Freedom and Basic Income

Background and Purpose: In spite of the fact that the U.S. is considered a welfare state, there is no income support system in place which assures that everyone is economically secure. There are various income support programs serving different segments of the population, but there are some folks who don’t qualify for any of them. And even when people qualify for certain programs, those programs are temporary or require recipients to meet very demanding conditions in order to continue receiving benefits. All of this results in an urgency among those of us who aren’t independently wealthy to find a job. And this urgency allows employers to exert a tremendous amount of power over us. I’ll argue in this paper that such a system should be intolerable to a profession which claims to value self-determination and that a basic income could go some way to making things right.

Methods: The NASW Code of Ethics Standard 1.01 will serve as the theoretical and ethical basis for my argument. It states that, “social workers respect and promote the right of clients to self-determination....” I’ll argue that self-determination applies as much to the macro level as it does to the micro one and that, viewed in this way, social workers would be behaving consistently with this standard if we advocated for public policies that would enhance people’s freedom or self-determination. I’ll also argue that a basic income is such a policy.

Results: This paper will present a conceptual analysis of what “freedom” or “self-determination” means and an argument showing how basic income could enhance the freedom of those who are currently under pressure to sell their labor power in order to survive.

Conclusions and Implications: Members of the social work profession should seriously consider advocating for a basic income.