Basic Income, Unemployment and Compensatory Justice

Chapter 1. Basic Income Confronted with Some Popular Ideas of Justice
1. Introduction
2. Self-reliance
3. Reciprocity: not only the truly lazy
4. Basic income and the work ethic Summary and conclusions

Chapter 2. Compensatory Justice and Basic Income
1. Introduction
2. The economist's view on compensatory justice
3. The objective approach to compensatory justice
4. The balancing approach to compensatory justice
5. The conditions of compensatory justice: the role of the social security system
5.1. Compensatory justice and conditional social security
5.2. Compensatory justice and basic income
6. Compensatory justice and parasitism Summary and conclusions Appendix

Chapter 3. Basic Income, Un(der)employment and Jobs Shortage
1. Introduction
2. Hamminga's thought experiment
3. The Labour Rights Scheme
3.1. Uniform productivity levels
3.2. Non-uniform productivity
4. The equivalent basic income scheme
4.1. Uniform productivity levels
4.2. Non-uniform productivity
5. Welfare policy and economic up- and downturns
6. Parasitism and exploitation
7. (Un)employment rents Summary and conclusions Appendix

Chapter 4. Why Launch a Basic Income Experiment?
1. Introduction
2. The limitations of theoretical models and empirical research
3. Basic income versus negative income tax
4. The New Jersey income-maintenance experiment
4.1. The design of the New Jersey experiment
4.2. The operations, surveys, and administration
5. Lessons drawn from the New Jersey experiments
6. Design of a new basic income experiment
6.1. Social assistance recipients
6.2. Workers
6.3. Prospective entrepreneurs
6.4. The cost of the experiment
6.5. Effects of a basic income to be researched Summary and conclusions

Chapter 5. First Steps towards a Basic Income
1. Introduction
2. The impossibility theorem: A basic income is either too low to be socially acceptable or too high to be economically feasible
3. A partial basic income
4. An alternative route
5.

Loek Groot studied economics (University of Amsterdam) and philosophy (Catholic University of Leuven), received his Ph.D. (cum laude) in 1999, was Grotius Post-Doctorate Research fellow at the Department of Political Science (University of Amsterdam), is member of the Amsterdam School of Social Research (ASSR) and now working at SISWO/Netherlands Institute of the Social Sciences. He was (co)editor, together with Robert van der Veen, of the book Basic Income on the Agenda. Policy Objectives and Political Chances (2000).

Phillippe van Parijs is Professor of Economic and Social Ethics at the Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium. His books include Marxism Recycled (1993) and Real Freedom for All. What (if anything) can justify capitalism (1995). In 2001 he received the Prix Francqui for his entire oeuvre.