Between universalism and targeting: Exploring policy pathways for an Australian Basic Income

2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 502-523 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ben Spies-Butcher ◽  
Ben Phillips ◽  
Troy Henderson
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Policy Option ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Basic Income ◽  
Policy Options ◽  
Jel Codes ◽  
International Context ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Made In

Despite growing interest in proposals for a universal basic income, little advance has been made in implementation. Here we explore policy options for an Australian Basic Income. Our analysis responds to concerns that Basic Income is both too expensive and too radical a departure from existing welfare state structures to be a feasible policy option. Drawing on policy and Basic Income scholarship we identify changes to Australia’s current means-tested benefits structures that move substantially towards Basic Income while remaining consistent with historic policy norms, which we call ‘affluence testing’. Using microsimulation we explore fiscal and distributional trade-offs associated with the implementation of an affluence-tested Basic Income. Our results suggest Basic Income has the potential to significantly reduce inequality and poverty while also requiring taxes to rise substantially. Placing these trade-offs in international context we find the policy would reduce inequality to levels similar to Nordic welfare states while increasing overall taxation to approximately the OECD average. JEL Codes: I3, H2, H5

scholarly journals The Political Economy of Governance Capacity and Institutional Change: The Case of Basic Income Security Reform in European Welfare States

2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 243-263 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louise Haagh
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Institutional Change ◽  
Economic Security ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
The Political ◽  
Basic Income ◽  
Policy Debate ◽  
Governance Capacity ◽  
Income Security ◽  
Trade Offs

This article will situate public debates about – and experiments in features of – basic income within European countries in the context of welfare state crisis and change. Treating access to basic income security as a policy problem, I argue basic income policy debate highlights the need for multi-level and multifactorial analysis of public governance capacity as a key factor in driving the relationship of basic income with welfare state transformation. Drawing on the cases within this themed section, I attempt to tease out what comparatively are long-run conditionsforbasic income within state and society, and what are the political and institutional trade-offs at the current juncture. Exploring contributing determinants of governance corrosion and adaptation of public economic security structures under globalisation contributes to deepen our understanding of contemporary patterns of institutional change.

scholarly journals Social Investment, Redistribution or Basic Income? Exploring the Association Between Automation Risk and Welfare State Attitudes in Europe

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
MARIUS R. BUSEMEYER ◽  
ALEXANDER H. J. SAHM
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Technological Change ◽  
European Social Survey ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Basic Income ◽  
Social Investment ◽  
Market Outcomes ◽  
Social Survey ◽  
Investment Policies ◽  
Using Data

Abstract Rapid technological change – the digitalization and automation of work – is challenging contemporary welfare states. Most of the existing research, however, focuses on its effect on labor market outcomes, such as employment or wage levels. In contrast, this paper studies the implications of technological change for welfare state attitudes and preferences. Compared to previous work on this topic, this paper adopts a much broader perspective regarding different kinds of social policy. Using data from the European Social Survey, we find that individual automation risk is positively associated with support for redistribution, but negatively with support for social investment policies (partly depending on the specific measure of automation risk that is used), while there is no statistically significant association with support for basic income. We also find a moderating effect of the overall size of the welfare state on the micro-level association between risk and preferences.

The Second Marriage of Justice and Efficiency

1990 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philippe van Parijs
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Current Debate ◽  
Postwar Period ◽  
Basic Income ◽  
Ex Ante ◽  
Major Reform ◽  
Positive Effect ◽  
The Welfare State

ABSTRACTNo major reform of the welfare state has a chance of going through unless one can make a plausible case as to both its ‘ethical value’ and its ‘economic.value’, that is, that it would have a positive effect in terms of both justice and efficiency. In this essay, this rough conjecture is first presented, and its plausibility probed, on the background of some stylised facts about the rise of modern welfare states in the postwar period. Next, the focus is shifted to the current debate on the introduction of a basic income, a completely unconditional grant paid ex ante to all citizens. It is argued that if basic income is to have a chance of meeting the strong twofold condition stipulated in the conjecture, some major changes are required in the way one usually thinks about justice and efficiency in connection with social policy. But once these changes are made, as they arguably must be, the chance that basic income may be able to meet the challenge is greatly enhanced.

scholarly journals Welfare without rent seeking? Buchanan’s demogrant proposal and the possibility of a constitutional welfare state

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Otto Lehto ◽  
John Meadowcroft
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Rent Seeking ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Constitutional Political Economy ◽  
Basic Income ◽  
Majoritarian Democracy ◽  
Welfare Systems ◽  
Future Task ◽  
Negative Income Tax

AbstractIn 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.

scholarly journals Public Opinion on Welfare State Recalibration in Times of Austerity: Evidence from Survey Experiments

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Björn Bremer ◽  
Reto Bürgisser
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Social Policies ◽  
Family Policies ◽  
Social Risks ◽  
Labor Market Policies ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Survey Experiments ◽  
Distribution Of Resources ◽  
Priority Order

In times of austerity and new social risks, fiscal resources are scarce. Governments have to prioritize some social policies over others, which is particularly challenging because most social policies are highly popular. However, existing research only asks about preferences towards individual social policies and fails to capture the citizens’ overall priorities regarding the trade-offs inherent in the multidimensional recalibration of welfare states. We thus study citizens’ priorities with two novel survey experiments in three European countries. We find that the average citizen has an explicit priority order: pensions and education enjoy a high, family policies a medium, and labor market policies a low priority. Yet, party and policy constituencies have different relative priorities. Our findings imply that distributive conflicts in mature welfare states are more about the distribution of resources to specific groups than welfare state support in general, and we point out potential voter coalitions for welfare state recalibration.

scholarly journals Governmental Illegitimacy and Incompetency in Canada and Other Liberal Nations: Implications for Health

2018 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dennis Raphael ◽  
Morris Komakech ◽  
Toba Bryant ◽  
Ryan Torrence
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Relative Role ◽  
Health It ◽  
Role Of The State ◽  
Economic Elites ◽  
Developed Nations ◽  
Made In ◽  
The Welfare State

The welfare state literature on developing nations is concerned with how governmental illegitimacy and incompetency are the sources of inequality, exploitation, exclusion, and domination of significant proportions of their citizenry. These dimensions clearly contribute to the problematic health outcomes in these nations. In contrast, developed nations are assumed to grapple with less contentious issues of stratification, decommodification, and the relative role of the state, market, and family in providing economic and social security, also important pathways to health. There is an explicit assumption that governing authorities in developed nations are legitimate and competent such that their citizens are not systematically subjected to inequality, exploitation, exclusion, and domination by elites. In this article, we argue that these concepts should also be the focus of welfare state analysis in developed liberal welfare states such as Canada. Such an analysis would expose how public policy is increasingly being made in the service of powerful economic elites rather than the majority, thereby threatening health. It would also serve to identify means of responding to these developments.

scholarly journals Welfare States’ Social Investment Strategies and the Emergence of Dutch Experiments on a Minimum Income Guarantee

2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 277-287 ◽  
Author(s):  
Loek Groot ◽  
Ruud Muffels ◽  
Timo Verlaat
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Cultural Values ◽  
Personal Autonomy ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Investment Strategies ◽  
Basic Income ◽  
Social Investment ◽  
New Paradigm ◽  
Minimum Income ◽  
Policy Practice

The focus in welfare state support in the Netherlands has been shifted from workfare and activation policies to social investment strategies. The discourse on basic income and the related municipal experiments highlights this shift. We address the inspiration found in basic income and behavioural economic and motivational psychological theoretical insights for the design of the experiments and for new avenues of minimum income protection and providing participation opportunities for the disadvantaged. The emerging new paradigm also implies a shift in the cultural values and principles on which welfare state policies are implicitly founded. This means that in these endeavours particular social values are put more upfront, such as personal autonomy (capacitating people by providing opportunities and therewith ‘free choice’) and trust (activating people by putting trust in their self-management capacities) which in day-to-day policy practice means more tailor-made, demand-oriented integrated mediation and coaching while rewarding people instead of penalising them.

scholarly journals The Virtuous Circle of Sustainable Welfare as a Transformative Policy Idea

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 391 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tuuli Hirvilammi
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Holistic Approach ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Unintended Consequences ◽  
Economic Policies ◽  
Positive Feedbacks ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Policy Idea

Welfare states are highly dependent on the economic growth paradigm. Especially in social democratic welfare states, growth dependence has historically been accompanied by the notion of a virtuous circle, which ensures that social policy measures do not conflict with economic growth. However, this policy idea ignores the environmental impacts that are now challenging human wellbeing and welfare goals. In this conceptual research article, I reframe the virtuous circle of the welfare state by revealing its unintended consequences and internal contradictions before introducing a more sustainable policy idea. I argue that this new concept—a virtuous circle of sustainable welfare—could have transformative potential in designing a planned and socially sustainable degrowth transformation. Drawing on historical institutionalism, degrowth, social policy and sustainable welfare state research, I advocate for the virtuous circle as a heuristic tool to provide an appealing and convincing narrative for sustainable welfare state beyond growth. The policy idea of virtuous circle addresses interrelated institutional reforms and positive feedbacks between different institutions and policy goals. It also emphasizes that a holistic approach is necessary to avoid trade-offs and contradictions between social, environmental, and economic policies.

Unconditional basic income and duties of contribution: exploring the republican ethos of justice

2020 ◽  
pp. 281-306
Author(s):  
Simon Birnbaum
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Significant Role ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Political Community ◽  
The Political ◽  
Active Citizenship ◽  
Basic Income ◽  
Novel Approach ◽  
Civic Virtues

Do welfare states promote social justice when they demand that individuals must work in return for social benefits? This chapter explores a novel approach to this question, based on the idea of a republican ethos of justice. The analysis brings out important reasons for why duties of contribution have a significant role to play in the quest for a just welfare state, based on the demands of political community, civic virtues, and anti-oligarchic commitments. However, this does not lead to the justification of welfare conditionality. By contrasting the republican ethos with the philosophy of productive reciprocity, the author instead shows how the political discourse of duty and community offers weighty arguments in defence of aims associated with unconditional basic income. Placing active citizenship and resistance to domination in focus, republicans have good reasons to favour basic income-oriented solutions over compliant productivism.

A Social Investment Turn in East Asia?

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timo Fleckenstein ◽  
Soohyun Christine Lee
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
East Asia ◽  
Family Policy ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Low Fertility ◽  
Female Employment ◽  
Industrial Workers ◽  
Social Investment ◽  
Investment Policies ◽  
Employment Participation

The welfare states of Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan were built by conservative elites to serve the project of late industrialization, and for this reason the East Asian developmental welfare state focused its resources on those who were deemed most important for economic development (especially male industrial workers). Starting in the 1990s and increasingly since the 2000s, the developmental welfare state has experienced a far-reaching transformation, including the expansion of family policy to address the post-industrial challenges of female employment participation and low fertility. This chapter assesses social investment policies in East Asia, with a focus on family policy and on the South Korean case, where the most comprehensive rise of social investment policies were observed.

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