SHAREThis bibliographical essay is David Hart's introduction to Property and its Enemies. Part III. How to Get a Free Lunch? Just Apply for It., by Anthony de Jasay.
In this article Jasay takes issue with a new group of "enemies of property", namely the contributors to a collection of essays entitled What Is Wrong With A Free Lunch? (2001) in which the idea of a government guaranteed minimum income for all is advocated. Jasay goes through the moral, political and economic arguments why this would be a bad idea. But he also notes with some resignation that even some free market economists, like Milton Friedman, have also been tempted by the idea of a "negative income tax".
Bibliography
Joshua Cohen & Joel Rogers, eds., What Is Wrong With A Free Lunch? (Boston: Beacon Press, 2001).
Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom (University of Chicago Press, 1962). See Chapter XII "The Alleviation of Poverty", pp. 192-3 where Friedman advocates "an arrangement that recommends itself on purely mechanical grounds".
Jodie T. Allen, "Negative Income Tax" in the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics at Econlib. URL: http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/NegativeIncomeTax.html
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David M. Hart is Director of the Online Library of Liberty Project.
For more articles by David M. Hart, see the Archive.
For more articles by David M. Hart, see the Archive.
The cuneiform inscription in the Liberty Fund logo is the earliest-known written appearance of
the word “freedom” (amagi), or “liberty.” It is taken from a clay document written
about 2300 B.C. in the Sumerian city-state of Lagash.