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Guy Standing: Basic Income: And How We Can Make It Happen. Penguin, 2017
Basic Income Studies Pub Date : 2018-01-16 , DOI: 10.1515/bis-2017-0022
Luke Antony Martinelli

Guy Standing’s newest book Basic income: And How We Can Make It Happen (Penguin 2017) comprehensively summarises key debates, issues and evidence around the desirability and feasibility of basic income, retaining the hallmarks of Standing’s research and advocacy throughout. This book is at once an accessible, concise overview of Standing’s impressive body of work on the ethical and practical imperatives for basic income, and a political and strategic treatise for basic income advocates and activists. Chapter one of the volume provides definitions and context for what follows. Support for basic income is traced historically, starting with the ideas of Thomas More and culminating in the advocacy of the Silicon Valley tech. entrepreneurs. In chapters two to five, Standing elaborates his views regarding the justifications for a basic income: namely: social justice; freedom; poverty reduction, inequality and insecurity; and economic arguments. In the discussion of social justice, Standing reviews the well-known arguments in favour of a form of ‘social dividend’ designed to compensate for the private appropriation of common resources, and extends this to other sources of rental income. Such arguments support basic income as an entitlement to shared societal assets – including the fruits of technological innovation currently accruing privately due to the enshrinement of stringent intellectual property protections. While it is hard to dispute that basic income could fulfil such a function, such arguments might only warrant a relatively modest basic income, insufficient as “a response to poverty per se”, as Standing himself acknowledges (p. 27). Chapter three considers basic income’s value in promoting freedom. Here the discussion traverses libertarian and republican conceptualisations of freedom, and argues for basic income’s potential to emancipate oppressed people and promote meaningful democracy. Standing’s perception that basic income can and should enhance both negative and positive liberty is a valuable one, since a narrow view of liberty implies acceptance of ‘free market’ outcomes and severely reduces the scope for progressive political movements. However, the discord between his view that “needs-based supplements ... should always be preserved” (p. 53) and the right libertarian perspective has important political and strategic implications that Standing does not consider here. Ultimately, it may be impossible to accommodate the spectrum of view held by basic income’s disparate supporters in a coherent movement. Chapters four and five consider the more prosaic justifications for basic income: that it is increasingly essential to address growing poverty, inequality and insecurity, themselves the consequences of “market-oriented global capitalism” (p. 73), and that it would have a number of economic advantages, via higher economic growth and stabilisation of the economic cycle. Here we touch on a range of familiar themes: the advantages of basic income vis-à-vis stigma, bureaucratic intrusion, and unemployment, poverty and bureaucracy traps. Standing rightly observes that the extent to which basic income would reduce income inequality would depend on the specifics of the scheme, and the means through which it was funded (p. 82). But he argues compellingly that basic income could promote the laudable goal of a fairer society, as well as mitigate against pervasive economic insecurity and its pernicious psychological and financial side-effects. In chapter five, Standing touches upon arguments that technological change will exacerbate insecurity, even if the “mass displacement of human labour” cannot be predicted with any certainty (p. 106). Chapter six, titled ‘The Standard Objections’, runs through 13 of the latter and rejects each of them as erroneous or of little consequence. Standing’s arguments against some practical objections are forceful. He is also right to acknowledge that even were some of these objections valid, any disadvantages must be weighed against basic income’s purported benefits (p. 126). Nevertheless, there is a sense that perhaps Standing does not adequately acknowledge common normative concerns and objections, which are of paramount political and strategic importance. There is ample evidence that a large proportion of people do oppose basic income on grounds

中文翻译:

Guy Stand:基本收入:以及我们如何实现。企鹅,2017

Guy Stand 的最新著作《基本收入:以及我们如何使其发生》(企鹅出版社 2017 年)全面总结了关于基本收入的可取性和可行性的关键辩论、问题和证据,并始终保留了 Stand 的研究和倡导的特点。这本书既是对 Stand 令人印象深刻的关于基本收入的伦理和实践要求的令人印象深刻的工作的简单易懂的概述,也是基本收入倡导者和活动家的政治和战略论文。该卷的第一章提供了以下内容的定义和背景。对基本收入的支持在历史上是有迹可循的,从 Thomas More 的想法开始,到对硅谷科技的倡导而告终。企业家。在第二至第五章中,Standing 阐述了他关于基本收入理由的观点:即:社会正义; 自由; 减贫、不平等和不安全;和经济论据。在讨论社会正义时,Standing 回顾了支持一种旨在补偿私人占有公共资源的“社会红利”形式的众所周知的论点,并将其扩展到其他租金收入来源。这些论点支持将基本收入作为共享社会资产的权利——包括目前由于严格的知识产权保护而私人积累的技术创新成果。虽然很难对基本收入可以履行这样的功能提出异议,但这些论点可能只保证相对适度的基本收入,不足以作为“对贫困本身的回应”,正如斯坦特本人所承认的(第 27 页)。第三章探讨基本收入在促进自由方面的价值。这里的讨论贯穿了自由主义和共和主义的自由概念,并论证了基本收入在解放被压迫人民和促进有意义的民主方面的潜力。斯坦丁认为基本收入可以而且应该促进消极和积极自由的看法是有价值的,因为对自由的狭隘看法意味着接受“自由市场”的结果,并严重缩小了进步政治运动的范围。然而,他认为“基于需求的补充剂……应该始终保留”(第 53 页)与正确的自由主义观点之间的不一致具有重要的政治和战略意义,而斯坦丁在这里没有考虑到这一点。最终,在一个连贯的运动中,可能无法容纳基本收入的不同支持者持有的不同观点。第 4 章和第 5 章考虑了基本收入的更为平淡的理由:解决日益严重的贫困、不平等和不安全感越来越重要,这些贫困、不平等和不安全本身就是“以市场为导向的全球资本主义”(第 73 页)的后果,并且它会产生通过更高的经济增长和经济周期的稳定,许多经济优势。在这里,我们涉及一系列熟悉的主题:基本收入相对于耻辱、官僚入侵以及失业、贫困和官僚陷阱的优势。站立正确地观察到,基本收入将在多大程度上减少收入不平等将取决于该计划的具体情况以及资助该计划的方式(第 82 页)。但他令人信服地认为,基本收入可以促进更公平的社会这一值得称赞的目标,并减轻普遍存在的经济不安全感及其有害的心理和财务副作用。在第五章中,Standing 谈到了技术变革将加剧不安全感的论点,即使“人类劳动力的大规模流离失所”无法准确预测(第 106 页)。第六章,标题为“标准异议”,贯穿了后者的 13 条,并以错误或无足轻重的理由驳回了每一条。针对某些实际反对意见,Standing 的论点很有说服力。他也正确地承认,即使其中一些反对意见有效,也必须权衡任何不利因素与基本收入声称的好处(第 126 页)。尽管如此,有一种感觉是,Station 可能没有充分承认共同的规范性关切和反对意见,这些关切和反对具有至关重要的政治和战略重要性。有充分的证据表明,很大一部分人确实反对基本收入,理由是
更新日期:2018-01-16
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