A/HRC/35/26 Individual 13. Whereas many aspects of existing social protection systems flow to the household, basic income would go directly to each individual. Some proposals do, however, diverge from this principle and envisage reduced payments which take account of the overall family or household situation. Unconditional 14. The absence of conditionality is a key dimension for most basic income proponents. This means that no conditions, such as children’s attendance at school or proof of job searches, must be met before the income is paid. People are thus not compelled to accept unpleasant or unattractive jobs. The latter would be filled either by machines, or by people attracted by a higher pay level.11 Universal 15. A full basic income is considered a universal entitlement that is automatically paid ex ante to all in a society, regardless of income, wealth, age and gender. It does not require means testing and is not restricted to specific categories of recipients. This idea is troubling to many, who question why the “haves” should receive as much as the “have nots”. Common responses are that any form of means testing to determine eligibility requires a large and inefficient bureaucracy to evaluate claims, creates a burden on disadvantaged people to prove their financial need, stigmatizes the target group, and undermines the freedom to not work — as compared to means-tested welfare that is reduced as people work and earn more. One option for retaining universality but responding to this unfairness critique is a progressive taxation system that effectively takes back much of the basic income payment from high earners. Some challenge the viability of that approach in a world in which elite tax avoidance and evasion schemes are rife.12 16. The universality dimension is often assumed to apply only to citizens or those with a minimum period of legal residence in the country, although some schemes require only fiscal residence. These limits raise important questions in terms of migrant workers, undocumented workers and asylum seekers. B. A brief history of the concept 17. Proposals for a form of basic income have been floated by thinkers for centuries. 13 Proponents of the idea trace its historical origins back to Sir Thomas More’s Utopia (1516), Johannes Vives’s On Assistance to the Poor (1526), and the works of the Marquis de Condorcet, Charles Fourier, Victor Considerant, John Stuart Mill, Bertrand Russell, George Cole, Herbert Simon, and various other political scientists, economists, and public intellectuals. Perhaps the most detailed and specific early set of plans for basic income and related social protection arrangements was put forward by Thomas Paine, a key figure in both the French and American revolutions, in The Rights of Man (1792) and Agrarian Justice (1797). 18. In the United Kingdom, basic income proposals were prominent in the period after both world wars. In 1918, Bertrand Russell called for an income for all, sufficient to pay for “necessaries” in post-First World War Britain.14 And when the Beveridge plan was being 11 12 13 14 See, for example, Van Parijs and Vanderborght, Basic Income, p. 22. Francine Mestrum, “Why basic income can never be a progressive solution”, 14 April 2016. Available from https://www.socialeurope.eu/2016/04/basic-income-can-never-progressive-solution/. For summaries on the history of basic income, see Michael Tanner, “The pros and cons of a guaranteed national income (Cato Institute, 12 May 2015), p. 4; Van Parijs and Vanderborght, Basic Income: A Radical Proposal for a Free Society and a Sane Economy, chap. 4; and “History of basic income”, available from http://basicincome.org/basic-income/history/. Bertrand Russell, Roads to Freedom: Socialism, Anarchism and Syndicalism (Unwin, 1918), p. 127. 7