Should all young adults receive a capital grant? Should all individuals be given a lifetime regular income? Would either form of payment be just or unjust? These questions figure prominently in recent social philosophy and policy discussions on 'stakeholding' and 'basic income'. Both types of proposal have a long, but largely unknown history. This anthology contains a wide variety of historical contributions, some of which are presented in English for the first time, highlighting striking parallels between past and present debates.

In Piracy and the Origins of Universal Jurisdiction, Mark Chadwick relates a colourful account of how and why piracy on the high seas came to be considered an international crime subject to the principle of universal jurisdiction, prosecutable by any State in any circumstances.

Universal basic income (UBI) is emerging as one of the most hotly debated issues in development and social protection policy. But what are the features of UBI? What is it meant to achieve? How do we know, and what don’t we know, about its performance? What does it take to implement it in practice? Drawing from global evidence, literature, and survey data, this volume provides a framework to elucidate issues and trade-offs in UBI with a view to help inform choices around its appropriateness and feasibility in different contexts. Specifically, the book examines how UBI differs from or complements other social assistance programs in terms of objectives, coverage, incidence, adequacy, incentives, effects on poverty and inequality, financing, political economy, and implementation. It also reviews past and current country experiences, surveys the full range of existing policy proposals, provides original results from micro†“tax benefit simulations, and sets out a range of considerations around the analytics and practice of UBI.

“Powerful as well as highly engaging—a brilliant book.” —Amartya Sen A Times Higher Education Book of the Week It may sound crazy to pay people whether or not they’re working or even looking for work. But the idea of providing an unconditional basic income to everyone, rich or poor, active or inactive, has long been advocated by such major thinkers as Thomas Paine, John Stuart Mill, and John Kenneth Galbraith. Now, with the traditional welfare state creaking under pressure, it has become one of the most widely debated social policy proposals in the world. Basic Income presents the most acute and fullest defense of this radical idea, and makes the case that it is our most realistic hope for addressing economic insecurity and social exclusion. “They have set forth, clearly and comprehensively, what is probably the best case to be made today for this form of economic and social policy.” —Benjamin M. Friedman, New York Review of Books “A rigorous analysis of the many arguments for and against a universal basic income, offering a road map for future researchers.” —Wall Street Journal “What Van Parijs and Vanderborght bring to this topic is a deep understanding, an enduring passion and a disarming optimism.” —Steven Pearlstein, Washington Post

This new edited collection brings together historians and social scientists to engage with the global history of Universal Basic Income (UBI) and offer historically-rich perspectives on contemporary debates about the future of work. In particular, the book goes beyond a genealogy of a seemingly utopian idea to explore how the meaning and reception of basic income proposals has changed over time. The study of UBI provides a prism through which we can understand how different intellectual traditions, political agents, and policy problems have opened up space for new thinking about work and welfare at critical moments. Contributions range broadly across time and space, from Milton Friedman and the debate over guaranteed income in the post-war United States to the emergence of the European basic income movement in the 1980s and the politics of cash transfers in contemporary South Africa. Taken together, these chapters address comparative questions: why do proposals for a guaranteed minimum income emerge at some times and recede into the background in others? What kinds of problems is basic income designed to solve, and how have policy proposals been shaped by changing attitudes to gender roles and the boundaries of social citizenship? What role have transnational networks played in carrying UBI proposals between the global north and the global south, and how does the politics of basic income vary between these contexts? In short, the book builds on a growing body of scholarship on UBI and lays the groundwork for a much richer understanding of the history of this radical proposal. Chapter 3 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.