Property for all? Basic income and basic capital

Should individuals have a right to income or capital from the community? One possibility is for every resident to be paid an income from the state without any test of means or work-related condition - an unconditional basic income. Another is for everyone to receive a capital sum on reaching adulthood, perhaps paid for (wholly or in part) by a tax on inherited wealth. These proposals offer a way of universalising some of the benefits of asset ownership in a market economy and, thereby, creating a more equal and fairer society - more equal not only in terms of income and wealth themselves, but in terms of freedom and power.

Stuart White's research focuses on the philosophical arguments for and against these proposals, on aspects of the intellectual history behind them, and on evaluating concrete policy proposals.

Relevant publications include: The Civic Minimum (2003); The Citizen's Stake (2006), co-edited with Will Paxton and Dominic Maxwell; How to Defend Inheritance Tax(2008), with Rajiv Prabhakar and Karen Rowlingson; and a free to download e-book, Democratic Wealth (2014), co-edited with Niki Seth-Smith.

An introduction to the philosophical perspective explored in this research can be found in this online article: https://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/stuart-white/alternative-liberal-solutions-to-economic-inequality