Growing arguments for a guaranteed basic income wouldn’t have stood a chance against the dominant market economics mindset I was trained on in the early 90’s. I’ve been surprised in recent years to see that the likes of Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman and even Charles Murray each put forth arguments for some form of income floor. There’s a strong case for public finance efficiency gains compared to our current bureaucratic welfare state – both for the government administrators and the individual recipients. Another argument I find especially compelling is that automation and scale are driving the marginal product of labor below the level needed to sustain basic human needs. The most timely argument relevant to our country’s current focus on racial justice is that an income guarantee could effect real and immediate progress for the past property right violations incurred by any and all affected groups. Moreover, such a solution focuses on a common future aspiration rather than debating and weighting any particular historical cause and stakeholder group. This and other arguments are summarized well in The Libertarian Case for a Basic Income:
A Basic Income Guarantee might be required on libertarian grounds as reparation for past injustice.
One of libertarianism’s most distinctive commitments is its belief in the near‐inviolability of private property rights. But it does not follow from this commitment that the existing distribution of property rights ought to be regarded as inviolable, because the existing distribution is in many ways the product of past acts of uncompensated theft and violence.
Matt Zwolinsky, The Libertarian Case for a Basic Income, 12/5/2013, Libertarianism.org
As we discern our future in a time of intense debate about racial inequality and fast changing labor economics, it’s promising to see how the economic thinkers who argued for the benefits of free markets also provide foundational arguments for reconciling the gaps that remain.
JP Snow 