Welfare for Markets: A Global History of Basic Income (The Life of Ideas)

Jäger, Anton; Zamora Vargas, Daniel

ISBN 10: 022683672X / ISBN 13: 9780226836720

Published by University of Chicago Press, 2024

About this Item

First Edition NO-PA16APR2015-KAP.

Seller Inventory # 26401694766

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Welfare for Markets: A Global History of Basic Income (The Life of Ideas)
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication Date: 2024
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 022683672X
• ISBN 13: 9780226836720
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

A sweeping intellectual history of the welfare state’s policy-in-waiting.

The idea of a government paying its citizens to keep them out of poverty—now known as basic income—is hardly new. Often dated as far back as ancient Rome, basic income’s modern conception truly emerged in the late nineteenth century. Yet as one of today’s most controversial proposals, it draws supporters from across the political spectrum.

In this eye-opening work, Anton Jäger and Daniel Zamora Vargas trace basic income from its rise in American and British policy debates following periods of economic tumult to its modern relationship with technopopulist figures in Silicon Valley. They chronicle how the idea first arose in the United States and Europe as a market-friendly alternative to the postwar welfare state and how interest in the policy has grown in the wake of the 2008 credit crisis and COVID-19 crash.

An incisive, comprehensive history, Welfare for Markets tells the story of how a fringe idea conceived in economics seminars went global, revealing the most significant shift in political culture since the end of the Cold War.

About the Authors

Anton Jäger is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Catholic University of Leuven. He has published widely on populism, basic income, and the contemporary crisis of democracy.

Daniel Zamora Vargas is assistant professor of sociology at the Free University of Brussels. He is coauthor of The Last Man Takes LSD.