Ethically Justifiable, Economically Sustainable, Politically Achievable: A Response to van der Veen & Groot, Rogers, and Noguera

摘要: It is a great privilege to have our work scrutinized and critically reviewed in such a careful, well-documented, and generous way. But it is quite a challenge to respond to these three wide-ranging and very different pieces in an integrated and succinct way. We shall do our best, while trying not to dodge any of the most difficult objections. Let us first acknowledge that none of the essays dismisses the" radical proposal" to which our book is devoted as nonsense. Brishen Rogers concedes that," in the long run, an unconditional basic income [henceforth UBI] may be a necessary and important addition to welfare states."'Jos6 Noguera does not claim that the scenarios (to be discussed below) that he proposes are" preferable to a full UJBI in ideal terns." 2 And the UBI, Robert van der Veen and Loek Groot write, is" an ideal [they] share with [us]."'3 Nonetheless, they disagree either about how the objective of a generous UBI …