The Case for a Universal Basic Income

For a while I've been interested in the political policy known as the Universal Basic Income (also known as the Basic Income Guarantee or a Negative Income Tax).

It is usually thought of as a left wing policy, but it is interesting that many on the Right of the political spectrum also advocate this policy.

For example, I came across a couple of interesting articles on why the classical liberal economist Friedrich von Hayek supported a basic universal income.

http://www.libertarianism.org/columns/libertarian-case-basic-income#.oz0pbd2:3cP6

http://www.libertarianism.org/columns/why-did-hayek-support-basic-income

Hayek was a leading free market economist (it is said Margaret Thatcher used to carry around a copy of his book The Road to Serfdom in her handbag), but he maintained that in a free society there should be a basic income floor that no one is permitted to fall below.

Having seen that F. A. von Hayek seemed to favour a universal basic income, I've found a few other interesting pieces that also argue for the policy. As these show, there is a right-wing case for this policy as well as a left-wing case.

The free market Adam Smith Institute in the UK and the libertarian Cato Institute in the United States are both organisations coming at this policy from the Right of the political spectrum.

http://www.adamsmith.org/blog/a-neoliberal-case-for-a-basic-income-or-something-like-it

http://www.cato-unbound.org/2014/08/04/matt-zwolinski/pragmatic-libertarian-case-basic-income-guarantee

As can be seen from the video below, even the arch-free marketeer, Milton Friedman, advocated something like a universal basic income, though Friedman's idea was actually a kind of "negative income tax."

Similarly, Charles Murray, the conservative political scientist, is a supporter of the basic income, as he speaks about in this speech at the American Enterprise Institute:

Maybe the Universal Basic Income could be a policy around which left and right could come to an agreement?