A/HRC/35/26 57. Finally, a simulation for the region of Catalonia, in Spain, suggests that a basic annual income of €7,968 for those aged over 18 and of €1,594 for minors would require a 49.57 per cent flat tax rate and extra financing of €7 billion. 89 58. Van Parijs and Vanderborght admit that a universal basic income at 25 per cent of GDP per capita would result in “far higher rates of taxation because of the need to keep funding other public expenditures”. They then proceed to point to some (relatively smallscale) basic income experiments, negative income tax experiments and econometric models, none of which provides a clear answer on affordability. After discussing alternative financing models, such as taxes on capital, nature, money and consumption, they conclude that “none of these alternative sources offers a panacea, or any robust assurance that a generous basic income is economically sustainable, or any reason to believe that, in the short run at any rate, we can dispense with the income tax”.90 That leads them to explore alternatives to their core idea of a universal basic income — including a categorical basic income, a household basic income and tax surcharge, and their preferred alternative, a partial basic income: “one that makes no claim to being sufficient to live on if one lives alone”.91 VI. Conclusion 59. The most committed proponents of basic income proclaim their approach to be utopian,92 not in the sense of being unrealistic or unachievable, but as providing a highly ambitious, sweeping, and progressive vision. Critics or sceptics who raise objections based on unaffordability, the unacceptability of unconditionality or the unrealistic change in mentality required will often be dismissed as unimaginative defenders of an obviously unsatisfactory status quo. 93 60. But these contrasting views accurately reflect the conclusion that emerges from a comprehensive survey of the many different utopias the world has known, which is that “utopias are essential but potentially dangerous”.94 In this case, the danger is that the single-minded pursuit of basic income as a magic bullet, capable of resolving many deeply troubling challenges, will distract attention from the deeper underlying complexities and values. But the utopian vision may also provide the much-needed impetus to rethink the optimal shape of social protection explicitly designed to achieve universal realization of the human right to an adequate standard of living in the twenty-first century. At a comparable watershed moment, Lord Beveridge introduced his 1943 report that laid the groundwork for the British welfare state by insisting that a “revolutionary moment in the world’s history is a time for revolutions, not for patching”.95 61. Thus, the basic income concept should not be rejected out of hand on the grounds that it is utopian. Policymakers at the national and international levels need to develop the sort of creativity in social policy that is capable of matching and responding to the technological innovations and other developments that have brought us to this crossroads. Despite the magnitude of the challenge and the breathtaking scope of the proposed solution, there is an option, which Van Parijs seems to have subtly embraced, to move in an incremental fashion towards the overall 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 Jordi Arcarons, Daniel Raventos Pañella and Lluís Torrens Mèlich, “Feasibility of financing a basic income”, Basic Income Studies, vol. 9, No. 1-2 (2014), pp. 79-93. Van Parijs and Vanderborght, Basic Income, p. 137. Ibid., p. 165. Ibid., pp. 245-247; and Bregman, Utopia for Realists. For an excellent overview of the practical and principled objections, see Piachaud, “Citizen’s income: rights and wrongs”. Lyman Tower Sargent, Utopianism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 127. Beveridge report, para. 7. 17