Basic Income and Rawlsian Justice

The purpose of this chapter is twofold. Firstly, in sections 2 to 4 a brief outline is given of Rawlsian justice in relation to basic income. Section 2 presents Rawls's principles of justice and the accompanying primary social goods to which these principles are applied. Sections 3 and 4 deal with two general problems of Rawlsian justice: how to implement the principle of fair equality of opportunity and what to do about the pro-leisure bias of the difference principle. Secondly, sections 5 to 7 address the problem, taking the reciprocity objection seriously, of how to evaluate leisure while simultaneously obeying Rawls's difference principle. In the concluding section, I summarize the findings and consider the implications for the next chapter.