In a number of works, James M. Buchanan set out a proposal for a ‘demogrant’—a form of universal basic income that applied the principles of generality and non discrimination to the tax and the transfer sides of the scheme and was to be implemented as a constitutional rule outside the realm of day-to-day politics. The demogrant has received surprisingly little scholarly attention, but this article locates it in Buchanan’s broader constitutional political economy project and shows it was a logical application of his theoretical framework to the problem of inefficient and unfair welfare systems when reform to the basic institutions of majoritarian democracy was not forthcoming. The demogrant aims to end the problems of majority cycling and rent seeking that plague contemporary welfare states and therefore offers a model of welfare without rent seeking—a constitutional welfare state. We compare Buchanan’s demogrant model to other universal basic income and negative income tax models and consider the most important criticisms. We conclude that rescuing the demogrant model from relative obscurity would be a fruitful future task of applied constitutional political economy and public choice.

中文翻译：

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福利不寻租？布坎南的民主提案和宪法福利国家的可能性

在许多作品中，詹姆斯·M·布坎南提出了一项“民主人士”的提案——一种普遍基本收入的形式，将普遍性和非歧视性原则应用于该计划的税收和转移方面，并将予以实施作为日常政治领域之外的宪法规则。令人惊讶的是，民主主义者几乎没有受到学术界的关注，但本文将其置于布坎南更广泛的宪政政治经济学项目中，并表明在对多数民主的基本制度进行改革时，这是他的理论框架对低效率和不公平福利制度问题的合乎逻辑的应用。不是即将到来。民主人士旨在结束困扰当代福利国家的多数人骑自行车和寻租问题，因此提供了一种没有寻租的福利模式——宪法福利国家。我们将布坎南的民主模型与其他普遍基本收入和负所得税模型进行比较，并考虑最重要的批评。我们得出的结论是，从相对默默无闻中拯救民主模式将是应用宪政政治经济学和公共选择的一项富有成效的未来任务。