Taking the “G” Out of BIG: A Comparative Political Economy Perspective on Basic Income

Peter Boettke and Adam Martin

Chapter Chapter 6 in Basic Income and the Free Market, 2013, pp 125-142 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract Libertarians are surprisingly comfortable with basic income guarantees and related proposals. The classic statement is Milton Friedman’s “negative income tax” proposal from Capitalism and Freedom (1962). In Friedman’s scheme, individuals earning an income beneath a certain threshold receive the difference between their income and that threshold rather than paying taxes. A basic income guarantee (BIG) differs only in that it pays an amount equal to that threshold to everyone regardless of income up front, balancing the outlay through taxes afterwards. Charles Murray (2006, 2008) has defended it as a potential compromise between libertarians and liberals as a measure replacing the welfare state. Hayek (1960: 376), while lambasting proposals to engineer the overall pattern of income distribution, defends the idea of a minimum income floor, one of the primary aims of basic income advocates. And libertarian economists have long argued that, given some redistribution, simple cash transfers are preferable to the bureaucratic machinery necessary for rationing specific goods.

Keywords: Civil Society; Welfare State; Poverty Alleviation; Policy Proposal; Redistributive Policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:etbchp:978-1-137-31593-9_7

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DOI: 10.1057/9781137315939_7

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