Basic Income, Unemployment and Compensatory Justice

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 Universite 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.

• Detailed Table of Contents.- by Philippe Van Parijs A Basic Income for All: A Brief Defence. To Secure Real Freedom, Grant Everyone a Subsistence Income.- 1. Basic Income Confronted with some Popular Ideas of Justice.- 1. Introduction.- 2. Self-reliance.- 3. Reciprocity: not only the truly lazy.- 4. Basic income and the work ethic.- Summary and conclusions.- 2. Compensatory Justice and Basic Income.- 1. Introduction.- 2. The economist’s view on compensatory justice.- 3. The objective approach to compensatory justice.- 4. The balancing approach to compensatory justice.- 5. The conditions of compensatory justice: the role of the social security system.- 6. Compensatory justice and parasitism.- Summary and conclusions.- 3. Basic Income and Unemployment.- 1. Introduction.- 2. Hamminga’s thought experiment.- 3. The Labour Rights Scheme.- 4. The equivalent basic income scheme.- 5. Welfare policy and economic up- and downturns.- 6. Parisitism and exploitation.- 7. (Un)employment rents.- Summary and conclusions.- 4. Why Launch a Basic Income Experiment?.- 1. Introduction.- 2. The limitations of theoretical models and empirical research.- 3. Basic income versus negative income tax.- 4. The New Jersey income-maintenance experiment.- 5. Lessons drawn from the New Jersey experiments.- 6. Design of a new basic income experiment.- Summary and conclusions.- 5. First Steps Towards a Basic Income.- 1. Introduction.- 2. The impossibility theorem: A basic income is either too low to be socially acceptable or too high to be economically feasible.- 3. A partial basic income.- 4. An alternative route.- 5. Part-time workers.- 6. A differential basic income.- Summary and conclusions.- Conclusion.- References.- Author Index.