Social Theory and Practice

Volume 40, Issue 1, January 2014

Income Inequalities in a Context of Political Equality
Guaranteed Basic Income, No Guaranteed Income, or Guaranteed Work Opportunities

This paper investigates individual differences-based income entitlements (entitlements based on people’s contributions, efforts, and needs) in a context of political equality. Three regimes for distributing income are considered: guaranteed basic income (GBI), no guaranteed income (NGI), and guaranteed work opportunities (GWO). Whereas GBI attends to equality while remaining silent on difference and NGI attends to difference while de-emphasizing equality, GWO attends to both difference and equality. Balancing individual differences and political equality is a plausible goal for distributive justice, and the GWO regime seems well suited to accommodate these joint concerns.