Welfare for Markets

"A sweeping intellectual history of the welfare state's policy-in-waiting From Thomas More to Thomas Paine, Milton Friedman to Mark Zuckerberg, centuries of public figures have hailed the power of government payments as a tool for advancing social justice. For some advocates, basic income is a moral imperative, a policy with potential to upend structural inequalities; for others, it's a market-friendly version of the welfare state that doesn't constrain capitalism. By appealing differently to different political sensibilities, basic income has persisted in the political imagination for centuries. In this deeply erudite and original work, Anton Jèager and Daniel Zamora offer the first historical examination of basic income as a policy of convenience--and, critically, as an intellectual backstop for the shortcomings of capitalism. With modern origins in works of neoliberals like Friedrich Hayek, basic income was conceived as a form of market-friendly welfare state-a safety net around capitalism that wouldn't impinge on capitalism. Although neoliberals failed to make the idea a reality, they succeeded in seeding a fascination that would permeate all corners of late-century capitalism, from supply-side Democrats to neoclassical economists and barons of Silicon Valley. Basic income, Jèager and Zamora show, is no mere political sideshow. Amid societies' ongoing search for market-friendly utopianism, it may be a policy whose time has finally come"--