Full Employment, Unconditional Basic Income and the Keynesian Critique of Rentier Capitalism

Thomas Alan ()
Additional contact information
Thomas Alan: Philosophy, University of York, York, YO10 5DD, UK

Basic Income Studies, 2020, vol. 15, issue 1, 38

Abstract: This paper compares and contrasts the basic income proposal with the alternative policy proposal of the state acting as employer of last resort. Two versions of the UBI proposal are distinguished: one is hard to differentiate from expanded welfare state provision. Van Parijs’s proposal is radical enough to qualify as major egalitarian revision to capitalism. However, while it removes from a capitalist class the power to determine the terms on which others labour, it leaves this class in place and able to exert other powers that distort the macro-economy. These include pecuniary emulation, demand pull inflation, and political resistance to full employment so that the rentier class does not have to contend with entrepreneurs *and* the working class over the distribution of the productive surplus. The state as employer of last resort proposal addresses these deeper issues while also claiming that inflationary pressure will undermine the UBI alternative.

Keywords: inequality; John Rawls; justice; state as employer of last resort; unconditional basic income (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1515/bis-2019-0015 (text/html)
For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bpj:bistud:v:15:y:2020:i:1:p:38:n:1

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.degruyter.com/journal/key/bis/html

DOI: 10.1515/bis-2019-0015

Access Statistics for this article

Basic Income Studies is currently edited by Anne-Louise Haagh and Michael W. Howard

More articles in Basic Income Studies from De Gruyter
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Golla ().