Once treated as a pointlessly utopian fantasy, the demand for a guaranteed basic income is now being debated across multiple forums, from mainstream and alternative media sites to more academic venues.
There are many different proposals that travel under this label. The version I want to defend is a minimal liveable income regularly remitted as a social wage, paid unconditionally to residents regardless of citizenship status, regardless of their family or household membership, and regardless of past, present, or future employment status. Waged work would not be replaced by such a social wage, but the link between work and income would be relaxed.
I support this form of basic income because of its feminist potential to loosen the constraints our current system places on all of us but particularly on women. It is a tool that, if deployed correctly, would enable waged work, marriage contracts, and childrearing to be more a matter of choice than they are at present, where all three are subjected to a relentless, strict, and miserly economic calculus.
