Thursday, February 4, 2010

Basic Income Conference

Thursday, 15 April and Friday, 16 April, 2010, at Universite de Montreal. The full program, as well as more information, can be found here. Basic income is probably the only policy in the world advocated by communists, Rawlsian liberals, and Sarah Palin (as governor of Alaska, she presided over the only operating basic income program in existence, the state oil revenue grants).

I don't know the precise form of basic income guarantee advocated by all of the speakers at the conference, but it is certainly worth differentiating between the negative income tax advocated by neoliberals and neo-classical economists (of which the US earned income tax credit is an instance) and the basic income guarantee, which would be unconditional (except, perhaps, ofr citizenship), and hence not means-tested or tied to employment.