Ethically Justifiable, Economically Sustainable, Politically Achievable: A Response to van der Veen & Groot, Rogers, and Noguera
![handle is hein.journals/cllpj40 and id is 271 raw text is:
ETHICALLY JUSTIFIABLE, ECONOMICALLY
SUSTAINABLE, POLITICALLY ACHIEVABLE?
A RESPONSE TO VAN DER VEEN & GROOT,
ROGERS, AND NOGUERA
Philippe Van Parijst and Yannick Vanderborghttt
It is a great privilege to have our work scrutinized and critically
reviewed in such a careful, well-documented, and generous way. But it is
quite a challenge to respond to these three wide-ranging and very different
pieces in an integrated and succinct way. We shall do our best, while trying
not to dodge any of the most difficult objections.
Let us first acknowledge that none of the essays dismisses the radical
proposal to which our book is devoted as nonsense. Brishen Rogers
concedes that, in the long run, an unconditional basic income [henceforth
UBI] may be a necessary and important addition to welfare states.' Jos6
Noguera does not claim that the scenarios (to be discussed below) that he
proposes are preferable to a full UJBI in ideal terns.2 And the UBI, Robert
van der Veen and Loek Groot write, is an ideal [they] share with [us].'3
Nonetheless, they disagree either about how the objective of a generous UBI
can and must be justified, or about the path along which one should pursue
it, or both.
Before engaging in the discussion of these disagreements, one possible
misunderstanding is worth dispelling straight away, especially in the context
of the North American debate. Our plea for a UBI is emphatically not based
on the proposition that the robots are coming and that they will abruptly
t Philippe Van Parijs is professor emeritus at the University of Louvain, Hoover Chair of
Economic and Social Ethics, and author of Real Freedom for All (Oxford UP, 1995) and Linguistic Justice
for Europe and for the World (Oxford UP, 2011).
tt Yannick Vanderborght is professor of political science at the Universit6 Saint-Louis, Brussels,
and at the University of Louvain, and author, with Philippe Van Parijs, of Basic Income. A radical
proposal for a Free Society and a Sane Economy (Harvard UP, 2017).
1. Brishen Rogers, Basic Income and the Resilience of Social Democracy, 40 COMP. LABL. L. &
POL'Y J. 199-222 (2019).
2. Jos6 A. Noguera, The Second-Best Road Ahead for Basic Income, 40 COMP. LABL. L. & POL'Y
J. 223-238 (2019).
3. Robert van der Veen and Loek Groot, Unconditional Basic Income and the Rejuvenation of the
Welfare State, 40 CoMP. LABL. L. & POL'Y J. 153-198 (2019).](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/cllpj40&div=20&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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