Basic Income Guarantee and Politics: International Experiences and Perspectives on the Viability of Income Guarantee (Exploring the Basic Income Guarantee)

This exciting and timely collection brings together international and national scholars and advocates to provide historical overviews of efforts to pass basic income guarantee legislation in their respective countries and/or across regions of the globe. This volume will bring together international and national scholars and activists to provide historical overviews of the main efforts to date to pass unconditional basic income guarantee legislation in their respective countries and/or across regions of the globe. Each contributing author will be asked to address a specific set of issues or substantive content. Such issues will include who are or were the main people and groups involved in support or against such legislative efforts, what are or were the main theoretical and pragmatic reasons for the success or failure of BIG-related initiatives to date, what legislative alternatives compete with BIG for political favor, what if any relationship is there between a country's level of economic development and factors affecting the legislative fate of BIG measures, what the prospects are for the future. Ideally, each contribution or chapter would be country or region specific, although several contributors will make international or cross-country comparisons. A concluding chapter will identify commonalities and differences across countries and possibly regions to the extent contributing sufficiently address a common set of question as suggested above and it will draw lessons for advancing social policies in general and BIG policies in particular Front Matter....Pages i-xi Front Matter....Pages 1-1 Hopes and Realities of Adopting Unconditional Basic Income Guarantee Schemes....Pages 3-16 On the Political Feasibility of Universal Basic Income: An Analytic Framework....Pages 17-38 Front Matter....Pages 39-39 The Best Income Transfer Program for Modern Economies....Pages 41-53 An Anniversary Note — BIEN’s Twenty-fifth....Pages 55-60 Front Matter....Pages 61-61 Finland: Institutional Resistance of the Welfare State against a Basic Income....Pages 63-81 Germany: Far, though Close — Problems and Prospects of BI in Germany....Pages 83-106 Ireland: Pathways to a Basic Income in Ireland....Pages 107-124 The Netherlands: Final Piece of the Welfare State Is Still to Come....Pages 125-134 Kingdom of Spain: Basic Income from Social Movements to Parliament and Back Again....Pages 135-149 Australia: Will Basic Income Have a Second Coming?....Pages 153-175 Canada: A Guaranteed Income Framework to Address Poverty and Inequality?....Pages 177-201 Japan: Political Change after the Economic Crisis Introduces Universalist Benefit....Pages 203-216 Mexico: The First Steps toward Basic Income....Pages 217-233 The United Kingdom: Only for Children?....Pages 235-263 United States of America: GAI Almost in the 1970s but Downhill Thereafter....Pages 265-281 Iran: A Bumpy Road toward Basic Income....Pages 285-300 Back Matter....Pages 301-322