Each of us is expected to make a contribution to society. We also agree that those who are not in a position to make a contribution should receive full support from society. However, we are not prepared to forgive those who, despite being perfectly capable of contributing, live off somebody else. We expect people to be self-sufficient, that is, capable of providing their own living, without relying on anybody else, a person or an institution.

Two different notions of self-sufficiency are concealed behind the previous statement. On the one hand we aim at putting people in a position to become self-sufficient, i.e. being endowed with whatever necessary to generate a decent income for themselves (see for example J. Gardiner, 2000[1]). On the other hand we expect people not to resort too much on external help, for them to secure a decent living (see, for example Hawkins, 2005[2]). Self-sufficiency is intended as an aspiration in the first case, but as an obligation in the second. In the first case we may aim at strengthening the welfare system so that individuals are free to look for the best possible way to contribute to society; in the second we aim at reducing the dependency on the welfare system by shifting some of its burden on to individuals. This is usually the way we tell a left-leaning political stance apart from a right-leaning one. Recently, the idea of a citizen’s basic income has sparked off a debate on whether it is economically and financially sustainable. The question hinges upon the ability of this kind of policy to foster both demand and supply and remain financially neutral.[3]

The paper intends to place the issue of the citizen’s basic income within the debate over economic self-sufficiency. It will be argued that it all boils down to an issue of property rights allocation, which cuts across both political economy and economics.

[1] Gardiner, J. (2000) ‘Rethinking self-sufficiency: employment, families and welfare’, Cambridge Journal of Economics, 24

[2] Hawkins, R.L. (2005) ‘From self-sufficiency to personal and family sustainability: a new paradigm for social policy’. Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare, XXXII

[3] “The truth is that the costs of people having insufficient incomes are many and collectively massive. It burdens the healthcare system. It burdens the criminal justice system. It burdens the education system. It burdens would-be entrepreneurs, it burdens both productivity and consumer buying power and therefore entire economies. The total cost of all of these burdens well exceeds $1 trillion annually, and so the few hundred billion net additional cost of UBI pays for itself many times over. That’s the big-picture maths.” (Why we should all have a basic income, World Economic Forum, 2017)