A/HRC/35/26 B. Global basic income 33. The concept of a basic income on a global scale has attracted little scholarly attention, but at least two organizations, the Global Basic Income Foundation and World Basic Income, are promoting it.51 According to the latter, a global basic income would be a “global scheme that gathers and redistributes money, in amounts ranging from a few dollars to over $2,000 per month, depending on circumstances”. 52 The long-term goal is redistribution of wealth and natural resources through “collective shareholdings in global companies, international taxes such as a carbon tax or financial transaction tax, royalties on goods like intellectual property or the extraction of natural resources, or fees for the use of shared goods, such as charging airlines a fee for using our shared airspace”.53 The present report does not seek to examine the feasibility or otherwise of such an approach. C. The welfare state 34. All developed societies have welfare states in one or other of the three principal forms. First, welfare for the poor in the form of non-contributory means-tested programmes. Second, social insurance, social rights and social services, which include a wide array of institutions from contributory pension and unemployment schemes to public education and health insurance. Third, and the least familiar, is the role of the government in the economy, through regulatory, fiscal, monetary and labour-market policies and “in shaping markets, promoting growth, providing employment, and ensuring the welfare of firms and families”. While some see these three conceptions as competing, David Garland argues that none “of these three sectors can exist in that form without the others as structural supports”.54 35. In comparing basic income schemes with the welfare state, it is important to note that some of the proposed forms of basic income are intended to replace the welfare state, while others complement it or only partly replace it. Charles Murray proposes a radical form of basic income designed to replace the welfare state, 55 and to eliminate “programmes that are unambiguously transfers — Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, welfare programmes, social service programmes, agricultural subsidies, and corporate welfare”, but that would keep in place State-funded education. 56 But others have argued that “a basic income should not be understood as being, by definition, a full substitute for all existing transfers, much less a substitute for the public funding of quality education, quality health care, and other services”.57 This approach is supported by commentators for whom basic income schemes “would not necessarily replace contributory benefits”.58 A Canadian study proposes that a new basic income should come on top of 33 existing income support programmes.59 36. Most of its proponents do not envision basic income directly replacing the third conception of the welfare state, namely the role of the government in the economy. As far as the second conception is concerned, many proponents appear to leave public education and social services mostly untouched. Even Murray would leave State-funded education and child protection services in place, although individuals would have to fund their own 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 12 See www.globalincome.org/English/English.html and http://worldbasicincome.weebly.com/. “The basics”, available from http://worldbasicincome.weebly.com/the-basics.html. “How we could fund a world basic income”, available from http://worldbasicincome.weebly.com/finding-the-money.html. David Garland, The Welfare State: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2016), p. 9. Charles Murray, “A guaranteed income for every American”, Wall Street Journal, 3 June 2016. Murray, “Guaranteed income as a replacement for the welfare state”, p. 4. Van Parijs and Vanderborght, Basic Income, p. 12. J.A. Noguera, “Basic income and contributory pensions”, in Karl Widerquist and others, eds., Basic Income: An Anthology of Contemporary Research (Wiley and Sons, 2013), p. 347. David Macdonald, “A policymaker’s guide to basic income” (Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, 2016), p. 8.