The website, Revista Libertalia, recently published an article in Spanish with extensive quotes from an interview conducted with me. The article is entitled, “Voces sobre la renta básica (II): ¿Está justificada? [Voices on basic income (II): Is it justified?].” It’s author is Pablo Magaña. The Spanish version was published on February 28, 2019. The author created, but did not publish an English version of the article. The quotes below reproduce the entire English version with no additional editing.
Voices on the basic income (II): Is it justified?
The idea of a basic income raises many hopes and some eyebrows. In this article, some of its defenders will explain to us which is, in their view, the best way to justify it. However, in order to make the discussion more interesting, we also asked them to answer one common objection that is often raised against the proposal: the free-riding objection. What does this objection say? Quite simple. Unlike other social security schemes, a basic income is unconditional, which means that you can be entitled to it regardless of your socio-economic condition. And, more crucially, regardless of the extent to which you contribute to your society.
For some people, this is plainly unfair. The viability of a basic income depends upon the existence of enough contributors to a common public fund. But, as long as this scheme is already in place and working in a stable manner, if any individual decided not to contribute to it, there would be nothing we could do in response: given the income’s unconditional character, the supposed free-rider would still be as entitled to it as any other citizen. Let us suppose – so goes the classical example[i] – that I decided to spent all my time living high, surfing the waves in Malibu, playing guitar under the moonlight, driving along endless highways on the wheel of an old van. Sounds great, doesn’t it? Still, since such a plan would only be possible if others work and contribute to a common fund, my decision might look like an injustice, a clear case of free-riding. But is it really like this?
Before introducing some possible answers to this challenge, we will look first at some arguments in favor of a basic income.
According to Hillel Steiner[ii], “the best way to defend the right to UBI involves a dual strategy: (a) showing that this right is implied by some more basic and uncontested principle, and (b) showing that this right is compatible with, and does not encroach upon, other widely accepted rights”. As a left-libertarian, Steiner regards the Earth as humanity’s common possession[iii], which entails that if somebody intends to appropriate herself of any portion of it, she should compensate her fellow co-owners. If she didn’t, she would be illegitimately appropriating of something that is not really hers. In other words, she would be stealing. Steiner’s emphasis on natural resources colors both his model of basic income and his preferred justification of it:
“In my view, a right to UBI should be funded by a 100% tax on the ownership of natural resources, commonly termed a ‘Land Value Tax’ or, more accurately, a ‘Location Value Tax’. This tax would be levied on the value of those locations themselves, and not on the value of any improvements made to those locations by human labour. A right to a UBI funded in this way satisfies (a) since those taxable natural resources/locations, not being the product of any person’s labour, are rightfully available for use by everyone. So if someone wants to privatise some of them, and to exclude all others from using them, then it seems only fair that the privatizer should compensate those others. The UBI I’m proposing simply is that compensation.”
This is a fairly common way to defend the right to a basic income, also employed by Guy Standing[iv], author of Basic Income: And How we Can Make it Happen[v]. In Standing’s view, “the right to a basic income can be justified on three ethical grounds. First, it is a matter of common justice. The land, the air, water, and even ideas inherited from our ancestors are all part of the commons which belong to everybody equally. But elites and the wealthy have been given, have inherited or have used the commons for their benefit. Therefore, they should compensate the commoners who have lost the commons, and the fairest way to do that is give everybody in society a common payment, a ‘common dividend’ on our collective public wealth”.
Again, the basic income is presented as a way of compensating human beings for having deprived them of what is, in essence, a public good. However, as we have seen, Standing believes there are additional reasons on behalf of a basic income. “[A] second fundamentally ethical reason for a basic income”, he contends, “is that it would enhance individual and societal freedom. In particular, it would strengthen republican freedom — the freedom from domination by figures in unaccountable positions of power. Whether you are on the political left or right, we all claim (or most of us do!) to believe in freedom. But you cannot be free unless you have the capacity to say ‘no’ to people who can oppress or exploit you. If you do not have basic income security, you do not have that capacity.”
Note that this argument is slightly different from the previous one. Granted, here the argument is also premised upon the existence of an injustice. Yet in this case the injustice does not involve the illegitimate appropriation of what is commonly owned, but rather the presence of a structure of domination under which individuals cannot really be considered autonomous or free. According to this argument, justice requires that nobody ever feel the need to be subjected to another’s arbitrary will, an aim which would only be secured by implementing a right to a basic income[vi].
Political philosopher Karl Widerquist[vii], author of many books and articles on the basic income[viii], has defended a similar view. As he puts it, we need acknowledge that:
“[I]t’s wrong for anyone to come between another person and the resources they need to survive. It’s wrong for anyone to put conditions on people’s access to the resources they need to survive. Don’t ignore this fact: poverty is the lack of access to the resources you need to live a decent life. A healthy person with the right skills and access to a healthy environment can do many things that are impossible for an impoverished person in society today. They can build their own house; fish, farm, or hunt their own food; they can work with who they want. They call work alone or with whoever they want. They don’t need a boss. They never have to follow orders.”
“Our societies create poverty by interfering with people who would like to use the resources of the Earth for themselves. We do it because better off people want to control all the world’s resources. By allowing a small group to control the world’s resources without paying compensation to the people they thereby make propertyless, we put most people in the position in which “work” becomes synonymous with “a job.” Making a living means taking orders. This is not a fact of nature. It is the outcome of society’s rules. We need to change those rules.”
“UBI rectifies that problem. It says if you’re going to hold more resources than others, you have to pay something back in compensation, so that no one ever again is forced to live in poverty and no one is ever forced into the position where they must take orders to survive.”
“UBI is not the end of the market or the end of paid labor. It is simply a market where income doesn’t start at zero, and workers are freed from the threat of destitution. With UBI, workers enter the labor market as free people. Employers have to pay enough to make it worthwhile for workers to take those jobs. UBI will give us a high-wage economy that works for everyone.”
One view in this vicinity has been defended by philosopher Elizabeth Anderson[ix], who, nonetheless, does not believe that a basic income would necessarily be the best option. Now, if it was, she says, the best way to ground it would be as follows:
“The best case for the UBI is as follows. Automation, and changes in the nature of employment, are bringing about the disappearance of stable jobs and the rise of a precariat class whose members are unable to support themselves with steady employment. UBI is needed to provide the security and basis for a decent life for a rising number of people in the world. BI should be universal to ensure its political stability and to avoid the costs of means testing and intrusive investigations of people’s lives.”
Among other things, Anderson is well-known for her defense of so-called “relational egalitarianism”[x], the view that theorists of justice should focus a bit less on how resources are distributed and more on how we treat each other (the latter having obviously implications for the former). This is to say, what matters the most is not who gets what, but whether we treat each other as an equal or not – without distinctions based on social status or power asymmetries.
Before finishing this part of the article, let us look at another possible strategy to justify a basic income. Until now, the arguments we have seen have focused either i) on a compensation for an illegitimate appropriation of a common good, or ii) on the need to make sure that individuals enjoy a minimal independence, in that they ought not to be forced to choose between accepting orders or starve. But there is a third line of argument, which would stress iii) the alleged positive consequences of a basic income. This is Guy Standing’s third argument:
“The third ethical reason for wanting a basic income is that it would tend to provide basic security, which is what we call a public good. We all want basic security in our lives, and basic security is a superior public good in that if everybody in our community has basic security, it increases the value of it for everybody. Basic security has been shown to increase tolerance, resilience, altruism and mental bandwidth (or mental health and IQ).”
This is all very well, one might say. But, what happens with our Malibu surfer? Isn’t he objectionably free-riding on his fellow citizens? Isn’t it unfair that he can live a highly pleasant life while I have to break my back from 9 to 5?
In Steiner’s view, the answer is no: “[E]veryone – lazy, as well as industrious – is entitled to that compensation”. For remember that, according to him, a basic income is not just another subsidy, but the compensation that those who want to possess more than their fair share of the Earth’s natural resources have to pay to the rest of us – whether we are surfers or not.
Widerquist, in his reply, invites us to cast some doubt on the value judgments and the assumptions presupposed by the objection:
“The thing that most detracts people from UBI is the belief that prosperous people have the right and responsibility to tell less prosperous people what to do. We, the prosperous, want to think we are better than the less prosperous. We want to think our virtue—rather than a less-than-perfectly-fair system—is the reason people are less prosperous than we are. We like to think that we know what the less prosperous need to do to become prosperous—even though the vast majority of us have no idea what it is like to grow up poor and how different people’s circumstances can be.”
“Not only are these beliefs unfounded, they are not good for the middle class. Because we want to put the very poor in the position where they have to do what more prosperous people want, we put the vast majority of people in the position where they have to do what the wealthiest few want. Probably well more than 90% of people in every country have no choice but to take a job for a living. The vast majority of us—even some very prosperous people—are unfree to work for ourselves. And so, we must go to an employer—most of whom represent very wealthy corporations—get a job, and take orders all day. That is neither freedom nor fairness.”
“UBI will put the middle class in a much better bargaining position. In most countries, the middle class is not significantly better off than they were 40 years ago. Virtually, all the benefits of the last 40 years of economic growth have gone to the wealthiest 1%. UBI will help the other 99% command the better wages and the shorter working hours that they have earned.”
Another way to answer the free-riding objection involves calling into question its relevancy. Why should we care so much, the rejoinder goes, about something that is actually very unlikely? A rejoinder of this type has been endorsed by Guy Standing:
“The normal human condition is to want to work, to improve ourselves, to improve our living conditions, to improve the life prospects of our children and so on. I would feel sorry for somebody who would not work because he or she had a modest basic income. But of course this is not what happens or is likely to happen to more than a tiny number of people. We have found in our pilots that people with a basic income work more, not less, and are more productive, not less.”[xi]
Indeed, Standing believes that even if free riding was as likely as the objection assumes, the good consequences of a basic income would probably outweigh its potential defects or unfair aspects. As he puts it, a basic income “would encourage more of us to spend more time doing work that is not labour, such as caring for elderly frail relatives or children or doing community work. Most of us will go into old age wishing we had done more of that type of work and less of labour”.
Finally, one can accept the core of the objection – namely, that justice requires some degree of reciprocity – while denying that one’s contributions to society must be measured solely according to their market value. In Elizabeth Anderson’s words: “Everyone ought to contribute to society. But not all positive contributions to society need be via paid employment on the market. Much of women’s work taking care of children and elder dependents is not paid, although it is socially necessary. Much nonprofit work makes a huge difference for others, but it is also not paid. Most people want to make a positive contribution and will do so in one way or another. Society should expand opportunities to make a contribution, but not insist that they survive a market test”.
What this view suggests is that Californian surfers needn’t be free-riding on us. Though their economic contribution to society may border on nothingness, this wouldn’t necessarily imply that they cannot contribute in other ways, nor that they are unable to provide us with valuable things. Suppose we discovered that no member of the Rolling Stones has ever paid a dollar in taxes since they became famous. Would that mean they haven’t contributed to society as much as they should? Probably. Would it also mean they haven’t contributed anything at all? That seems harder to stomach. For many people, listening to their songs, going to their concerts, or simply learning to play guitar by imitating Keith Richards or Roon Wood are in themselves valuable experiences that would not vanish of a sudden.
Are these arguments convincing? Do they answer adequately to the free-riding objection? Do they really succeed in justifying a basic income? That is something for the reader to decide.
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[i] This objection was famously formulated by John Rawls in his article “The Priority of Right and Ideas of the Good” (1988), Philosophy & Public Affairs 17(4): 257, n. 7. For an equally well-known response, see also Philippe van Parijs,“Why Surfers Should be Fed: The Liberal Case for an Unconditional Basic Income” (1991), Philosophy & Public Affairs 20(2): 101-131.
Chamberlain’s book explores universal basic income (UBI), which he calls unconditional basic income, as a potential step on the way from a “work society,” in which individual gainful employment is placed at the center of citizenship and community membership, to a post-work community in which the wellbeing of others is valued over individual achievements. Undoing Work, Rethinking Community focuses primarily on the UK and the US, moving through a detailed discussion of the place of work in contemporary life and politics, as well as more recent changes that have witnessed a gradual erosion of worker’s rights and stability, contending that the current overvaluation of work undermines freedom, equality, and justice. It then outlines a potential role for UBI in Chamberlain’s vision of the transition away from the work society, along with guidance for UBI advocates who share similar priorities with regard to shifting the conversation from its focus on encouraging employment. Finally, it sketches the theoretical beginnings of a “post-work” community.
Employment in Politics and the Meaning of Citizenship
Chamberlain begins by touching on the centrality of work and employment as a right and citizen’s obligation to the campaign rhetoric on both sides of the US 2016 election. Beyond America, he also points out 2011 UK Prime Minister David Cameron’s focus on employment as a solution to riots through the words “work is at the heart of our society.” In his very first pages, Chamberlain outlines his central contention: that citizenship and social participation are conditional upon employment and that those who are not able (or do not desire) to pursue employment for any reason, be it ability, other priorities or means of subsistence, family responsibilities, etc., are marginalized and configured as social pariahs or “freeloaders” rather than good citizens. In essence, he argues that society itself is currently understood to be the product of collective labour, and thus the work society values work ethic, the independence it permits, and the full citizenship or social participation made possible by said independence.
Interestingly, Chamberlain traces a brief history of types of “dependence” that used to be considered socially permissible or positive (that of a wife, for example, or the elderly) but have become more and more suspect, such that one must demonstrate the reason for one’s dependence (i.e., in the case of pregnancy, disability, or other inability to work) or show that one has paid one’s dues (in the case of the elderly) or is preparing oneself for employment (in the case of youth in school).
Undoing Work outlines the roots of the work society in history and political theory and examines several of the key arguments that connect work to citizenship. For example, the idea that individuals exist outside of society but collectively create society with their labour implies, in turn, that a lack of gainful employment is necessarily anti-social. This can be tied to a kind of apocalyptic, chaotic rhetoric, saying that unemployment will lead to social unrest and disintegration (as in David Cameron’s focus on employment in response to social unrest).
Studio portrait of James Chamberlain
(photo by Beth Wynn / Mississippi State University)
The “Work Society” Limits Freedom and Demands Increasing Flexibility
What is the problem with this social emphasis on everyone “pulling their weight”? Chamberlain argues that it limits the freedom to act according to one’s own “values, needs, and desires,” (10) when a person needs to take any or all employment available. Freedom is also limited when all of one’s time is occupied by making money with no opportunity to spend time on activities that don’t have a price put upon them. Furthermore, the increase in information technology has begun to dissolve the boundaries between work and the remainder of life. Importantly, restrictions to freedom do not fall equally upon a population, with regard to access to greater varieties and qualities of employment: “One can understand justice as equality of freedom or, more specifically, the equal ability of all members of society in ways that reflect their own ends” (12).
In his third chapter, Chamberlain discusses the idea of increasing flexibility of employment, from Reagan and Thatcher to the gig economy and the increase in remote work. Flexibility is a double-edged sword. Half of it entails deregulation, erosion of support for workers, increased precarity in terms of employment and compensation, dissolution of work–life boundaries, lack of collective bargaining, and other employer-friendly policies. Many qualities of flexibility can also be worker-friendly, however: flexible scheduling and the dissolution of work–life boundaries may allow a person to work from home or on their own time, or it may ask them to devote significant quantities of their life to work without any additional compensation. At least there are solutions available to offer support to those remote working away from the office so that they can receive additional training and mentorship from wherever they may be and still progress in their careers. Without the support, those working from home may quickly find themselves without motivation and disassociated from their work colleagues. Companies have begun to look at ways to combat this by finding virtual team building activities such as the ones you can see at BreakoutIQ. This is in the hopes of instilling a sense of comradeship between co-workers.
UBI: Undoing or Supporting Employment?
If our jobs are becoming increasingly flexible and precarious, allowing us to participate socially in a complete manner and support ourselves as independent citizens less and less, then UBI is one way to fill that gap and allow people to continue to find meaningful employment: however, it is just this argument for UBI that Chamberlain finds suspect. In Undoing Work, UBI is established as a partial solution to many of the aforementioned issues, a very important stop-gap permitting what he claims is actually required, which is to dismantle the work society and the social value of employment.
Chamberlain identifies an ideological disjuncture within the UBI movement, between advocates who say that UBI will support employment and advocates who contend that supporting employment is beside the point. This is echoed in the works reviewed by BIEN, as emerging UBI research and economic simulations define different metrics for success, and many of them are focused on employment rates rather than health indicators or other measurements associated solely with wellbeing. Undoing Work places UBI proponents on a spectrum from a full commitment to the work society to the preference for freedom from employment/right and ability to refuse employment. However, Chamberlain acknowledges that some who have argued for UBI’s positive impact on employment rates have done so for the sake of expediency. In other words, supporting a truly Unconditional BI may necessarily be politically precarious due to its promise to give “something for nothing.”
Chamberlain then contends that UBI’s implementation and effects depend upon the ideologies of social participation and citizenship by which it is surrounded. Whether or not a UBI recipient lives in Chamberlain’s “work society” will have a significant impact on a basic income’s ability to transform their lives for the better.
To highlight his point, Chamberlain contrasts UBI with workfare/unemployment and means-tested benefits, examining the differences between the administrative goal of re-integrating a person into the workforce and UBI. An implementation of the latter without a corresponding ideological shift may simply result in social forces creating the same stigmas against and marginalization of those who appear not to be contributing in a normative manner. In other words, without a cultural change in the value of work, people receiving UBI will still feel the pressure to take jobs regardless of interest or aptitude. From the perspective of a reader perennially curious about the intercultural differences in UBI implementation around the world, this is an interesting and important point, though it is beyond this book’s purview to speculate about the international differences that might be seen in UBI implementation depending on each country or region’s ideological variations.
A more radical implementation of UBI may in fact encourage people to shape new “purposes,” voluntary or collectively informed but not necessarily rewarded or validated by a wage. Indeed, if work is as essential to a valuable and meaningful life as its proponents suggest, Chamberlain suggests that it is unlikely that UBI recipients (i.e., all of us) will simply give up any kind of occupation or responsibility.
The Post-Work Society
The final chapters of the book examine visions of a post-work society. Chamberlain suggests that many contemporary visions of post-capitalism (e.g., André Gorz’s work, or Hardt and Negri’s Empire) have not in fact theorized a real “post-work” society because they remain centred upon community-oriented production and reproduction: they still see the common/society as produced by some form of work or labour, and participation in their post-capitalist models is still frequently predicated upon social contribution conceptualized as labour.
A real post-work society, argues Chamberlain, means that membership in one’s community must not be connected to work (paid or unpaid). Rather, he suggests a vision of community that is predicated upon concern for the wellbeing of others but does not then turn around and stigmatize or marginalize community members who do not appear to share similar concerns.
One key part of this is that we should not view individuals as things that can be separated from a community or society (or accordingly marginalized as “non-contributors”). Rather, a community is in its fundamental form made up of interconnected relationships that have little to do with labour.
Chamberlain argues that the tendency to think about this kind of community as encouraging “freeloading” is an intuitive response from those of us who have grown up valuing employment so highly. Accordingly, Chamberlain provides some insightful advice for UBI advocates, suggesting that arguments for UBI should be focused on collective well-being rather than employment potential, shaped in a way that does not encourage critics to jump straight to criticisms about giving “something for nothing.”
Chamberlain’s vision for a post-work society is outlined in terms of what it must not be. The lack of a fuller picture is understandable given the magnitude, impossibility, and perhaps unsuitability of attempting this task theoretically (a challenge he acknowledges). Despite this, the last few pages of the book cite reasons for hope of a transition: the prevalence of conversations about UBI, minimum wage movements, and economic cooperatives, as some examples.
A reader may wonder if none of the smaller communities established within and regardless of political boundaries, including economic or social cooperatives, faith-based communities, secular or intentional communities, families, or Indigenous or ethnicity-based communities, already value interpersonal wellbeing more highly than labour and, accordingly, exhibit unique social economies. While it is sensibly out of the book’s scope to conduct an international comparison of work ideologies, Chamberlain’s focus on national discourse feels relevant and interesting but also general and totalizing, spoken from the “voice” of the work society without exploring the diversity that may be occurring within a nation or testing its borders on local scales. However, overall, Chamberlain’s Undoing Work, Rethinking Community is a considered and valuable critique of the role of employment in life, politics, and UBI policy and discourse. His discussion of increasing precarity, demand for flexibility, and the lack of freedom that employment often delivers despite independence’s promises to the contrary will strike home for many readers.
The hardest thing for any society to do is to avoid oppressing its least advantaged people. Politics everywhere is an insider game: people with political, economic, and social advantages make policy for their own benefit not just neglecting outsiders, but oppressing them. Most theories of justice understandably want to eliminate this insider-outsider problem by building a consensus around a true “social contract” or an undeniable sent of “natural rights.” Unfortunately, you can never get everyone to agree to anything. How can you eliminate the insider-outsider problem, if you can’t bring every outsider into consensus?
More than 200 years ago, Immanuel Kant gave the world an overconfident solution that, I would like to argue, has helped justify oppression ever since: create a basic social-political structure that, in Thomas Scanlon’s words, “no one could reasonably reject.”
Obviously, no matter how fair and just social arrangements are, some unreasonable people—call them recalcitrants—will reject them because of their selfishness, irrationality, or ignorance. But if we create a social structure that truly incorporates everyone’s needs or rights or concerns, we can effectively eliminate the insider-outsider problem even without a literal consensus. Any reasonable objectors—call them dissenters—will have been brought into the coalition.
If you could do such a thing, the social contract would resemble (if only superficially) an insider contract. Some people—call them the ruling coalition—would establish a basic structure. Other people would object. The ruling coalition would say that the objectors were unreasonable, and they would be right. The coalition would speak for the recalcitrants, truly bringing them inside the contract, knowing that if they were rational they would know (and if they were reasonable they would admit) that they are not really outsiders.
If the social contract of the reasonable looks so much like an insider contract, how will we know which it is? Most theories of justice try to bypass this how-do-we-know question by focusing on the what-do-we-do question. If we thought there were reasonable objections, we would change the basic structure to one that had no reasonable objections. Many philosophers have written extensive theories about the kind of structure that they believe could not reasonably be rejected.
Great. But then we’re in the same situation where the ruling coalition says its reasonable. How do we know that the ruling coalition is the one that’s reasonable and the objectors are the ones that are unreasonable rather than the other way around? No one is infallible. Philosophers make mistakes. So do ruling coalitions. One could reasonably characterize all of recorded history as the March of Folly of ruling coalitions. So, if we’re fallible, how will we know when and whether we’ve succeed in this great and worthy quest to create social arrangements “that no one could reasonably reject?”
Unfortunately, I want to argue that virtually all contemporary theories of justice are based on the overconfident assumption that the theorist who wrote it actually knows how to solve the insider-outsider problem.
Immanuel Kant
The danger of a theory based on that piece of overconfidence is revealed by the answer to this question, who must we convince that we’ve created a structure “that no one could reasonably reject”? The only possible answer is that the ruling coalition only has to convince itself. They have to treat potential objectors well enough to keep them from rebelling, but they don’t really have to justify the structure to anybody; they don’t have to get objectors to agree to anything, because they can dismiss them as “unreasonable.” My reading of recorded history indicates that insider coalitions can be incredibly unjust without doubting their own reasonableness or creating a serious risk of rebellion. (For example, the Texas state legislature once passed a resolution claiming, “the servitude of the African race … is mutually beneficial to both bond and free.”)
Modern philosophers can reasonably claim that they are far more reasonable than the 1861 Texas Confederate state legislature, and they can propose a structure that gives voice and concern to many out groups, but they are dangerously overconfident if they ignore this observations that I believe our obvious: A privileged majority can never speak for an underprivileged minority. A male-dominated government can never claim to speak for women. A white majority can never speak for black or any other non-white minorities. A Christian majority can never claim to speak for non-Christian minorities. A secular majority can never claim to speak for religious minorities. A heterosexual majority can never claim to speak for queer minorities, and so on and so on.
The insider majority must give out-groups voice and try to accommodate their concerns, but the majority also has to rule, and they will make mistakes that advantage insiders over outsiders. The job will never be done. Justice is in the pursuit of accord, not in the assumption that we’ve done enough, and objectors are just unreasonable.
My latest academic article, “The Pursuit of Accord: Toward a Theory of Justice with a Second-Best Approach to the Insider-Outsider Problem,” discusses this issue at greater length. It gives ten reasons to believe that all ruling coalitions are insider coalitions rather than true “social contracts.” It discusses four strategies to create consensus, and argues that although they must be tried, they’re likely to fall short of establishing a genuine consensus even if everyone is reasonable.
Finally, it discusses an alternative theory called “justice as the pursuit of accord” (JPA), which offers a second-best approach to the insider-outsider problem under the working assumption that consensus is impossible to achieve even if everyone is rational and reasonable. The ruling coalition has to make the laws, but it can never presume to speak for dissenters. It must both try to get as many people into accord as possible and try to minimize negative interference with people who can’t be brought into accord. Basic Income plays a significant role in the minimization of negative interference and other aspects of JPA. My earlier book, Freedom as the Power to Say No, outlined JPA’s theory of freedom. My article (“The Pursuit of Accord”) and the future book I’m hoping to develop from it will discuss JPA as an overall theory of justice and outline its accompanying property theory.
The Taoiseach (Prime Minister) of Ireland, Leo Varadkar, has just endorsed a carbon tax in which all funds go to a direct cash dividend. This came in a letter to the Green Party of Ireland and has been confirmed by the press. Varadkar was responding to questions posed by Eamon Ryan during a session of the Dáil (Parliament). Ryan calls for “an increase in [the] carbon tax in which every single cent would go back to the Irish people—a dividend.” Eamon Ryan is the Green Party’s leader in the Dáil (Parliament).
Ryan considers Varadkar’s response to be an endorsement of the Green proposal. The Green Party has issued a press release. In it, they express pleasure to hear that the government likes combining a carbon tax with a cash dividend but stress that they consider alternative energy and transportation to be their highest priority in addressing climate change.
In his address to the Dáil and in an interview on the Irish Times’ “Inside Politics” podcast, Ryan calls for an increase of €20 per ton in the carbon tax, with an increase of €5 per ton each year until it reaches €90 per ton. The tax revenue would be entirely returned to the public as a dividend. (If you consult the podcast, discussion of the carbon tax and dividend begins at 20 minutes and forty seconds).
Illustration posted by Eamon Ryan on his Twitter feed.
“Every single cent that will be raised will be returned with a check in the post.” In the podcast, journalist Hugh Linehan makes it clear that this would be cash that goes directly to everyone in Ireland. Ryan points out that those with lower incomes would come out with more cash than they have to pay in increased taxes. He sees this as a way to avoid a popular revolt against a carbon tax like the one Emmanuel Macron has seen in France. He hopes that this will retire the debate over the carbon tax and achieve larger changes in energy and agriculture. “[The carbon tax and dividend] will deliver maybe five, ten, fifteen, or twenty percent of the change we need.”
The Irish Times is considered the paper of record in Ireland.
The Green Party (Camhaontas Glas) has two members of the Dáil Éireann. If they gain more seats in the next election, they are considered a likely coalition partner in a future government.
The current government is run by Fine Gael, a party that caucuses with Conservative parties in Europe but seeks to be seen as pragmatically responsive to poverty and ecological issues. Ireland has seen campaigns to prevent increased water charges and to promote public action on housing.
The Irish Times has surveyed government leaders in Ireland who seek to emphasize that carbon tax increases would be “revenue neutral”, returning all funds to citizens as a dividend. The dividend is seen as a way to meet the climate change obligations set by the European Union without harming lower-income people.
In the discussion of the carbon tax and dividend, there is no discussion from the government or the opposition parties of the carbon tax and dividend as a basic income. Green Party Leader Eamon Ryan is very careful to stress that the dividend is just a small part of a plan to make Ireland ecologically responsible.
The idea that a carbon dividend is a basic income has not arisen in the Times or in the debate in the Dáil. The term “basic income” has not come up in the discussion of the carbon tax. This reflects a pattern found elsewhere. If a dividend is debated as an answer to poverty, it faces more scrutiny than if it is debated as a repair for the regressive effect of another policy.
Basic Income Ireland and Social Justice Ireland promote the idea that basic income has emancipatory potential. The idea that three to four percent of a country’s GDP could fund a dividend that abolishes poverty is still not being debated by any of the parties currently in the Dáil.
A new series of demonstrations have erupted in France: the “gilet jaunes [yellow vests]”. This movement started in 2018, from an online petition which had grown 300 000 signatures large by October. From there, massive street demonstrations have followed, with some violent eruptions, particularly in France (but in other regions of the world too). The causes for discontent have been mainly economic, related to taxes on fuels, income taxes, minimum wage and the monopoly of large retailers in villages and cities (which end up asphyxiating small businesses). However, the list of claims grows larger, including demands like eliminating homelessness, financial incentives for home insulation, protecting national industry (in France) and a cap on salaries (at 15000 Euro/month). It even includes the controversial claim that the production of hydrogen vehicles should be incentivized, instead of electrical ones (even though hydrogen for vehicles is produced using electricity).
The basic income movement in France (MFRB – Movement Français pour un Revenue de Base) has written on the “yellow vests” phenomena. In this article, it is suggested that demands from the “yellow vests” movement are aligned with the basic income idea. However, the list of demands above mentioned do not refer basic income, and do not question the conditionality of the present system of benefits and taxation. These do contain the immediate call for taking people off the streets (ending homelessness), but no further ideas on how to do it.
On the other hand, these social events and demonstrations have spurred discussion and public appearances voicing the basic income concept. Public figure and philosopher Abdennour Bidar, has defended basic income as a way to “stop strangling citizens with economic constraints”, on France TV (C La Suite). Cyril Dion, a known French filmmaker and environmental activist, has also supported basic income, alongside Bidar, as a way to both reduce acute inequalities and bring forward true environmental protection. According to him, there can be no ecology without social justice, which is also the opinion of other French thinkers and activists, such as Guy Valette. Also, on the political ground, Benoît Hamon (individually and under his recently formed Génération.s. party) has been defending the basic income policy in France, ever since the beginning of the last presidential elections.
Basic Income, Solidarity Economy and Social Protection
The 24th BIEN CONGRESS in Maricá & Niterói – Rio de Janeiro, Brazil – 27-29 August 2025
Maricá provides unconditional transfers to almost half of its population. 7 other cities in the state of Rio de Janeiro have already created their own local currencies inspired by Maricá’s Citizens Basic Income. Our other host city, Niterói provides transfers benefiting more than 100,000 individuals.
Pre-congress events: Latin America Day: 25 Aug. & Early Career Day: 26 Aug.
The Green Party (Camhaontas Glas) has two members of the Dáil Éireann. If they gain more seats in the next election, they are considered a likely coalition partner in a future government.