Exploring Basic Income in a Changing Economy Teach-Out

Yannick Vanderborght is Professor of Political science at Université Saint-Louis Bruxelles (Belgium), where he belongs to the Research Centre in Political Science. He is also a guest Professor at the Université Catholique de Louvain, and a member of the Hoover Chair for economic and social ethics. In 2014 and 2016, he was a visiting professor at Kobe University (Japan). He has published several books and articles on basic income and poverty alleviation. His most recent book is Basic Income: A Radical Proposal for a Free Society and a Sane Economy (with Ph. Van Parijs, Harvard University Press, 2017). He is also the co-editor of Basic Income: An Anthology of Contemporary Research (with K. Widerquist, J.A. Noguera, and J. De Wispelaere, Wiley Blackwell, 2013), and of Basic Income in Japan (with T. Yamamori, Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).

In this segment Yannick outlines what the research says about two main fields of basic income economics, on the one hand, and ethics, on the other. He also shares a few examples from his own research on basic income and summarizes several other demonstrations from around the world, with particular focus on examples from Canada and Finland.

Reflection Questions

As we watch the video, let's think about the following:

• Do you think that there should be conditions to assistance for the poor? If so, what conditions would you require for assistance, and why?