Basic Income, Post-Productivism and Liberalism

Abstract

This article discusses Basic Income (BI) in the context of postproductivism. It defines post-productivism as an ethic of reproductive value and argues that BI is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for the realisation of such value. However, against those who would abandon or else severely dilute liberal justifications for BI, it defends a liberal framework, albeit one that is broadly consistent with recent republican contributions to the debate. It concludes that BI can be justified as that which expands the spectrum of social goods but that a BI scheme should neither ignore those social conditions that are likely to enhance autonomy nor the social associations through which reproductive value can be promoted.

Bottom-up pressures, institutional hurdles and political concerns: the long path towards an eco-welfare state in Italy

“…According to these scholars, until now, productivism has neglected the environmental and ecological costs of solely giving priority to economic growth, higher employment rates and greater GDP (e.g. Birnbaum, 2009;Fitzpatrick, 2009). Based on this criticism, we see calls for more explicit and consistent consideration of environmental sustainability and the eco-social dimensions of welfare.…”

Money, Vouchers, Public Infrastructures? A Framework for Sustainable Welfare Benefits

“…Yet, a too-low basic income, which rules out some minimum level of autonomy on the market, also risks forgoing positive effects. Basic income has been advocated as raising workers bargaining power and promoting post-productivist lifestyles [63] by lowering the necessity to engage with the labor market through decoupling of the labor-money-nexus, reducing working time, choosing more leisure and less material consumption, or engaging in work-sharing [67,84,85]. It could also reduce inequality and the importance of positional goods [66] and enable collective change [86].…”

A Review of Basic Income for Nature and Climate

“…Basic income (BI) has been proposed, even if cursorily, to address the increasingly noticeable global effects of human activities on climate change and species extinction as a plausible means to reduce the dependency of people who have driven these effects and to provide for their future sustenance (Lewis and Maslin, 2018). BI may enable a transition toward an improved future welfare that, among other things, breaks the link between growth and economic security and ensures the latter for individuals (Andersson, 2010;Fitzpatrick, 2010;Pinto, 2020). BI might facilitate a structural change that targets the deeper, systemic problem related to climate change and biodiversity loss, namely, an economic system promoting expansion of production and consumption, in that BI encourages a shift toward sufficiency and resource-aware living (Schachtschneider, 2014;MacNeil and Vibert, 2019).…”

“…The most popular arguments against BI are related to unconditionality, financing, and their ramifications for nature and climate. When sustainable outcomes are not required in a given BI scheme one might question how BI alone can induce the adoption of post productivist values (e.g., Fitzpatrick, 2010;Tcherneva, 2007;Howard et al, 2019) or adverse effects from increased production and consumption given increased disposable income (e.g., Goldsmith, 2012). Further, despite the presence of other plausible sources (Howard et al, 2019;Van Parijs and Vanderborght, 2017), taxes can be a primary means of BI funding, notably on income (e.g., Atkinson, 1991;Desai and Palermo, 2019;Torry, 2019).…”