A Global Ecological Argument for a Basic Income

by Erik Christensen Friday, Aug. 13, 2010 at 3:08 PM
mbatko@yahoo.com

Erik Christensen is an associate professor of economics in Denmark.

Here's a link to an 18-page article "A Global Ecological Argument for a Basic Income" by a Danish associate professor of economics.

Forty more articles are available at the www.basicincome.org website.

http://www.basicincome.org/bien/papers.html

"What is new in Daly's paradigm is the fact that he argues that the idea of economic growth must be replaced by the idea of sustainable development. Sustainable development consists of three different political goals: ecological sustainability, social justice and economic efficiency, all of which are answers to basic problems in an economy.

Ecological sustainability raises the question about scope and is concerned with the limits of an economic system in relation to a surrounding ecological system. This is not accepted in mainstream economics as a problem of economics, as there is no notion of a 'full world', i.e. an ecological system as a closed system. The problem of sustainability can't be solved by the market alone. It is a political problem.

The problem of social justice is how to implement a just distribution between various receivers of income and across generations. This too is not a problem for the market to solve, but must be dealt with politically from ideas about justice and sufficiency..."

Original: A Global Ecological Argument for a Basic Income