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Why We Demand An Unconditional Basic Income: The Ecso Freedom Case, Karl Widerquist
Why We Demand An Unconditional Basic Income: The Ecso Freedom Case, Karl Widerquist
Karl Widerquist
Philippe Van Parijs’s (1995) Real Freedom for All: What (If Anything) Can Justify Capitalism makes a very thorough and challenging philosophical argument for basic income. But I believe that it has two important limitations that inhibit it from giving a compelling explanation why basic income supporters believe that support for the disadvantage must be not only universal but also unconditional and enough to meet an individual’s basic needs. This essay briefly discusses those limitations and then proposes an alternative argument for basic income that I believe relies on a more compelling concept of freedom, defined below as “Freedom as Effective …