Can a Policy of Guaranteed Basic Income Return Mature Market Economies to les Trente Glorieuses?
The
starting point of this
paper
is an analysis of
the original 19
th
Century
classical
dualistic structure of
emerging industrial economies associated with
a decoupling between real wage
and productivity
growth
. This is
followed by a description of
how this gap disappeared during the Golden Age period of
les Trente Glorieuses
and
then re
-
eme
rged
after the 1970s. Th
is is done with the purpo
se
of providing a framework for discussing some o
f the
literature on guaranteed income
programmes
as promoted by both mainstream and heterodox economists
.
As is
well known, proposals in favour of guaranteed
income have become fashionable in recent times
to address this
growing income polarisation
that has become endemic in mature industrial economies
,
and
th
is
paper
offer
s
a
critique
of these proposals
from
a Polanyian perspective. While supporting the princi
ple of a universal basic income
as
a
means to establish a social subsistence floor,
it is argued that
a guaranteed income policy without also a societal
commitment to full employment may trigger
mechanisms that could actually strengthen labour
-
market decou
pling.
