User:ImperfectlyInformed/basic income history
Roots in historical thought
[edit]The first Muslim caliph, Abu Bakr, introduced a guaranteed minimum standard of income, granting each man, woman, and child ten dirhams annually; this was later increased to twenty dirhams.[1]
In 1795, American revolutionary Thomas Paine advocated a citizen's dividend to all US citizens as compensation for "loss of his or her natural inheritance, by the introduction of the system of landed property" (Agrarian Justice, 1795).
French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte echoed Paine's sentiments and commented that 'man is entitled by birthright to a share of the Earth's produce sufficient to fill the needs of his existence' (Herold, 1955).
Gaining ground with economists and policymakers, 1962-1987
[edit]In 1962, economist Milton Friedman advocated a minimum guaranteed income via a “negative income tax.”[2]
In 1963, Robert Theobald published the book Free Men and Free Markets, in which he advocated a guaranteed minimum income (the origin of the modern version of the phrase).
In 1966, the Cloward–Piven strategy advocated "overloading" the US welfare system to force its collapse in the hopes that it would be replaced by "a guaranteed annual income and thus an end to poverty".
In his final book Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (1967), Martin Luther King Jr. wrote[3]
I am now convinced that the simplest approach will prove to be the most effective — the solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by a now widely discussed measure: the guaranteed income.
— from the chapter titled "Where We Are Going"
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.[4]
In 1973, Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote The Politics of a Guaranteed Income, in which he advocated the guaranteed minimum income and discussed Richard Nixon's Guaranteed Annual Income (GAI) proposal.[5][citation needed]
The term basic income became the term of art due to work by the Basic Income Research Group (BIRG),[6] which formed in 1987 out of a related group.[7]
In 1986 the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and the Brookings Institution held a conference[8] to discuss the results of four basic income experiments from 1968 to 1982.
In 1987, New Zealand's Labour Finance Minister Roger Douglas announced a Guaranteed Minimum Family Income Scheme to accompany a new flat tax. Both were quashed by then Prime Minister David Lange, who sacked Douglas.[9]
Empirical studies and increased awareness, 1988-Present
[edit]In his 1994 "autobiographical dialog," classical liberal Friedrich Hayek stated: "I have always said that I am in favor of a minimum income for every person in the country".[10]
References
[edit]- ^ Grace Clark: Pakistan's Zakat and 'Ushr as a Welfare System
- ^ http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/08/why-arent-reformicons-pushing-a-guaranteed-basic-income/375600/
- ^ Martin Luther King jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (New York: Harper & Row, 1967)
- ^ Economists' Statement on Guaranteed Annual Income, 1/15/1968-4/18/1969 folder, General Correspondence Series, Papers of John Kenneth Galbraith, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library. Cited in: Jyotsna Sreenivasan, "Poverty and the Government in America: A Historical Encyclopedia." (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2009), page 269
- ^ "Richard Nixon: Address to the Nation on Domestic Programs".
- ^ van Trier, Walter (1989-04-01). "Who framed social dividend? A tale of the unexpected". University of Antwerp, Faculty of Applied Economics.
{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires|journal=(help) - ^ http://citizensincome.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Basic-Income-and-the-Labour-Market.pdf
- ^ Lessons from the Income Maintenance Experiments
- ^ "New Zealand Is Jolted By a Speedy Decontrol", Seth Mydans, The New York Times (24 February 1988)
- ^ Hayek on Hayek: An Autobiographical Dialogue by F. A. Hayek, edited by Stephen Kresge and Leif Wenar (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994)