Basic Income: Incentives, Ethics and Political Strategy

Abstract

This final chapter deals with the ethical and political aspects of basic income. Section 2 seeks to defend BI against the charge that the high tax rate needed to sustain it would destroy economic incentives. Section 3 rebuts a number of moral objections to a transfer system in which guaranteed incomes are both unconditional and universal. Section 4 acts as a bridge between these abstract disputations and the political context which a transformatory strategy is obliged to address. Having noted that BI belongs to the more general class of ‘citizenship rights’, the argument draws out the tension between these rights and the logic of the market. A movement committed to the BI project could re-empower the claims of citizenship, infusing them with the moral appeal, motivational energy and political direction which are needed not just to shake off the debilitating consequences of the neo-liberal counter-revolution, but to establish an entrenched, gradualist dynamic of egalitarian transformation.