The idea of a universal basic income (UBI)—a government subsidy of at least a subsistence income for all citizens regardless of need—has long found support on the edges of the political left. But in recent years it has begun to receive mainstream interest. Hillary Clinton, the Democratic Party’s 2016 presidential nominee, noted in her campaign memoir What Happened (Simon & Schuster, 2017) that she seriously considered embracing the UBI during her campaign. Some financial and business leaders are now advancing the issue. For instance, bond manager Bill Gross has argued, “If income goes to technological robots whatever the form, instead of human beings, our culture will change and, if so, policies must adapt to those changes.” Entrepreneur Elon Musk also cites the prospect of major future job losses from automation as a reason for adopting a UBI, while Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg promoted the idea to Harvard University’s 2017 graduating class, saying, “Now it’s time for our generation to define a new social contract.”

Interest in the UBI is not limited to the center-left. Republican Richard Nixon proposed a quasi-UBI Family Assistance Plan in 1969 that also had a non-UBI work requirement. The idea went dormant after Democrat George McGovern proposed a $1,000 per-person UBI as part of his disastrous 1972 presidential campaign, but Republican Alaska Gov. Jay Hammond played a key role in that state’s 1976 creation of its Permanent Fund, an oil-rights-subsidized UBI. More recently, the American Enterprise Institute’s Charles Murray has proposed replacing U.S. welfare programs with a UBI.

In this new book intended to garner support for the UBI from beyond the political left, authors Philippe Van Parijs and Yannick Vanderborght invoke an even more impressive would-be supporter: Friedrich Hayek. Hayek called for a minimum income while rejecting other welfare state components. “Like the business leaders who have come out in favor of basic income,” Van Parijs and Vanderborght write, “many [classical liberals] are attracted to basic income because of its simple, non-bureaucratic, trap-free, market-friendly operation, which helps make generous transfers more efficient and sustainable.”

They further write:

Anyone doubting the power of utopian thinking would be well advised to listen to one of the main intellectual fathers of the “neoliberalism” that has been declared triumphant these days by its friends and even more by its foes.… The lesson Hayek learned from the socialists, we must now learn from him.… The free-society utopia we need today … must be a utopia of real freedom for all that frees us from the dictatorship of the market and thereby helps save our planet.

Parijs and Vanderborght concede that “sympathy and support” for a UBI is “most generously and most consistently” held by political Greens. Their book uses Green ideology at times. For instance, in Chapter 1 they write, “The conjunction of growing inequality … automation, and a more acute awareness of the ecological limits to growth [has] made [the UBI] the object of unprecedented interest throughout the world.”

They cast support for UBI in terms of “hope in the future of our societies” and “the future of the world.” At times, such rhetoric detracts from the work’s scholarly aim, especially such sentences as: “In addition to visionaries, activists are needed ass-kickers, indignados, people who are outraged by the status quo or by new reforms or plans that target the poor more narrowly, watch them more closely, and further reduce the real freedom of those with least of it.”

Explaining the UBI / The authors are more precise defining the UBI: “paid in cash rather than in kind; individual entitlement, as opposed to … [a] household situation; universal, as opposed to … an income or means test; [and] obligation free, as opposed to [a tie] to an obligation to work or prove willingness to work.” In short, the UBI is “individual, universal, and obligation-free.”

The book provides a good overview of the topic, discussing traditional alternatives to the UBI such as public assistance and social insurance. They describe the UBI as “a radically distinct” third model, offer a moral case for it, and tackle such issues as funding and affordability and the idea’s political prospects. They also make some surprising claims along the way, including their assertion that “the rich are entitled to [a UBI subsidy] just as much as the poor.”

The UBI’s intellectual history is traced to the late 18th century. Thomas Paine’s 1797 pamphlet Agrarian Justice proposed to “create a national fund, out of which there shall be paid to every person, when arrived at the age of twenty-one years, the sum of fifteen pounds sterling, as a compensation in part, for the loss of his or her inheritance, by the introduction of the system of landed property.” In sharp contrast to John Locke, Paine asserted of the UBI, “It is not charity but a right, not bounty but justice, that I am pleading for.” French social thinker Charles Fourier (1772–1837) was a proponent of a government-guaranteed basic income subsidy “targeting the poor: obligation-free but not universal.” More proponents emerged in the 20th century. Bertrand Russell’s “ ‘vagabond’s wage’ was sufficient for “existence but not for luxury.” British social activist Major C.H. Douglas (1879–1952) argued that “social credit mechanisms” could pay all households a monthly “national dividend.” Infamous Louisiana populist Huey Long advocated a “Share Our Wealth” program that would have operated like a UBI. More recently, economist Robert Theobold (1929–1999) advocated a “guaranteed income” because automation is making workers “redundant.”

The welfare state may diminish the UBI’s political appeal, making it appear to be just another government handout. The authors argue means-tested welfare state components like Social Security and unemployment insurance are “a safety net that fails to catch a great many people it should catch, and in which others get trapped.” In contrast, the UBI “provides a floor on which they all can safely stand.”

Today, the UBI competes with other welfare ideas: a one-time basic endowment payment, a negative income tax for low- and non-earners, an earned income tax credit for only low earners, wage subsidies, guaranteed employment, and work reduction. The authors criticize these competing ideas:

  • The basic endowment is about equalizing opportunities at the start of adult life, while basic income is about providing economic security throughout life.”
  • Because of “the need to switch back and forth between different administrative statuses of claimant or worker, a negative-income-tax scheme presents the same intrinsic defect as standard means-tested schemes.”
  • The EITC “has the obvious disadvantage of doing nothing for the jobless.”
  • If busyness is all that matters, wage subsidies are definitely superior to an unconditional basic income. For those committed to freedom for all, however, the opposite is clearly the case.”

Justifying the UBI / Pro-UBI arguments include “people can take jobs or create their own jobs with less fear;” “earnings … increase net incomes,” and women would benefit because they “currently participate to a lesser extent in the labor market and their average hourly wage is below that of men.” The UBI should not be “misunderstood as aiming to equalize outcomes or achievements. Rather, it aims to make less unequal, and distribute more fairly, real freedom, possibilities, and opportunities.”

Drawing on utilitarianism, they argue the UBI is “conducive to greater happiness.” Unfortunately, they follow this with a bout of unsatisfying rhetoric, claiming the UBI “does not operate at the margin of society but affects power relations at its very core. Its point is not to soothe misery but to liberate us all.”

The authors present a moral case for the UBI on the basis of distributive justice, which they define as “the just distribution of entitlements to resources among the members of a society.” They answer objections, including concerns that a UBI would encourage idleness by removing the work incentive of basic survival, but struggle to convincingly rebut objections raised by philosophers John Rawls and Ronald Dworkin. Rawls used the stereotype of the slacker Malibu surfer who would rather spend the day on his surfboard than laboring for money, arguing that such folks “must find a way to support themselves and would not be entitled to public funds.” Dworkin similarly dismissed such idle people as “scroungers.” If Rawls and Dworkin had such concerns, Van Parijs and Vanderborght are unlikely to gain support from people whose political thinking is more inclined to the views of Robert Nozick, who would have criticized the UBI as an illegitimate state acquisition of property. The authors also fail to explain how their abstract theory can achieve a critical mass of support among citizens—many of whom would have the same “idleness” concern—or the public officials needed to enact a UBI.

The authors concede the negative income tax (NIT) has political advantages over the UBI. Milton Friedman wanted an NIT, but wanted it set “low enough” so that taxpayers would be willing to pay the bill and give individuals harmed by the welfare state “a substantial and consistent incentive to earn their way out of the program.” Elsewhere, they acknowledge “skepticism about the potential political support” for a UBI. They cite NIT experiments in New Jersey and Pennsylvania (1968–1972); Iowa and North Carolina (1970–1972); Gary, IN (1971–1974); Seattle and Denver (1970–80); and Manitoba (1970s), observing, “There are now over fifty countries with sovereign wealth funds similar to the Alaska Permanent Fund. Yet, despite various proposals, Alaska’s dividend scheme remains unique so far.” But they don’t consider the possibility governments put their own self-interest ahead of individual citizens. The landslide defeat (76.9% – 23.1%) of a proposed Swiss UBI in a 2016 referendum suggests politics are not on the side of the UBI, at least for now.

As for the size of UBI payments, the authors suggest “picking an amount on the order of one fourth of (a country’s) current GDP per capita,” though, “there is nothing sacrosanct about 25 percent.” Their proposal would equal $1,163 per month in the United States (as opposed to $130 in India and $16 in Congo).

Proponents would fund the UBI through taxation, though no major political party in the industrialized world has embraced this radical idea—at least not transparently. However, some UBI programs have been attempted with nonprofit or private funding. Pierre Omidyar, e‑Bay co-founder, is donating nearly $500,000 for a Kenyan UBI experiment. The authors discuss initiatives such as a UBI operated by MeinGrundeinkommen, a German nonprofit; and a German United Evangelical Mission monthly UBI project in Otjivero, Namibia.

Conclusion / The UBI is gaining interest in the American political discussion, but on a very superficial political level. In my opinion, Van Parijs and Vanderborght’s book does not make a convincing argument that government UBI programs are needed. It also does not devote enough attention to privately funded experiments. These are the more important development in the UBI and they should be closely followed.