Citizen's Income Newsletter

Issue 2, 2007

Citizen's Income Newsletter
ISSN 1464-7354

Citizen's Income Trust
P.O. Box 26586
London SE3 7WY

Tel: +44 (0) 20 8305 1222
Fax: +44 (0) 20 8305 1802

Email: info@citizensincome.org

Website: www.citizensincome.org

Registered charity no. 328198

Director: Malcolm Torry

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this newsletter are not necessarily those of the Citizen's Income Trust

Editorial

There are some landmark articles in this issue of the Citizen's Income Newsletter.

We report on our questionnaire survey of the House of Lords. We have achieved a statistically significant response rate, and the results are highly significant. We would encourage our readers to study the tables carefully. We are enormously grateful to Baroness Barker, Lord Desai and Lord Beaumont for their help with this project.

This edition also contains news items, conference reports, and book reviews, amongst which there is a review of the new journal, Basic Income Studies, and an appropriately combative review of Charles Murray's equally combative advocacy of a Citizen's Income.

Main article

Both the House of Commons and the House of Lords support a Citizen's Income approach to the reform of tax and benefits

The House of Commons

Three years ago, with the help of Dr. Lynne Jones MP and Sir Archy Kirkwood MP (then Chair of the Work and Pensions Select Committee), the Citizen's Income Trust distributed a questionnaire to all MPs. Seventy-one completed questionnaires and eleven letters were returned. The level of support for a Citizen's Income was considerable. Forty-one respondents were in favour, and only eleven against; and of particular interest to Sir Archy Kirkwood and Dr. Jones was the level of support for a Royal Commission: forty-six in favour, and only sixteen against. (Sir Patrick Cormack MP, one of the respondents, commented in his letter: 'I have long advocated a Royal Commission to look at the Welfare State fifty years on'.)

The House of Lords

With the support of Baroness Barker, Lord Desai and Lord Beaumont, we have now distributed a questionnaire to every member of the House of Lords. Again we have achieved a substantial response: one hundred and thirty-four responses altogether.

Again the level of support for a Citizen's Income has been considerable: seventy-three respondents were in favour and only fourteen against. And this time support for a Royal Commission on income maintenance was even higher: eighty-three in favour and only twenty-seven against.

The full results of the survey are as follows:

(The figures in brackets are percentages of respondents for that party. Where these do not add up to 100% it is because some respondents didn't answer the question).

1. Does our tax and benefits system meet the needs of our society and economy ?

2. Does the system need radical change ?

3. Do you think that change needs all-party support ?

4. Would you like to help achieve such all-party agreement ?

5. Would a Royal Commission on income maintenance be a good idea ?

6. Might a Citizen's Income be a useful basis for reform ?

7. Would you like to know more about the Citizen's Income option for reform ?

News

Richard Clements: In November the Citizen's Income Trust was sorry to hear of the death of Richard Clements. After being editor of Tribune and running Neil Kinnock's office, Richard was Director of the Citizen's Income Trust from 1993 to 1996, when sadly he had to retire because of his own ill health and to look after his wife Bridget. He was a most effective Director, and we were very sorry when he had to leave. Not surprisingly, he was particularly good at raising the profile of the Citizen's Income debate in the press. To see an obituary in the Guardian, see http://www.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,,1955580,00.html

Last December the Department for Work and Pensions reported: 'Our benefits are complex to administer. Our IS/IT systems are not as integrated as they could be. Sometimes we fail to follow our procedures. The result is that, in 2005/06, we overpaid an estimated £1.9 billion through official and customer error - equivalent to 1.7% of total expenditure. ….. Our aim is to prevent new error from occurring by simplifying benefit rules so they are simpler to understand and administer' (Department for Work and Pensions, Touchbase, December 2006).

The London School of Economics has published Casepaper 114: Work-Life Balance in a Low-Income Neighbourhood by Hartley Dean and Alice Coulter: http://sticerd.lse.ac.uk/dps/case/cp/CASEpaper114.pdf.'This paper reports findings from a study, based on in-depth interviews with 42 economically active parents from a low-income neighbourhood. Participants supported the idea of work-life balance, but many found it difficult to achieve. …. Pay levels are insufficient and, though benefits/tax credits help, they are complex and badly administered. ….. The clearest finding was that participants tended to be fundamentally disempowered - by the unpredictability of the labour market, the dominance of a 'business case' rationale, their lack of confidence in childcare provision and a lack of belief in their employment and benefit rights.'

HM Revenue and Customs has decided that from November 2006 tax credit recipients must inform them immediately about a range of changes in their circumstances: if they were working 30 hours or more a week and now work less than 30; if they were working between 16 and 30 hours a week and now work less than 16; if their income goes up or down; if their benefits change; if their child leaves home; if a child over 16 leaves full time school or college or goes to university; if, for any other reason, they can no longer claim tax credits for their child; if their childcare costs go down by £10 a week or more and the change lasts for more than four weeks in a row, or the cost goes down to zero; if a partner moves in or out; if they leave the country for eight weeks or more; if they move home or change their bank account (www.hmrc.gov.uk/changes).

The Flanders region of Belgium has developed a tariff-based solution to its water affordability problems. Since 1997, the first 15m3 per annum per person in each household is provided free of charge, and beyond that limit water is charged for (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 2003, Social issues in the provision and pricing of water services, Paris: OECD).

Mark Wadsworth: The Citizen's Income Trust's new Research and Press Officer is Mark Wadsworth. Educated in business law, tax accounting, accounting and finance, Mark works as a tax consultant and has a longstanding interest in the reform of tax and benefit systems. As with all of the Citizen's Income Trust's trustees and staff members, Mark is working for the Trust in a voluntary capacity, and we are most grateful to him for offering his time in this way. Email Mark at: mark.wadsworth@citizensincome.org.

Conference reports

The Eleventh BIEN Congress

Cape Town University, Cape Town, South Africa, November 4-6, 2006

by Karl Widerquist

The Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN) held its Eleventh Congress in Cape Town, South Africa, last November. This was BIEN's first Congress since expanding to a worldwide Network in 2004. Until then BIEN had stood for the Basic Income European Network. However, because BIEN was the only international basic income network, national networks outside Europe had been asking for membership of BIEN since the late 1990s. This has now happened

Most members of the new BIEN agreed that South Africa was the best place to have BIEN's first conference outside of Europe because a grassroots movement for basic income has been growing in South Africa since the fall of Apartheid. Many of the churches, trade unions, HIV activist groups, and other progressive organizations, support basic income in South Africa, although most of the leadership of the ruling African National Congress remains opposed to the idea. Ingrid Van Niekerk, of the Institute for Economic Policy Research in Cape Town, organized the Congress.

Cape Town proved to be a good venue for the Eleventh BIEN Congress. Several basic income activists from Southern Africa participated, including Thabisile Msezane, Senior Vice-President of the South African Council of Churches; Zackie Achmat, of the Treatment Action Campaign; and Tovhowani Josephine Tshivhase, Member of Parliament for the ANC. One of the Congress's most dramatic events was when Bishop Zaphania Kameeta, of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, slammed his hand on the podium and said 'Words! Words! Words!' Kameeta argued that people should begin to create a fund from private donations that could eventually grow large enough to finance a basic income in a developing nation.

Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, who won the Noble Peace Prize for his work in the anti-Apartheid movement, was unable to attend the Congress in person because he was out of the country at the time. Instead he addressed the Congress by video tape, in which he strongly endorsed the basic income movement. Archbishop Tutu's address can be seen on YouTube at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gf3n-L5FDy0.

The Congress proved to be a boost to the basic income movement in South Africa. The event was followed by a large amount of discussion of the proposal in the South African press, and the day after the Congress the ANC Minister for Social Development gave his personal endorsement to the policy.

The prospect for basic income in other developing countries was also widely discussed at the conference. Claudia and Dirk Haarmann discussed basic income as a strategy for economic empowerment in Namibia, Maria da Silva discussed the Scholarship Family Program as a step toward basic income in Brazil, and Pablo Yanes suggested that the Universal Citizen Pension in Mexico City was an opportunity to open the debate on basic income in Mexico, where, despite booming trade with the United States, 40 million out of 100 million citizens live in extreme poverty.

Other presentations at the Congress examined diverse aspects of the basic income debate. Michael Howard, of the University of Maine at Orono, won the Basic Income Studies essay prize for his proposal for a resource dividend for the NAFTA region (Canada, the United States, and Mexico), and Shamshad Begum Sayed, Head of Women Affairs Human Rights Foundation in Johannesburg, discussed the Islamic case for basic income. According to Sayed, one of the pillars of Islam is not voluntary charity but rather the mandatory redistribution of wealth from rich to poor. Other presentations by Philippe Van Parijs (Belgium), Robert Van Der Veen (the Netherlands), Senator Eduardo Suplicy (Brazil), Daniel Raventos (Spain), Jennifer Mays (Australia), Julieta Elgarte (Argentina), Eric Patry (Switzerland), and Guy Standing (Great Britain) gave the Congress a rounded, international perspective.

After the Congress, BIEN held its Eleventh General Assembly. The first item on the agenda was a series of proposals to completely overhaul the statutes that have served BIEN with minor alterations since 1988. All of the proposed amendments were approved unanimously and the new rules seemed to work well as the meeting went on to more contentious issues such as a proposal to endorse specific government proposals. The Assembly approved Dublin as the venue for the 2008 BIEN Congress. All of the members of the Executive Committee who stood for a further term were re-elected. Jurgen de Wispelaere decided not to stand, and was replaced by Louise Haagh, of the University of York (UK). Eri Noguchi, Ingrid Van Niekerk, Karl Widerquist, and David Casassas retained positions on the committee. Sean Healy, of the Council of the Religious of Ireland, was later added to the Executive Committee as the representative of the local organizing committee of the Dublin Congress. At the close of the meeting, and following their re-election as BIEN's co-chairs, Senator Eduardo Suplicy and Guy Standing made a joint announcement that they would retire as chairs when their new terms expire in 2008.

New York Interlude: A report on the Sixth USBIG Congress, 23-25 February 2007

by Anne Miller

The sixth annual congress of the US Basic Income Guarantee (USBIG) Network took place at the Crown Plaza Hotel, Times Square, in New York City, on Friday 23 to Sunday 25 February 2007. It was held in conjunction with the Eastern Economics Association's annual meeting, and organised with apparent simplicity and effectiveness by Karl Widerquist, aided by the USBIG committee. A core of about 30 enthusiasts patronised the whole USBIG programme, while possibly another 20 or so wandered in and out from the main conference to give, or listen to, a paper. This provided a way in which the BI ideas might pollinate the minds of more traditional economists. The relatively small number present lent an intimate and friendly atmosphere to the proceedings, and made it possible to get to know new acquaintances more easily. Participants from the USA were joined by delegates from Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, Brazil, Netherlands and Ireland, as well as from the UK. I was impressed with the level of knowledge and technical detail displayed by the participants, compared with some larger conferences where newcomers present papers, but use technical terms in inappropriate ways (such as 'means-tested basic incomes').

The programme was organised into eleven sessions, the themes of which included 'The Ethics of BIG'; 'Finance and the Basic Income Guarantee'; 'Family Care Work and Gender'; 'The Politics of Basic Income', which covered two sessions; 'Economic Issues of BIG'; 'Alternative Anti-Poverty Programs'; and 'A Debate: Income guarantees vs. Job Guarantees'.

I felt very privileged to have been invited to give the opening address, which I entitled 'Basic Income, Necessary but not Sufficient: some women's issues', in which I chose to answer the question 'To what extent could a basic income meet the problem that women do about two-thirds of the world's unpaid domestic and care-giving work and receive only about a third of the world's income?' My conclusion was that a BI scheme could help to keep women and children out of poverty, and it could be adjusted somewhat to help redress the balance slightly. However, in order to bring about real equality for women in their care-giving roles, other major policy instruments would have to be brought to bear.

It is impossible to summarise every paper, but two in particular stood out for me. In his paper, 'The Rise and Fall of a Basic income Guarantee Bill in the United States Congress', Al Sheahan recorded the work involved, and the frustrations experienced, in getting a bill introduced into the US Congress in 2006. From the initial suggestion during the 1st USBIG conference in 2002, that USBIG needed a BIG bill in the US Congress, through the introduction by Californian Democrat, Bob Filner, of a bill with the catchy title 'The Tax Cut for the Rest of Us Act', given the number HR 5257 on 2 May 2006, to its subsequent languishing, due to the lack of support from any Republican co-sponsors, Sheahan charted the steep learning curve of a small group of amateurs who made no pretence of having any political expertise. The bill proposed a moderate annual $2000 'refundable standard tax credit' per adult and $1000 per child, which would operate through the federal income tax forms, even for those without any income. They hoped that it would be financed by rolling back the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, which reportedly cost the Treasury $224 billion per year. While the immediate outcome was disappointing, all had not been lost. The small group had gained much experience, the bill was a peg on which to hang discussion within the wider community, and Bob Filner was willing to give it another go in the next administration.

Before continuing, it is worth summarising some figures for the USA.

According to the Central Intelligence Agency's World Fact Book, www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/us.html Econs:

• GDP for the USA was $12.98 trillion, ie. $12,980,000,000,000 (2006 estimate);
• GDP per capita was $43,600 (2006 estimate);
• The public debt is 64.7% of GDP (2005);
• The real growth rate was 3.2%; the inflation rate (consumer prices) was 2.5%;
• The unemployment rate was 4.6%;
• The national (federal) minimum wage rate is $5.15 per hour;
• The population living below the poverty line was 12%;
• In 1997, the concentration of household income by % shares were: lowest 10%: 1.8% , highest 10%: 30.5%;
• The Gini coefficient as an index of inequality of household income was 45 (2004);
• 'Since 1975, practically all the gains in household income have gone to the top 20% of households;'
• The current exchange rate is roughly £ / $ = 2, which gives a rough indication of the value of the above dollar figures in £ sterling
• GDP per capita for the UK in 2005 was £20,338, and the National Minimum Wage currently is £5.35 per hour.

The second paper, 'Time to change America by Challenging Economic Fundamentals' by Richard Cook, who spent 21 years as an analyst with the US Treasury Department, began by cataloguing the symptoms of decline that are evident in the American economy. He noted that 'the USA has supported its domestic economy through trade domination of most of the rest of the world', but now the world is changing, and China and India are becoming major players. The US Treasury has an enormous deficit, which has been purchased in recent years by China and Japan. However, the worldwide dollar hegemony is beginning to slip, the value of the dollar having been declining continuously for more than half a century, and now China is starting to offload its dollars. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are adding to the US debt. The domestic situation is really bad for the 12% who live below the official poverty line, but economic insecurity is a feature of life for all except for the richest 20% of the population, who have never had it so good. The federal national minimum wage of $5.15 per hour is insufficient to keep a family of three out of poverty. Cook continued by describing the features of economic life which dog ordinary Americans, including high unemployment, easy access to debt, soaring costs for higher education and health care, a house price bubble which has burst, and a negative US household savings rate. 'The solutions to the economic side of the problem proposed by the Democratic leadership in Congress would only nibble around the edges.' When the US economy is in even deeper trouble, then the politicians might be prepared to look at more radical proposals. Cook offered a raft of other more progressive solutions, including the introduction of a guaranteed annual income for all citizens. Even $2,000 for an adult and $1,000 for each child 'would be a first step toward a true basic income guarantee that could eliminate the scourges of poverty and homelessness that give the lie to every politician who claims our economy is either fair or fundamentally sound'. An added advantage is that it would give a much-needed boost to the flagging demand side of the US economy, which cannot match the output poured out by the supply side.

Two other interesting topics were raised during the conference. One was a discussion about whether the BIG should be based on justice, being a dividend from the economy or the land (via a Land Value Tax, LVT, for instance), in which everyone was a shareholder, and thus everyone should receive the same, regardless of age (child or pensioner) and need, or whether it should be a grant based on compassion and therefore vary according to need. Michael Collins from Eire was using an analysis of deprivation data to fix a level for a BI, and Almaz Zelleke was looking at alternative combinations of levels for single adults, lone parents and children in the USA that would meet certain criteria. A full BIG was often put forward at the poverty subsistence level of about $10,000 per annum (about 22.9% of GDP per head) for a single able bodied adult in the USA (comparable to £5,000 pa in the UK, roughly £100 pw, which is regarded as quite generous and optimistic in many quarters in the UK, especially compared with the current Income Support levels). An alternative level of $6,000 pa was also discussed. Several advocates of LVT were among the participants, and the advantages of LVT for tackling the enormous inequalities of wealth, (perhaps in addition to an income tax for redistributing income) were obvious.

The second was the question of whether asylum seekers and immigrants should be eligible for the BIG. The fact that one illegal immigrant had frozen to death on the outskirts of New York just before the conference began gave an added poignancy to the question. The welfare programmes in the USA are very limited and are being cut back fast by the Bush administration. Tensions are built up if immigrants are perceived to be receiving more than the locals, but if the locals are getting very little anyway, it is hard to undercut them except by giving the immigrants nothing. The incidence of a BIG would change this, and the question is whether immigrants would get the same as the locals, or have to fulfil some residency qualification first, over a few years. Many of those present wanted immigrants to be treated compassionately, but had no answer as to the unintended consequences that might occur. Sean Healy of the Conference of Religious of Ireland, CORI, pointed out that since the enlargement of the EU, the number of people now in Ireland who had not been born in Ireland was 12%, or 1 in 8, which was a higher proportion than in the USA. Michael Howard put forward a proposal for a guaranteed minimum income for the NAFTA countries of Canada, USA and Mexico. In some ways, this is a debate that should take place in the context of a BI in all countries, with subsidies from rich countries to poorer ones, such that there is less incentive to emigrate to avoid the grinding poverty in the poorest countries.

There were many more very interesting papers. Richard Caputo compared how far countries differed according to their various anti-poverty programmes, and examined how far they had progressed in their attempts to introduce a BI. Brazil came out best, so far. Nadine Schenk's paper 'Political Constraints to Implementing a Basic Income Grant in South Africa', gave an analysis of the steps that are needed to rally support for the idea in order get a bill on the statute books. Michael Samson and Ingrid Van Niekerk gave evidence about how universal benefits promote development in less developed countries, giving examples from South Africa. In all, it was a very satisfying and stimulating event.

Further information about the USBIG Network, can be gained from its website, http://www.usbig.net/. Some of the papers will be posted on the website. To be put on the USBIG NEWSLETTER mailing list, e.mail Karl Widerquist at Karl@Widerquist.com.

Reviews

Heinz Steinert and Arno Pilgram, Welfare Policy from Below: Struggles against Social Exclusion in Europe, Ashgate, 2006, 316 pp, pbk, 0 7546 4815 X, £25

The preface of this diverse collection begins with a critique of social insurance (which in many respects isn't insurance as that term is normally understood) and intrusive means-testing mainly in terms of their inability to cope with a diverse and global labour market, and continues with a description of how the poor actually cope by using social security systems as one element in an overall strategy which might include casual labour, family and other networks, and voluntary and self-help organisations. It concludes with a description of a Citizen's Income as an important element in any future welfare state suited to new liberal production methods, a statement that other important elements will continue to be the household and the local community, and a call for a Europe-wide social infrastructure.

The introductory chapter outlines the three-year research project which gave birth to this book. Succeeding chapters study the limits of a market society, inclusion and exclusion, strategies for coping with and avoiding social exclusion (and particularly the welfare, work and family mix and the usefulness and often absence of community), and particular issues such as housing, legal and illegal immigrants, and gender.

The final chapter sets out ways in which poor people create support strategies for themselves ('situations of social exclusion are best coped with by using a multiplicity of resources. Rules by which such combinations of sources of income (wage, welfare, family) are hindered are dysfunctional' (p.268)) and recommends a Citizen's Income as the best basis for such strategies.

This book is the result of thorough research and careful thought, and suggests that the European welfare state called for in the preface would best be constituted by establishing a Europe-wide Citizen's Income.

We hope that this book will be widely read by policy-makers.

Basic Income Studies, Volume 1, Number 1, 2006 (www.bepress.com/bis)

2006 sees two twentieth anniversaries for the basic income (BI) movement. 1986 was the year that the Basic Income European Network (BIEN) was founded: a key tool in coordinating and disseminating work on BI. It was also the year that Robert van der Veen and Philippe Van Parijs published their seminal article 'A Capitalist Road to Communism'. The article made a forceful argument for the introduction of BI as an alternative to the socialist route to communism. BI, van der Veen and Van Parijs claimed, would free people from the necessity of securing their own subsistence and thus offer them the opportunity to find fulfilment in their work.

Marking these two anniversaries is the launch of Basic Income Studies (BIS), the first academic journal specialising on BI. The journal looks to establish an exciting new forum for future research. As the editorial acknowledges, research into BI has to date tended to be spread patchily across a variety of journals and is often inaccessible to those with an interdisciplinary interest in the topic. BIS is an attempt to remedy this situation. The journal will publish articles written in a non-technical style with the aim of drawing in a diverse readership.

BIS will appear online twice a year and will be formed around three sections. The first will feature a set of peer-reviewed articles by new researchers as well as established academics. The second will take the form of a debate, composed of 'snapshot' comment articles that stimulate controversy and open up new themes. The final section will be for book reviews.

This first edition opens with three articles, each considering an issue with important implications for BI: workfare, migration and trade union attitudes. The first of these issues is taken up by Joel Handler and Amanda Sheely Babcock who argue that workfare, as it has been implemented in the US and the EU, has failed clients with shoddy planning, little monitoring and harsh penalties for non-compliance. The authors conclude that BI would be a favourable alternative as it would offer the poor an exit option from employment schemes and thus boost their standing in the client-caseworker relationship.

Michael W. Howard's article considers migration in relation to BI. He raises the possibility of a dilemma facing BI advocates: on the one hand they may wish to help the global poor gain admittance to rich states; on the other hand they must acknowledge the fact that large-scale immigration could make a national BI in rich states politically, if not economically, unsustainable. Howard offers no easy solution to this dilemma. He suggests that cross-border assistance to the global poor, perhaps in the form of a regional or global BI, would make border restrictions more defensible. Even in the absence of such measures, however, he is prepared to continence the idea that border restrictions might be a necessary short term measure to fulfil the special duty citizens of rich states owe to their poorest members not to make them worse off than they already are.

Yannick Vanderborght's article considers trade union attitudes to BI. As large organisations whose purpose is to advocate on behalf of those who tend to be less well off, unions may seem obvious candidates to push BI forward. After considering evidence from Belgium, Canada and the Netherlands, however, Vanderborght finds little to support this assumption. In these countries the typical reaction of unions to BI has been cool, to say the least. In Belgium, where the BI movement is most developed, it has, ironically, received the strongest opposition from unions. Vanderborght explores reasons to explain this hostility. First, BI may be strategically unappealing as it may seem a utopian distraction from more realizable goals. Second, it may be economically unappealing as it may make the labour market more flexible, and undermine job security and, perhaps, wages. Third, it might be normatively unappealing as workers may fear BI would involve parasitism by the idle. Interestingly, Vanderborght still concludes that BI advocates should work to convert unions to their cause, but perhaps, given his analysis, advocates would have better luck turning to other groups that may be more responsive, e.g. the unemployed.

The debate section is dedicated to a retrospective on 'A Capitalist Road to Communism' on the twentieth anniversary of its publication. The article is reprinted beside six insightful comments by critics. The first of these is by GA Cohen, who, in never previously published notes made back in 1987, argues that van der Veen and Van Parijs offer mutually inconsistent replies to two objections against basic income: that it licenses exploitation of the industrious by the lazy and that it unjustifiably violates state neutrality between those who like to work and those who like leisure. Of the other comments, two provide arguments for BI as a device for the realisation of important moral values: Andrew Williams considers occupational choice, Catriona McCinnon, self-respect. Another two (by Erik Olin Wright and Harry F Dahms) engage with the Marxist theme of the original article and offer their own views on BI-reformed-capitalism as an alternative to socialism. Finally, Doris Schoeder expresses concerns regarding global justice not unlike Howard's. A national BI, she claims, could mean diverting resources away from the global poor. A global BI, she adds, although ethically appealing is politically unrealistic.

In their reply to their critics van der Veen and Van Parijs offer not only carefully considered responses but also a useful summary of how their work has developed since 1986. In particular they explain how they have responded to the neutralist objection that Cohen offers with a justice argument for BI. Finally they provide their own thoughts on the national BI versus global justice debate, arguing that if - as some empirical evidence suggests - states which share their wealth more equitably amongst themselves are more likely to share it with others, then national BI might be a good first step on the road to global justice.

The book reviews are probing and informative, covering a range of books which connect with BI. Altogether this is an extremely impressive first edition. If the standard is maintained Basic Income Studies is sure to become a must-read journal.

Kieran Oberman

Keith Dowding, Jurgen De Wispelaere and Stuart White (eds.), The Ethics of Stakeholding, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, 2003, 216pp, hbk, 1 40390 580 0, £52

In the interest of full disclosure, I must reveal that I am well acquainted with all three editors. Stuart White was my Ph.D. supervisor; Jurgen De Wispelaere is my coeditor of Basic Income Studies; and Keith Dowding invited me to join the Citizen's Income Trust. However, none of them asked me to contribute to this volume. Assume these two factors balance out perfectly, and I am the ideal unbiased reviewer.

From the title, this collected volume of essays sounds like a companion volume to Bruce Ackerman and Anne Alstott's 1999 book, The Stakeholder Society (New Haven, Yale University Press), and it almost is. All of the chapters touch on their proposal in some way, and the book concludes with a chapter by Ackerman replying to some of his critics in the volume. But the editors' opening essay defines Stakeholding more broadly than Ackerman and Alstott, as 'a particular paradigm within social policy that looks to empower individuals by granting them or helping them to acquire assets or a near equivalent guaranteed future stream of income.' Ackerman and Alstott focus on one such policy, basic capital. That is, a lump sum coming of age grant, which is, in their proposal, $80,000 for all high school graduates who aren't convicted of a felony by their 21st birthday. Dowding, De Wispelaere, and White consider two other kinds of Stakeholding proposals, universal basic income (which provides a small, lifetime stream of income) and target asset-building (which subsidizes savings and investment). Ackerman and Alstott's proposal remains the main focus of the book, and the other proposals are discussed largely in relation to the basic capital proposal.

Several chapters put forth Stakeholding proposals. Julian Le Grand and David Nissan discuss the baby bond initiative, a very small basic capital grant, which is since be adopted by the British government. Gavin Kelly, Andrew Gamble, and Will Paxton discuss a proposal for subsidized savings accounts. And Robert E. Goodin discusses an Australian proposal for capital grants to the unemployed. His basic idea is that a person who has been unemployed for a year can propose and investment project to the Department of Social Security. If the Department finds it is feasible, they grant or lend the individual as much as two-years-worth of unemployment benefits to get the project underway. It is a very interesting proposal, but Goodin pays too little attention to the question of whether it will encourage people who might have gone back to work in less than 12 months to stay unemployed for the full year so that they can become eligible for the grant.

Two chapters, one by Stuart White and one by Gijs van Donselaar, discuss the issue of whether unconditional grants allow people who may not be working to take unfair advantage of workers whose taxes support the grant. White concludes that a one-time grant or a temporary basic income can give the disadvantaged greater opportunities and protect them in times of crisis without interfering with a lifetime obligation to contribute to society through work. Van Donselaar is more skeptical, criticizing Ackerman and Alstott's funding of the stake through an inheritance tax as 'a tax on love.' He endorses a modified version that provides a voucher that will ensure that the stake is used only for productive investments.

Three chapters criticize Ackerman and Alstott's proposal. Cécile Fabre criticizes Stakeholding for being insufficiently egalitarian, but most of her criticism amounts to the claim that Stakeholding is merely a step in the right direction rather than the full solution. Carole Pateman addresses Ackerman's allegation