Guaranteed minimum income
Guaranteed minimum income (GMI), also called minimum income (or mincome for short), is a social-welfare system that guarantees all citizens or families an income sufficient to live on, provided that certain eligibility conditions are met, typically: citizenship and that the person in question does not already receive a minimum level of income to live on.
For the system where citizens receive an income stream through the public ownership of industry, see Social dividend.The primary goal of a guaranteed minimum income is reduction of poverty. Under more unconditional requirements, when citizenship is the sole qualification, the program becomes a universal basic income (UBI) system. Unlike a guaranteed minimum income, UBI does not typically take into account what a recipient already earns before receiving a UBI.
A system of guaranteed minimum income can consist of several elements, most notably:
History[edit]
Pre-modern antecedents[edit]
Persian monarch Cyrus the Great (c. 590 to c. 529 B.C.), whose government used a regulated minimum wage, also provided special rations to families when a child was born.[1]
The Roman Republic and Empire offered the Cura Annonae, a regular distribution of free or subsidized grain or bread to poorer residents. The grain subsidy was first introduced by Gaius Gracchus in 123 B.C., then further institutionalized by Julius Caesar and Augustus Caesar.[2][3]
The first Sunni Muslim Caliph Abu Bakr, who came to power in 632 C.E., introduced a guaranteed minimum standard of income, granting each man, woman and child ten dirhams annually. This was later increased to twenty dirhams.[4]
Modern proposals[edit]
In 1795, American revolutionary Thomas Paine advocated a citizen's dividend to all United States citizens as compensation for "loss of his or her natural inheritance, by the introduction of the system of landed property" (Agrarian Justice, 1795).
French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte echoed Paine's sentiments and commented that 'man is entitled by birthright to a share of the Earth's produce sufficient to fill the needs of his existence' (Herold, 1955).
The American economist Henry George advocated for a dividend paid to all citizens from the revenue generated by a land value tax.[5]
American economist Milton Friedman began advocating a basic income in the form of a negative income tax in the early 1940s. He discusses the proposal his 1962 book Capitalism and Freedom and his 1980 book Free to Choose.[6][7]
In 1963, Robert Theobald published the book Free Men and Free Markets, in which he advocated a guaranteed minimum income (the origin of the modern version of the phrase).
In 1966, the Cloward–Piven strategy advocated "overloading" the US welfare system to force its collapse in the hopes that it would be replaced by "a guaranteed annual income and thus an end to poverty".
In his final book Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (1967), Martin Luther King Jr. wrote[8]
In 1968, James Tobin, Paul Samuelson, John Kenneth Galbraith and another 1,200 economists signed a document calling for the US Congress to introduce in that year a system of income guarantees and supplements.[9]
In 1969, President Richard Nixon's Family Assistance Plan would have paid a minimum income to poor families. The proposal by Nixon passed in the House but never made it out of committee in the Senate.
In 1973, Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote The Politics of a Guaranteed Income, in which he advocated the guaranteed minimum income and discussed Richard Nixon's Guaranteed Annual Income (GAI) proposal.[10]
In 1987, New Zealand's Labour Finance Minister Roger Douglas announced a Guaranteed Minimum Family Income Scheme to accompany a new flat tax. Both were quashed by then Prime Minister David Lange, who sacked Douglas.[11]
In his 1994 "autobiographical dialog", classical liberal Friedrich Hayek stated: "I have always said that I am in favor of a minimum income for every person in the country".[12]
In 2013, the Equal Life Foundation published the Living Income Guaranteed Proposal,[13] illustrating a practical way to implement and fund a minimum guaranteed income.[14]
In 2017, Harry A. Shamir (US) published the book Consumerism, or Capitalism Without Crises, in which the concept was promoted by another label, as a way to enable our civilization to survive in an era of automation and computerization and large scale unemployment. The book also innovates a method to fund the process, tapping into the underground economy and volunteerism.
Other modern advocates include Ayşe Buğra (Turkey), The Green Economics Institute (GEI),[15] and Andrew Coyne (Canada).[16]