Basic Income, Unemployment And Compensatory Justice

by Groot, Loek; Van Parijs, Philippe

• ISBN13: 9781402026140
• ISBN10: 1402026145
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-11-01
• Publisher: Kluwer Academic Pub

Summary

Basic income is a regularly debated topic in various scholarly disciplines (political philosophy, political theory, welfare economics, labour market economics and social policy) and in circles of policy makers, administrators and activists. Since the late 1970s, unemployment is the primary problem for social-economic policy in all welfare states. In Basic Income, Unemployment and Compensatory Justice it is argued that implementing a substantial basic income is the best policy response to deal with unemployment-induced problems such as job insecurity, social exclusion, poverty and lack of compensatory justice on the labour market and to improve labour market flexibility, boost low wage employment and part-time work. Basic Income, Unemployment and Compensatory Justice , with an introductory chapter by Philippe van Parijs, discusses the attractiveness of a substantial basic income to deal with the problem of unemployment, in combination with an ethical perspective of social justice. Loek Groot is a senior lecturer at the Utrecht School of Economics.

Author Biography

Loek Groot studied economics (University of Amsterdam) and philosophy (Catholic University of Leuven), received his Ph.D. (cum laude) in 1999, was Grotius Post-Doctorate Research fellow at the Department of Political Science (University of Amsterdam), is member of the Amsterdam School of Social Research (ASSR) and now working at SISWO/Netherlands Institute of the Social Sciences. He was (co)editor, together with Robert van der Veen, of the book Basic Income on the Agenda. Policy Objectives and Political Chances (2000).Phillippe van Parijs is Professor of Economic and Social Ethics at the Universit+¬ Catholique de Louvain, Belgium. His books include Marxism Recycled (1993) and Real Freedom for All. What (if anything) can justify capitalism (1995). In 2001 he received the Prix Francqui for his entire oeuvre.

Table of Contents

Basic Income Confronted with Some Popular Ideas of Justice	25	(18)
Introduction	25	(3)
Self-reliance	28	(7)
Reciprocity: not only the truly lazy	35	(3)
Basic income and the work ethic	38	(5)
Summary and conclusions	40	(3)
Compensatory Justice and Basic Income	43	(26)
Introduction	43	(1)
The economist's view on compensatory justice	44	(3)
The objective approach to compensatory justice	47	(1)
The balancing approach to compensatory justice	48	(4)
The conditions of compensatory justice: the role of the social security system	52	(6)
Compensatory justice and conditional social security	54	(3)
Compensatory justice and basic income	57	(1)
Compensatory justice and parasitism	58	(11)
Summary and conclusions	61	(2)
Appendix	63	(6)
Basic Income and Unemployment	69	(24)
Introduction	69	(2)
Hamminga's thought experiment	71	(2)
The Labour Rights Scheme	73	(4)
Uniform productivity levels	73	(3)
Non-uniform productivity	76	(1)
The equivalent basic income scheme	77	(2)
Uniform productivity levels	77	(2)
Non-uniform productivity	79	(1)
Welfare policy and economic up- and downturns	79	(2)
Parisitism and exploitation	81	(2)
(Un)employment rents	83	(10)
Summary and conclusions	85	(2)
Appendix	87	(6)
Why Launch a Basic Income Experiment?	93	(22)
Introduction	93	(1)
The limitations of theoretical models and empirical research	94	(3)
Basic income versus negative income tax	97	(2)
The New Jersey income-maintenance experiment	99	(6)
The design of the New Jersey experiment	102	(1)
The operations, surveys, and administration	103	(2)
Lessons drawn from the New Jersey experiments	105	(1)
Design of a new basic income experiment	106	(9)
Social assistance recipients	110	(1)
Workers	110	(1)
Prospective entrepeneurs	111	(1)
The cost of the experiment	112	(1)
Effects of a basic income to be researched	113	(1)
Summary and conclusions	113	(2)
First Steps towards a Basic Income	115	(20)
Introduction	115	(1)
The impossibility theorem: A basic income is either too low to be socially acceptable or too high to be economically feasible	116	(2)
A partial basic income	118	(4)
An alternative route	122	(7)
Part-time workers	129	(1)
A differential basic income	130	(5)
Summary and conclusions	132	(3)
Conclusion	135	(2)
References	137	(4)
Author Index	141