Bill Mitchell — A Basic Income Guarantee does not reduce poverty

… the introduction of a Job Guarantee would eliminate poverty arising from unemployment and the working poor because the Government could condition the minimum wage by where it set the Job Guarantee wage. If it truly desired to end poverty among those in employment then it would set the Job Guarantee accordingly. Others argue that a more direct way of dealing with poverty and lack of income is to just provide the income via a Basic Income Guarantee (BIG). The BIG idea has captured the progressive side of politics and many on the Right. It is another one of those sneaky neo-liberal ideas that look good on the surface but are rotten not far below. Supporters of BIG are really absolving currency-issuing governments of their responsibility to use their fiscal capacities to ensure there are sufficient jobs created – whether in the non-government or government sector. They are thus going along with the neo-liberal attack on the right to work. Moreover, closer analysis reveals that the introduction of the BIG would not, under current institutional arrangements reduce poverty at all....

I think Bill on to an ket point in saying that basic income is neoliberal, based on neoclassical economics including New Keynesianism. This implies that the JG is based on social welfare based on Keynesian economics, including Post Keynesianism and MMT.

The key point is the difference between creating a buffers stock of employed to ensure full employment in the sense of a job offer for everyone willing and able to work, and buffer stock of unemployed that must be supported by transfer payments over one sort or another.

Basic income does not address this key point, and obscures the tradeoffs by emphasizing the benefits while minimizing the costs and externalties. Basic income is like treating a serious wasting disease with an analgesic like aspirin.
 
Bill Mitchell – billy blog
A Basic Income Guarantee does not reduce poverty
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Bill Mitchell — A basic income guarantee is a neo-liberal strategy for serfdom without the work

A reader pointed out the other day that a good idea remains a good idea even if bad people advocate it. This was in relation to my blog – Why are CEOs now supporting basic income guarantees?. It reprised an issue that has a long history in culture and the arts. Should we hate Wagner because it was symbolic for the Nazis? What about the work of Budd Schulberg who produced the screenplay for ‘On the Waterfront’ but was simultaneously dobbing people into the House Un-American Activities Committee? There are countless examples of this sort of quandary, or not, depending on your viewpoint. As I wrote in the earlier blog (cited abive), I am always suspicious when the elites advocate something. It is not just a taste for Wagner they are articulating. Generally, they are advocating further pathways that they can shore up their control and power. Which means bad things for the rest of us! The BIG is one of those pathways and it leads to impoverishment and an on-going capitalist domination. A basic income guarantee is not a path to nirvana – I see it as just a neo-liberal strategy for serfdom without the work....

Ccapitalism is not as much about private ownership of the means of production as it is about favoring capital, that is, ownership of real and financial assets, over the other factors of production — labor, that is, workers, and land, that is, the environment.

Capitalism is about capital accumulation and this occurs through expropriation and exploitation of workers and the environment by means of the application of power and control.

In democratic republics, the people have the opportunity to confront this through the electoral process. But they have to know what the alternatives are and how to proceed. Presently, they are being kept in the dark and misled.

MMT shows what some of the economic options are and how they would work to produce an economic system in which the factors of production are integrated harmoniously, with the top priority being people and the planet.

I know that BIG-toting progressives will respond and say their intent is different to Friedman’s. Sure enough. But structures are structures.

The BIG is very susceptible to neo-liberal manipulation. Once you abandon the narrative that it is the government’s responsibility to ensure full employment and agree that all the government is required to do is guarantee a bare existence then the slippery slope has been erected.

A moment’s reflection tells us that the CEOs and their lobbying organisations typically oppose any form of social assistance being provided by governments, in the same way, they tend to oppose wage rises.

Capital-labour conflict remains a central dynamic in our societies and only naivety would lead one to conclude it will go away, or rather, be ‘outside’ this dynamic by giving the unemployed a bare minimum BIG.

Once those who were formerly workers – in direct opposition to capital – become meagre consumption units, then the balance of power is tilted further towards capital....

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
A basic income guarantee is a neo-liberal strategy for serfdom without the work
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Bill Mitchell — Why are CEOs now supporting basic income guarantees?

Must read on the basic income guarantee and why it sucks.

Recall that Marx wrote in his 1844 work A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. that “Die Religion ist der Seufzer der bedrängten Kreatur, das Gemüth einer herzlosen Welt, wie sie der Geist geistloser Zustände ist. Sie ist das Opium des Volks” (Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people).

Religion was a major vehicle for social control used by capital to divert attention away from what they were up to – suppressing wages and worker autonomy and advancing their own interests.

Think about the role the Roman Catholic church played in Latin America as stark examples of the more subtle processes that operate in more advanced nations.
As the hold of religion lessened over time, capital found mass consumption as the next effective way to sustain a docile, compliant working class.

Please read my blog – The mass consumption era and the rise of neo-liberalism – for more discussion on this point.

But that meant allowing the standard of living of workers to increase through real wages growth in line with productivity growth and a more equitable distribution of national income.

As neo-liberalism has become more refined (not in quality but in its ability to attack the living standards of workers), the mass consumption strategy has become more involved.

Capital worked out that it could suppress real wages through labour market deregulation, take the gap generated by productivity growth for itself (redistribute national income in favour of profits), and then maintain mass consumption by pushing massive debt onto households, via the relaxing of credit standards and the corruption of banking, allowed for by the simultaneous deregulation of the financial markets.

Neat.

Major lobbying was expended to make this seemingly perfect solution operational.
Except greed got in the way and the GFC came along because the debt that was being pushed onto households was no longer subject to satisfactory prudential standards and the NINJAs finally couldn’t pay.

At that point, a new form of social control was needed to cope with the mass unemployment that has been created around the world.

Enter the next ‘you-beaut-plan’ – the CEO-advocated BIG.

And the progressives who are pushing for the BIG don’t know what day it is!
So our conception of humanity is of a bare minimum consumption unit – where society only has a responsibility to provide a small capacity to ensure this consumption is enabled.
End of story. We keep people in their boxes with just enough food and other things to keep them alive – just so they don’t rebel and challenge the capacity of the top-end-of-town to go on their merry way pillaging national resources and generated income.

Social control – BIG time.

If they want a better material existence then they can do a bit of work! But haven’t the robots taken all the jobs?...

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
Why are CEOs now supporting basic income guarantees?
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Claire Connelly — Why a universal basic income is a poor substitute for a guaranteed job

Bill Mitchell, Pavlina Tschernva, Fadhel Kaboub, Steven Hail, Ellis Winningham.

Buffer stock of employed versus a buffer stock of unemployed.

Bill Mitchell:

Article on Job Guarantee versus Basic Income Guarantee

The ABC published an article that I had some input into today – Why a universal basic income is a poor substitute for a guaranteed job – by Claire Connelly, a freelance journalist in Australia.

It generally makes all the relevant points and is worth reading and spreading.

ABC (Australia) — Opinion
Why a universal basic income is a poor substitute for a guaranteed job
Claire Connelly

ht Bill Mitchell at billyblog

Kate McFarland — FINLAND: First Basic Income payments sent to experiment participants

Finland's basic income experiment is now underway, with the first payments having been mailed this week. With the experiment generating much media attention, here is a review of some of the basics.

On January 1, 2017, Finland launched an experiment in which 2,000 individuals–randomly selected from a pool of unemployment benefit recipients–will receive unconditional cash payments of €560 (about 590 USD) per month for two years.

The first payments were sent out on Monday, January 9. 

The main goal of the experiment, as it presently stands, is to determine whether unconditional cash transfers are more effective than means-tested unemployment benefits with respect to promoting job-seeking and employment. Olli Kangas, leader of the research team at Kela that designed the experiment, has recommended expanding the experiment to other target populations (including “other persons with small incomes” and individuals under age 25)....

Bien
FINLAND: First Basic Income payments sent to experiment participants
Kate McFarland, former professional student at the Ohio State University (PhD Philosophy 2015, MS Statistics 2009, BS Mathematics 2006) and philosophy instructor, now a member of BIEN's Executive Committee as well as Secretary of BIEN's US affiliate (USBIG).

Bill Mitchell — Cash transfers are not squandered on booze but do not replace the need for jobs

Some years ago I was asked to design a framework for the implementation of minimum wage system in South Africa as part of an ILO project my research group was involved. We were evaluating the first five years of the Expanded Public Works Programme in South Africa, which was a cut-down employment guarantee program (limited by supply-side constraints on public expenditure largely conditioned by the bullying of the South African government by the IMF). One of the issues I had to deal with was the belief among many economists that the existing cash transfer system introduced by the South African government after 1994 should be expanded into a full-blown Basic Income Guarantee and that any notion of employment guarantees should be rejected. Our work demonstrated quite clearly (in my view) the flawed logic in this argument. The cash transfer system was productive as it stood but was no reasonably extensible into a widespread income guarantee without significant negative consequences. The creation of an employment guarantee scheme to absorb the social transfers and leave them as supplemental to cope with varying family structures was a much better option. That conclusion holds for less developed nations and advanced nations alike....

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
Cash transfers are not squandered on booze but do not replace the need for jobs
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Bill Mitchell — Is there a case for a basic income guarantee – Part 5

This is Part 5 in the mini-series discussing the relative merits of the basic income guarantee proposal and the Job Guarantee proposal. It finishes this part of our discussion. Today, I consider how society establishes a fair transition environment to cope with climate change and the impacts of computerisation etc. I outline a coherent adjustment framework to allow these transitions to occur equitably and where they are not possible (due to limits on worker capacity) alternative visions of productive work are developed? I argue that while work, in general, is coercive under capitalism, the provision of employment guarantees is a more equitable approach than relying as the basic income advocates envision on the exploitation of some to provide the freedom for others. Further, I argue that the Job Guarantee is a better vehicle for creating new forms of productive work. Adopting a basic income guarantee in this context just amounts to surrender. Our manuscript is nearly finished and we hope to complete the hard edits in the next month or so and have the book available for sale by the end of this year. More information on that later.

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
Is there a case for a basic income guarantee – Part 5
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Bill Mitchell — Is there a case for a basic income guarantee – Part 4 – robot edition

This is Part 4 in the mini-series discussing the relative merits of the basic income guarantee proposal and the Job Guarantee proposal. It is the ‘robot edition’. The march of the robots is the latest pretext that basic income proponents (including the IMF now) use to justify their policy advocacy. There is some truth in the claims that the so-called ‘second machine age’, marked by the arrival of robots, is not only gathering speed, but is different from the first period of machine development with respect to its capacity to wipe out human involvement in production. But the claims are somewhat over the top. Further the claims that these trends are inevitable are in denial of the basic capacities of the state to legislate in the common interest. While the innovations in technology will free labour from repetitive and boring work and improve productivity in those tasks, there is no inevitability that robots will develop outside the legislative framework administered by the state and overrun humanity (even if the predictions of robot autonomy are at all realistic). We will surely need to develop a coherent adjustment framework to allow these transitions to occur equitably and where they are not possible (due to limits on worker capacity) alternative visions of productive work are developed?

Further, the Job Guarantee is a better vehicle for handling these type of transitions and creating new forms of productive work. Adopting a basic income guarantee in this context just amounts to surrender.…

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
Is there a case for a basic income guarantee – Part 4 – robot edition
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Bill Mitchell— Is there a case for a basic income guarantee – Part 3

This is Part 3 in the mini-series discussing the relative merits of the basic income guarantee proposal and the Job Guarantee proposal. While there is a lot of literature out there on the merits of introducing a basic income guarantee very rarely will you read a detailed account of the macroeconomic implications of such a scheme. It is inescapable that the basic income proposal lacks what I call an inflation anchor. That is, to provide an adequate stipend and generate full employment (ensure there are enough jobs for all who want to work), the basic income guarantee is inherently inflationary and sets in place destructive macroeconomic dynamics which make it unsustainable. To suppress the inherent inflationary bias of the proposal, the stipend has to be so low that the recipients are freed from work but not poverty. The Job Guarantee, by way of contrast, is designed to provide an explicit inflation anchor and allows the government to continuously maintain full employment and provide a decent wage to those who from time to time will be in the Job Guarantee pool. It does not rely on poverty wages or unemployment to maintain price stability. That alone is a fundamental advantage of the Job Guarantee over the basic income guarantee – it is sustainable.…

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
Is there a case for a basic income guarantee – Part 3
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Bill Mitchell — Is there a case for a basic income guarantee – Part 2

This is Part 2 in the mini-series discussing the relative merits of the basic income guarantee proposal and the Job Guarantee proposal. The topic of a basic income guarantee seems to evoke a lot of passion and in all the discussions I rarely read anyone going carefully through the macroeconomic implications of bringing in a scheme. I get lots of E-mails accusing me in varying degrees of politeness of being on a moral crusade in my opposition to basic income proposals. I wonder how much of my work over the years such correspondents have read. Not much is my conclusion. Whatever you think of the morality of having a system where some people work while others are supported in one way or another without having to work, even though they could (so I exclude the aged, sick, severely disabled here), the fact remains that a policy proposal won’t get much traction from me if it has a deep inflation bias and adopts neo-liberal explanations for economic outcomes like unemployment. I will also never support a proposal that absolves the national government from taking responsibility for providing enough work via its currency capacities and treats individuals expediently as ‘consumption units’ – to be maintained at minimum material levels. Anyway, we explore a few of those issues in this blog.

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
Is there a case for a basic income guarantee – Part 2
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Bill Mitchell — Is there a case for a basic income guarantee – Part 1

This is Part 2 in my mini-series on my version of the debate between employment guarantees and income guarantees. This discussion will form part of the Part 3 of my next book (with co-author, Italian journalist Thomas Fazi) which traces the way the Left fell prey to what we call the globalisation myth and started to believe that the state had withered and was powerless in the face of the transnational movements of goods and services and capital flows. Accordingly, social democratic politicians frequently opine that national economic policy must be acceptable to the global financial markets and compromise the well-being of their citizens as a result. In Part 3 of the book, which we are now completing, we aim to present a ‘Progressive Manifesto’ to guide policy design and policy choices for progressive governments. We also hope that the ‘Manifesto’ will empower community groups by demonstrating that the TINA mantra, where these alleged goals of the amorphous global financial markets are prioritised over real goals like full employment, renewable energy and revitalised manufacturing sectors is bereft and a range of policy options, now taboo in this neo-liberal world, are available. Wherever one turns these days, a so-called progressive pops up with a megaphone (conceptual) shouting that a basic income guarantee is the panacea for all manner of evil – starting back some years ago with unemployment and moving more recently, as that rationale was exposed, to the need to counter the expected ravages of the second machine age. As regular readers will know I am a leading advocate for employment guarantees. I consider basic income proposals to represent a surrender to the neo-liberal forces – an acceptance of the inevitability of mass unemployment. Further, the robot argument doesn’t cut it. Anyway, in Part 1 – Work is important for human well-being – I considered the need to broaden the definition of productive work. I also emphasised the importance of an on-going availability of work for human well-being. In Part 2, we sketch the arguments that have been advanced to justify the basic income proposal and find them inconsistent, illogical and deficient.

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
Is there a case for a basic income guarantee – Part 1
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Yves Smith — Job Guarantee Versus Basic Income Guarantee

Yves here. I’ve been remiss in not putting this video from November on a discussion of the merits of proposals for a job guarantee versus an income guarantee. The talk was hosted by Dissent Magazine, Jacobin, and the New Economy Coalition, and is explicitly anticapitalist, so you may need to filter out the occasional ideological leap.

The participants were Alyssa Battisoni from Jacobin, activist Jesse Myerson, Darrick Hamilton of the New School, and Pavlina Tcherneva of University of Missouri, Kansas City.…. [Pavlina is now assistant professor of Economics at Bard College.]

Naked Capitalism
Job Guarantee Versus Basic Income Guarantee
Yves Smith

Bill Mitchell — The Job Guarantee and contributory unemployment benefits systems

The unemployment rate in Finland is climbing steadily and in October 2015 was 9.6 per cent (seasonally adjusted) and the employment to population ratio stood at 60.1 per cent and was trending down. Finland is fast becoming the next basket case of the Eurozone. What was once a highly supportive society is steadily being turned into a austerity-ridden backwater. The latest news, however, that the Finnish government is due to debate a proposal to provide every citizen with a basic income of €800 a month has excited the progressives – unfortunately. The proposal currently being prepared by the national agency that administers the Finnish welfare system (KELA) would offer this basic allowance in lieu of all other existing benefit payments. It would be paid regardless of whether the person received income from any other source. I have been considering the Finnish welfare system over the last month or so since my visit there in October. This is in relation to a series of queries I had from activists there who were keen on the Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) Job Guarantee proposal but were wondering how it would situate itself within the existing system of unemployment benefits in Finland. This blog captures my thoughts on both of those topics.…

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
The Job Guarantee and contributory unemployment benefits systems
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Tomas Hirst — The Greek government is calling for a radical new 'basic income' welfare policy

Well, not a universal BIG.

In the case of Greece it looks like such a scheme would initially be targeted at those nearing pension age in order to prevent them from taking early retirement — providing them with an income that they would otherwise draw from the state pension fund.

What Greece obviously needs with its depression level unemployment and forced austerity is a job guarantee and safety net for those unable to work.

Business Insider
The Greek government is calling for a radical new 'basic income' welfare policy
Tomas Hirst

Ian Welsh — The Problem with Basic Income

So basic income, at any level that would be equivalent to a living wage (aka. letting people live a decent life, not just barely scrape by), can be expected to spike inflation in various commodities, including oil. This is a problem, but it’s not a huge problem, because we finally have the technology which allows us to move off oil (not completely, but enough to mitigate the effect of demand increases), and because, hey, we’re flirting with deflation anyway. 

The real problem with basic income has to do with who controls our economy—with the fact that we are sold what we need, by and large, by oligopolies.... 

What this means is that increases in income, especially at the lower end, tend to be simply taken away by those who have what you must have. Everyone will know what the basic income is, and they will know who is surviving on just that, or just that plus a low-wage job. And they will raise prices so that money goes to them.... 

So if you want basic income to work, you must also make capitalism work. You must create actual competitive markets, you must-trust bust, you must regulate and you must move, as government, to ensure that the important things people will spend that basic income on are not scarce—either naturally or artificially.This extends far beyond basic income. 

Good post. Read the whole thing if you are into basic income.

Ian Welsh
The Problem with Basic Income

Yves Smith — The Failure of a Past Basic Income Guarantee, the Speenhamland System

The idea of a basic income guarantee is very popular with readers, more so that the notion of a job guarantee. Yet as we have mentioned in passing, this very sort of program was put in place on a large-scale basis in the past. Initially, it was very popular. However, in the long run it proved to be destructive to the recipients while tremendously beneficial to employers, who used the income support to further lower wages, thus increasing costs to the state and further reducing incentives to work. And when the system was dismantled, it was arguably the working poor, as opposed to the ones who had quit working altogether, who were hurt the most. It is also intriguing to note that this historical precedent is likely to resemble a a contemporary version of a basic income guarantee.

Caveats for the design of a BIG policy.

BWT, at least some MMT economists are not opposed to a basic income guarantee in addition to a job guarantee. The point out that a basic income guarantee is not a replacement for a job guarantee. The do different things. Some kind of guaranteed income is needed for those unable or unwilling to work if a job guarantee is not to be transformed into workfare, for instance. So some MMT economists would make a JG optional while also providing other safety net benefits for the unemployed to address poverty and destitution. Neither a JG nor a BIG would suffice to replace unemployment insurance, for example, which prevents higher skill workers from being forced to take work beneath their knowledge and skill level. An integrated policy is needed to address different needs effectively and efficiently, both socially and economically.

Naked Capitalism
The Failure of a Past Basic Income Guarantee, the Speenhamland System
Yves Smith

Neil Wilson — The Political Aspects of a Basic Income Guarantee

Brian [Romanchuk] has put up a useful post called Consequences of a Basic Income Guarantee which runs through some of the technical issues of an Income Guarantee for Canada and other countries. 

I'm from the UK, and we've had 'Means Tested' Unemployment Benefit, Housing Benefit, Universal Child Benefit, Universal Pensions and a National Health Service for decades. The history of these benefits show why general income schemes just don't work properly in practice.

Let's run through some reality.

Neil makes the point that the practical issues surrounding assistance are fundamentally political rather than essentially economic.

I would add that politics is about power, who wields it and how it is used. In a democracy, the power structure determines candidate selection, while election is by popular vote. So there is a dynamic between the power structure and the mindset of the public. Obviously, it is in the interest of the power structure to influence the public mindset, for example, through popular media controlled by the power structure.

In a capitalist economy and liberal democracy, oligarchic democracy is the norm owing to the ability of the power structure to influence the public mindset through media as well as to select candidates through funding. It is very difficult to change this in a representative democracy with a constitutional government that favors the power structure, legitimating capitalism as the priority of capital (class cronyism) over the other factors, labor (people) and land (the environment).

Without a change in the public mindset little lasting progress can be achieved to reverse these priorities, and without reversing them, little lasting social, political and economic change can come about through the political process.

Marxists hold that the way forward is material, though changing the economic infrastructure, which can only be accomplished effectively through revolution. Therefore, the task is eliminating "false consciousness" by raising the consciousness of labor through re-education in order to effect a political revolution.

Humanists hold that the way is through raising the level of collective consciousness to expand appreciation of universality, thereby grounding political revolution in an expansive conception of human rights.

Both stand in opposition to the classical liberal and neoliberal assumption that the dominant rights, if not the only ones, are self-ownership and ownership of property, both of which are held to be alienable.

3spoken
The Political Aspects of a Basic Income Guarantee
Neil Wilson

Brian Romanchuk — Consequences Of A Basic Income Guarantee

The idea of a Basic Income Guarantee (hereafter known as BIG) has become increasingly a topic of interest. My views have been greatly influenced by Hyman Minsky and Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), where a guaranteed job was preferred to guaranteed income. (Minsky referred to this as an Employer of Last Resort programme; MMT refers to this as a Job Guarantee.) I explain why I view a BIG as being essentially unfeasible within Canada, using logic similar to their analyses.

Bond Economics
Consequences Of A Basic Income Guarantee
Brian Romanchuk

Peter Cooper — Technology Paves the Way for Basic Income More than a Job Guarantee

Regular readers will be aware that I would support either a basic income guarantee (BIG) or job guarantee (JG) as standalone programs, whichever happened to be on the policy agenda, but ideally would prefer a program that combined the positive elements of both into some form of ‘job or income guarantee‘. Much of my reasoning to date has been outlined in previous posts archived under the category Job & Income Guarantee. I won’t revisit those considerations in this post. The present focus is instead on which of the two programs — a BIG or JG — should be seen as primary.…

heteconomist
Technology Paves the Way for Basic Income More than a Job Guarantee
Peter Cooper

Peter Cooper — Supporting a Basic Income Guarantee on Incentive Grounds

Sometimes supporters of a basic income guarantee (BIG) argue for the policy on the grounds that it would increase “incentives to work”. This conclusion follows from standard neoclassical labor-supply analysis. Irrespective of the correctness or otherwise of the argument – and, if correct, it probably does have some utility as a negator of frequent neoliberal claims to the contrary – it is important to keep in mind obvious limitations of the argument and to go well beyond it. Two limitations, in particular, spring to mind.

heteconomist
Supporting a Basic Income Guarantee on Incentive Grounds
Peter Cooper