Volume 12, Issue 1 -

As is well known, John Rawls opposes the idea and policy of basic income. However, this paper posits that his view of self-respect and activity could accommodate its implementation. Rawls lists the social basis of self-respect in social primary goods as the most important good, but does not assume that it is derived from wage labor alone. It appears that his theory of justice aims to criticize the work-centered (wage-labor) society and to overcome it. Besides, as Rawls desires, for our work to be meaningful and our life worthwhile, we should institutionalize basic income because it can improve workers’ bargaining power and their attitude toward work, in addition to enhancing their leisure time. In this paper, by considering the normative relationship between meaningful work, worthwhile life, and self-respect from a Rawlsian perspective, I inquire into the potential of basic income in his well-ordered society.

This paper is concerned to make three points about money-metric poverty in India: first, that the standard poverty-line approach to measuring poverty considerably underestimates poverty, and that the particular protocols by which India’s official poverty lines are determined are arbitrary and misleading; second, that a view of poverty in which the achievement of a satisfactory level of income is seen as a valuable end in itself, and which is captured in something like Kaushik Basu’s ‘quintile income statistic’, suggests a high order of income-poverty in the country which belies the relatively encouraging trends exhibited by headcount ratios based on official poverty lines; and third, that the continued co-existence of large amounts of poverty with large amounts of inequality needs to be redeemed by some deliberate redistributive strategy aimed at providing something like a guaranteed basic minimum income to every citizen of the country—for reasons, at least, of self-interest, if not justice.

The paper proposes a financial model suitable for ensuring the economic, financial and social sustainability of this basic protection. We have calculated the estimated cost for the Spanish population in 2010 and have estimated the cost for the following 12 years (three legislatures) under a range of demographic and economic assumptions. The results are then analysed to draw conclusions about the viability and sustainability of this basic social protection floor. A remarkable finding is that it is feasible to obtain greater coverage, but by requiring contributions of the State or other financial resources.

This paper contributes to debates regarding the normative justification of basic income (BI) via a critical reevaluation of Philippe Van Parijs’ ‘real-libertarian’ theory. Van Parijs’ work constitutes the most ambitious attempt within the literature to ground a justification of BI within a systematic normative framework. In this paper I argue that key elements of his framework should form part of any progressive justification of BI. Specifically, his linking of the principle of ‘real freedom for all’ with the policy mechanism of the ‘highest sustainable basic income.’ I take issue with Van Parijs’ treatment of compensation for unequal internal endowments based on the criterion of ‘undominated diversity’ and I reject the ‘external resources’ approach to justifying the funding of a substantial BI, including Van Parijs’ ‘jobs as assets’ argument. I introduce the concept of ‘total social productivity’ as a means of understanding the production and reproduction of society in a manner that anchors the justification of BI in a commitment to a ‘deep form of social reciprocity.’ Finally, I suggest that BI be framed as a ‘pragmatic-utopian reform.’