Michael W. Howard

Basic Income and Migration Policy: A Moral Dilemma?

In this paper, the author argues that globalist egalitarians may face a dilemma between a generous welfare policy such as a national basic income (NBI) for all residents, and an egalitarian immigration policy such as open borders, because NBI may have a welfare magnet effect that generates pressure for tightening of borders or restricting NBI to citizens only. However the case for open borders is weaker to the extent that global transfers (such as might occur with a regional basic income or global basic income) address the economic inequities and motives for migration. In the absence of such global or regional institutions, NBI advocates can justify border restriction and a waiting period for BI entitlement, to the extent necessary to prevent a worsening of the condition of the least advantaged compatriots, as temporary measures on a path toward global justice.

Basic Income, Liberal Neutrality, Socialism, and Work

Abstract Liberal critics often object to basic income (BI) on the grounds that it violates reciprocity and is biased toward those who choose voluntarily to opt out of work and thus violate the principle of liberal neutrality toward conceptions of the good life. In the first part of this paper I argue that liberal neutrality favors BI. Marxist critics of BI are less likely to accept liberal neutrality, but I argue in the second part that the argument for BI in the first part applies with equal force to Marxist objections that BI is unfairly exploitative of workers. Marxists are also less likely to accept current labor market trends, seeing socialism as affording more opportunity for guaranteeing everyone a right to decent work, and suspecting BI of making the unfair inequalities of capitalism a little more palatable while diverting attention from a more equitable socialist alternative. I argue that BI is not incompatible with socialism or Marxism, and should not be opposed to but rather combined with strategies for full employment.

A NAFTA Dividend: A Guaranteed Minimum Income for North America

This paper explores the desirability and feasibility of a minimum income for the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) region. I review arguments in support of a basic income or a negative income tax for the European Union (EU). Then I examine ways in which the NAFTA countries do and do not resemble the EU in aspects relevant for the desirability and feasibility of a regional basic income. I argue that a case can be made for a North American guaranteed income, grounded, with respect to desirability, in a globalist theory of justice, and with respect to feasibility, in the necessity of moderating the flow of labor migration. A universal regional basic income is a useful tool for regional development that is fair and that insures better than does the current NAFTA that cooperation benefits the least advantaged.

A Cap on Carbon and a Basic Income: A Defensible Combination in the United States?

The Permanent Fund Dividend (PFD) of the Alaska Permanent Fund (APF) can be seen as a successful example of a universal basic income. It is a partial, not a full, basic income, as it is not sufficient for basic needs. But like other basic income schemes, it is universal and detached from any work requirement. A basic income funded in this way is a natural resource dividend. The natural resource, in this case Alaska’s oil, is owned equally by every resident, and every resident gets an equal share of the returns on wealth generated by the resource. This book asks how this model might be replicated in other contexts, and with other resources. Of the possible resource bases for a basic income at the federal level in the United States, one of the most promising is the atmosphere we all share, which, treated as a common sink, is becoming dangerously polluted with greenhouse gasses (GHGs). Limitation of this pollution through the auction of a fixed number of carbon permits will generate large revenues, and each of us might lay claim to an equal share of these revenues in the form of dividends, an idea popularized by Peter Barnes.1 This is not mere speculation. The American Clean Energy and Security (ACES) Act, which passed the United States House of Representatives in June 2009, initially would give away 85 percent of the permits, but in the 2020s it would begin auctioning an increasing share of the permits and return the revenue to residents on an equal per capita basis.

Introduction: Success in Alaska

Every year, every Alaskan gets paid. Every man, woman, and child receives a dividend as a joint owner of Alaska’s oil reserves. In 1956, Alaska ratified a constitution recognizing joint ownership of unoccupied land and natural resources. In 1967, North America’s largest oil reserve was discovered in publicly owned areas on Alaska’s North Slope. In 1976, the state government voted to dedicate a small part of its yearly oil revenues to a state investment fund, called the Alaska Permanent Fund (APF). In 1982, the state government voted to distribute part of the returns from that fund as a yearly dividend, called the Permanent Fund Dividend (PFD), sometimes called “the Alaska Dividend,” to every Alaskan. In 2008, the dividend (plus a onetime supplement of

The Alaska Model as a Menu of Options

1,200 from that year’s state government budget surplus) reached a high of

Conclusion: Lessons from the Alaska Model

3,269, which comes to

Critical Reflections on the Future of Alaska’s Permanent Fund and Dividend

16,345 for a family of five. More often in recent years the PFD has been between

Exporting an Idea

1,000 and

A Jubilee Tax for Citizens’ Capital Accounts

1,500 per person, which comes to between