Basic Income Guarantee - Advocates

Advocates

Many of the following advocates have actually proposed a negative income tax, which is means tested, rather than a basic income. Despite their differences in administration and effect, the two proposals are usually conflated.

Many countries have political parties that advocate a basic income, such as the Green Party of the United States, Green Party of Canada, Green Party of England and Wales, Vivant (Belgium), De Groenen and GreenLeft (The Netherlands), the Scottish Green Party, Socialist Party of South Korea, the New Zealand Democratic Party, the Liberal Party of Norway, Norwegian Green Party and Norwegian Red Party, New Party Nippon (Japan), Greens Japan as well as the Pirate Party Germany.

Worldwide, supporters of a basic income have united in the Basic Income Earth Network. BIEN recognizes numerous national advocacy groups.

One of the world's outspoken advocates of a basic income system is the Belgian philosopher and political economist Philippe van Parijs. Other advocates include Gunnar Adler-Karlsson (Sweden), Götz Werner (Germany), Saar Boerlage (Netherlands), Herwig Büchele (Austria), André Gorz (France), Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Charles Murray (USA), Keith Rankin (New Zealand), es:Daniel Raventós (Spain), Osmo Soininvaara (Finland), Guy Standing (UK), Eduardo Suplicy (Brazil) and Walter van Trier (Belgium)

In 1918, philosopher Bertrand Russell argues for a basic income in Roads to Freedom.

In his last book, Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?, published in 1967, Martin Luther King, Jr. calls for a guaranteed income.

In 1968, James Tobin, Paul Samuelson, John Kenneth Galbraith and another 1,200 economists signed a document calling for the US Congress to introduce in that year a system of income guarantees and supplements.

In the 1972 presidential campaign, Senator George McGovern called for a 'demogrant' that was very similar to a basic income.

In 1973, Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote The Politics of a Guaranteed Income (ISBN 0394463544) in which he advocated for the Basic Income and discussed Richard Nixon's GAI proposal.

Mike Gravel, a former US congressman and presidential candidate, advocates a tax rebate paid in a monthly check from the government to all citizens as part of a transition away from income taxes and toward a pre-bated national sales tax (the FairTax).

Winners of the Nobel Prize in Economics who fully support a basic income include Herbert A. Simon, Friedrich Hayek, James Meade, Robert Solow, and Milton Friedman.

It is clear, however, that Friedrich Hayek did not advocate that any modern nation act to implement a minimum income. This was a concept that he attributed to his "Great Society," which was his Utopian liberal society, in the classical sense. Hayek emphasized a minimum income in the far future, and stated clearly that no wealthy countries such as the United States should guarantee any income not available to all around the world, as it would attract mass immigration and overwhelm the procedure:

"It is obvious that for a long time to come it will be wholly impossible to secure an adequate and uniform minimum standard for all human beings everywhere, or at least that the wealthier countries would not be content to secure for their citizens no higher standards than can be secured for all men. But to confine to the citizens of particular countries provisions for a minimum standard higher than that universally applied makes it a privilege and necessitates certain limitations on the free movement of men across frontiers... we must face the fact that we here encounter a limit to the universal application of those liberal principles of policy which the existing facts of the present world make unavoidable."

In his final book Full employment regained? James Meade states that a return to full employment can be achieved only if, among other things, workers offer their services at a low enough price, that the required wage for unskilled labour would be too low to generate a socially desirable distribution of income, and that therefore a citizen's income would be necessary.

Erik Olin Wright characterizes basic income as a socialist project and a further reform to capitalism that establishes the basis of a social economy by empowering labor in relation to capital.

Richard Parncutt argues that income tax is effectively progressive when basic income is combined with flat income tax. The combination would simplify the tax-welfare system.

Jeremy Rifkin, in his book The End of Work, argued that there may be an increasing need for such measures as automation would reduce the demand for workers in future.

Edward Skidelsky and Robert Skidelsky favoured a basic income in their book called "How Much is Enough?"