Alberto Mingardi — Hayekian arguments for basic income

Matt Zwolinski has an interesting article which attempts to answer the question "Why Did Hayek Support a Basic Income?". His answer is that Hayek did so because such a minimum endowment of economic means grants people the essential freedom to say "no"--thus making up for "real" freedom of contract. Matt stresses that Hayek was more concerned than most libertarians with the idea that "unbalanced" market relationships may also be a source of coercion.

I think Matt brings together a neat summary of some well-pondered arguments for a guaranteed minimum income. I would have thought, however, that the Hayekianarguments for a basic income were different.

I think that a Hayekian argument for the basic income is that it would minimize state interventions and, thus, discretionary powers on the part of lawmakers as opposed to contemporary welfare systems….

Thus, a basic minimum income is a smart solution to (a) keep our allegiance to the idea we shall accept some sort of poverty mitigation device but (b) refuse to accept the bureaucratization and the social and economic planning that inevitably comes with "organised benevolence", as Hayek repeatedly pointed out. By providing people with a basic income you do not play with prices (including the price of labour), and society spares herself the (self-interested) intermediation of a welfare apparatus. A basic income is less paternalistic, and may have seemed to Hayek a good way to avoid what happened in the years when he was writing, particularly in England: that is, increasing redistribution, nationalizations, and regulation of the economy going hand-in-hand.

Of course, the interesting question is: could this version of the idea of a basic income survive the test of the political process? And what about its unintended consequences? Hayek would have been fine with replacing the welfare state altogether with a basic income. In Europe at least, most advocates of the basic income are for adding it to the existing welfare provisions. If this happened, I suspect Hayek would not be very confortable in the position of the useful idiot (neither would Matt, for that matter).

Econolog
Hayekian arguments for basic income
Alberto Mingardi