observation Against the Institutional Background: How natural is this natural tendency and what can we do about it?” Basic Income Studies 10 (1), June, 83-90
Karl Widerquist and Grant S. McCall, 2015. “Myths about the State of Nature and the Reality of Stateless Societies.
[i] “Personal Web Page of Karl Widerquist”, at widerquist.com/karl/personal.html
[ii] “Karl Widerquist”, at explore.georgetown.edu
[iii] “Karl Widerquist”, at explore.georgetown.edu
[iv] “Personal Web Page of Karl Widerquist”, at widerquist.com/karl/personal.html
[v] “Selected Works of Karl Widerquist”, at works.bepress.com/widerquist/
[vi] “About BIEN”, at basicincome.org.
[vii] Karl Widerquist, 2005. “A Failure to Communicate: What (If Anything) Can we Learn from the Negative Income Tax Experiments?” the Journal of Socio-Economics 34 (1): 49–81
[viii] Karl Widerquist and Michael W. Howard (eds.) 2012. Alaska’s Permanent Fund Dividend: Examining its Suitability as a Model, New York: Palgrave Macmillan
[ix] Karl Widerquist and Michael W. Howard (eds.) 2012. Exporting the Alaska Model: Adapting the Permanent Fund Dividend for Reform around the World, New York: Palgrave Macmillan
[x] Karl Widerquist, 1999. “Reciprocity and the Guaranteed Income” Politics and Society, 33 (3): 386–401
[xi] Karl Widerquist, 2006. “Who Exploits Who?” Political Studies 54 (3): 444-464
[xii] Karl Widerquist, 2010. “The Physical Basis of Voluntary Trade,” Human Rights Review 11 (1): 83-103
[xiii] Vallentyne, P. and H. Steiner (2000), The Origins of Left-Libertarianism: An anthology of historical writings. Basingstoke: Palgrave.
[xiv] Vallentyne, P. and H. Steiner (2000b), Left-Libertarianism and Its Critics: The Contemporary Debate. New York: Palgrave
[xv] Vallentyne, P. (2000). “Left-Libertarianism – A Primer,” in P. Vallentyne and H. Steiner, Eds.). Left-Libertarianism and Its Critics: The Contemporary Debate. New York: Palgrave, 1-22
[xvi] Karl Widerquist, March 2013. Independence, Propertylessness, and Basic Income: A Theory of Freedom as the Power to Say No, New York: Palgrave Macmillan
[xvii] Karl Widerquist, March 2013. Independence, Propertylessness, and Basic Income: A Theory of Freedom as the Power to Say No, New York: Palgrave Macmillan
[xviii] Karl Widerquist, March 2013. Independence, Propertylessness, and Basic Income: A Theory of Freedom as the Power to Say No, New York: Palgrave Macmillan
[xix] Karl Widerquist, 2009. “A Dilemma for Libertarianism,” Politics, Philosophy, and Economics 8 (1): 43-72
[xx] Grant S. McCall and Karl Widerquist, 2015. “The Evolution of Equality: Rethinking Variability and Egalitarianism Among Modern Forager Societies.” Ethnoarchaeology 7 (1) March: 21 – 44
[xxi] Karl Widerquist and Grant S. McCall, 2015. “Myths about the State of Nature and the Reality of Stateless Societies.” Analyse & Kritik 37 (2), August
[xxii] Karl Widerquist and Grant McCall. Prehistoric Myths in Modern Political Philosophy, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, January 2017
[xxiii] Karl Widerquist and Grant McCall. Prehistoric Myths in Modern Political Philosophy, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, January 2017
[xxiv] Karl Widerquist and Grant McCall. Prehistoric Myths in Modern Political Philosophy, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, January 2017
[xxv] Karl Widerquist and Grant McCall. Prehistoric Myths in Modern Political Philosophy, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, January 2017
[xxvi] Michael Anthony Lewis and Karl Widerquist, 2002. Economics for Social Workers: The Application of Economic Theory to Social Policy and the Human Services, New York: Columbia University Press
[xxvii] Karl Widerquist, 2015. “The Piketty Observation Against the Institutional Background: How natural is this natural tendency and what can we do about it?” Basic Income Studies 10 (1), June, 83-90
[xxviii] Karl Widerquist, 2003. “Public Choice and Altruism,” the Eastern Economic Journal 29 (3): 277-278
[xxix] Karl Widerquist, 2010. “How the Sufficiency Minimum Becomes a Social Maximum,” Utilitas 22 (4): 474-480
[xxx] Karl Widerquist, 2010. “Lockean Theories of Property: Justifications for Unilateral Appropriation,” Public Reason 2 (3): 3-26
[xxxi] Karl Widerquist, 2008. “Problems with Wage Subsidies: Phelps’s economic discipline and undisciplined economics” International Journal of Green Economics 2 (3): 329-339
Karl Widerquist in speaking in front of (a painting of) the Danish Parliament
