Basic Income on the Agenda: Policy Objectives and Political Chances. Edited by Robert van der Veen and Loek Groot. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2001. 290p. $32.00.

Extract

This book tells the story of a dog that did not bark. Since the 1980s, a number of European scholars have advocated a system of income support that would eliminate the stigma attached to most forms of poverty assistance and would be simple, easy, and cheap to implement. Their idea, which has various forms, is to provide all citizens a guaranteed level of support that would have no strings attached. Organized as the Basic Income European Network (BIEN), these scholars have met regularly to discuss the subject of basic income and have endeavored to make their research useful to policymaking by promoting their group's ideas in their home countries. The problem is that after more than a decade of activity, the group cannot claim any major success. To the contrary, many countries have striven to make unemployment and social assistance more conditional by attaching work requirements or lowering thresholds of eligibility.