A community-based guaranteed income

Record

Guaranteed Income (GI) is usually defined as an income provided by a government to all adult members of a given nation at a uniform, fixed level, and at regular intervals.

GI as public policy is typically characterized as a socio-economic right of an individual, or an entitlement provided by the legitimate institutions of a given polity. Many authors have supported GI on the grounds that it is a ‘human’ or ‘natural’ right, or some other variation of the basic rights argument.

Analysis reveals that these various rights-based arguments are predicated on a morally incomplete and sociologically inaccurate vision of society. By contrast, this brief advocates and analyzes a GI which both reflects and arises out of the responsibilities we have to one another as members of both smaller and more encompassing communities.

This community-based analysis of GI gives rise to numerous implications for public policy.

Authors: Etzioni, A; Platt, A

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Series: The social contract revisited
• Place of publication: http://www.fljs.org/content/social-contract-revisited-publications
• Publication date: 2008-01-01
• Edition: Publisher's version
• Language: English
• Keywords: income
• Subjects: Socio-legal studies