A basic income greatly increases real freedom through leximin distribution
Parijs 95 {“Real Freedom for All : What (if Anything) Can Justify Capitalism?” Philippe Van Parijs (Studied philosophy, law, political economy, sociology and linguistics at the Facultés universitaires Saint Louis (Brussels) and the Universities of Louvain, Oxford, Bielefeld and California (Berkeley). He holds doctorates in the social sciences (Louvain, 1977) and in philosophy (Oxford, 1980). He is Professor at the Faculty of economic, social and political sciences of the University of Louvain (UCL), where he has directed the Hoover Chair of economic and social ethics since its creation in 1991. He has also been a special guest professor at the KuLeuven's Higher Institute for Philosophy since 2006. From 2004 onwards he was for several years a Regular Visiting Professor of Philosophy at Harvard University). Oxford Political Theory. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Published 1995, Accessed June 23, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1093/0198293577.001.0001.} //Livshits
A basic income, in other words, is an income paid by the government to each full member of society (1) even if she is not willing to work, (2) irrespective of her being rich or poor, (3) whoever she lives with, and (4) no matter which part of the country she lives in. The choice of the expression is meant to convey the idea that, owing to its unconditional nature, we here have something on which a person can safely count, a material foundation on which a life can firmly rest, and to which any other income, whether in cash or in kind, from work or savings, from the market or the State, can legitimately be added. On the other hand, there is nothing in the definition of basic income, as it is here understood, to connect it to some notion of basic needs. A basic income, as defined, can fall short of or exceed what is regarded as necessary to a decent existence.3 2.2 Unconditionality and Real Freedom In this light, it is tempting to rephrase the radical suggestion made earlier by stating simply that what a real-libertarian should endorse is the formal-freedom-respecting institutional framework that yields the highest basic income.4 Before being able to assert this equivalence with any confidence, however, we must check whether a concern with real- freedom-for-all can justify all four of the unconditionalities that define a basic income. So far, only the first of these—the absence of a constraint on the use of one's time in the form of a restriction of the benefit to those willing to accept employment or training—has been explicitly linked to the concern with real-freedom-for-all. What about the other three? What is involved in the second one—the absence of a means test—is essentially the choice between an (ex ante) basic income and an (ex post) negative income-tax scheme. At first sight, both approaches may seem equivalent from a real- libertarian standpoint, since exactly the same distributions of post-tax-and-transfer income can in principle be achieved with a basic income scheme and a negative income tax. Or, if there is a difference, it should be to the advantage of the latter, since what it does is simply to avoid the heavy to-and-fro that results from paying a basic income to those with a substantial income and then taxing it back, and this should make a negative income-tax scheme cheaper to run.(The Appendix to this chapter depicts graphically the difference between the two types of scheme, and the difference between both and existing guaranteed income schemes.) And yet, the absence of a means test gives basic income a decisive advantage in terms of leximin real freedom, for three distinct reasons. First, it is obvious enough, given the time-lag unavoidably involved in any income assessment for tax purposes, that a negative income-tax scheme can only hope to compete with a basic income scheme in terms of leximin real freedom if it is supplemented by a system of advance payments that will at least give people the real freedom not to starve while waiting for the tax administration to calculate their entitlements. But sheer ignorance or confusion is bound to prevent some people from getting access to advance payments they could have claimed. The higher rate of take up that is therefore bound to be associated with a basic income scheme is a difference that matters supremely when prior importance is being given to the real freedom of the least really free. Secondly, in the case of a negative income tax, the relevant feature of the budget-set takes the form of a contingent promise of corrective transfers rather than of a sum of money on which one can fully bank simply because it is tangibly there. This fact is bound to hamper the confidence needed to actually to make use of the options contained in the (abstractly identical) budget-set. One aspect of this difference relates directly to an important dimension of the ‘unemployment trap’ to which social workers are usually far more sensitive than economists. What deters people in the poverty trap from looking for a job or taking one is arguably less that they would not have a higher income, or a significantly higher income, at work than out of work, but even more the liquidity gap and the uncertainty involved in renouncing a safe and regular benefit as a result of taking up a job which they may soon prove unable to keep or to bear. 5 Finally, in an era of computerized transfer payments and pay-as-you-earn tax collection, and assuming that there is no need for control on some other grounds (to check work-proneness or household situation, for example), the administrative costs involved in the advance payment scheme that must be coupled to a negative income-tax system make the latter more expensive to run for any given level of income guarantee, and they therefore absorb resources that could otherwise be used to swell this level. Even on its own, this consideration would suffice, given present tax and transfer technologies, to justify the choice for the universal over the means-tested variant of an otherwise unconditional income. 6