Climate Change, Complicity, and Compensation

Stephen Winter

Chapter Chapter 13 in Alaska’s Permanent Fund Dividend, 2012, pp 189-204 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract A basic income is a very good thing. If set high enough, it could help realize each person’s equal right to be free. But it requires funding. And that raises significant ethical questions. How can we fund a basic income ethically? This chapter inserts itself between two judgments expressed by Karl Widerquist and Michael Howard, the editors of this volume. First they suggest we should fund basic income by taxing natural resource appropriation. They argue that “taxing natural resources is at least as good, and probably far better than the case for taxing any other source of wealth.”2 The judgment is comparative, and one reason for their preference (but perhaps not the only one) is that most forms of taxation involve morally dubious expropriations of private property. If its funding were to involve wrongful rights violations, then a basic income funded through taxation would be complicit with that wrongdoing.

Keywords: Climate Change; Extreme Weather Event; Fair Share; Basic Income; Bank Robbery (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:etbchp:978-1-137-01502-0_13

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DOI: 10.1057/9781137015020_13

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