“Powerful as well as highly engaging—a brilliant book.”
—Amartya Sen

A Times Higher Education Book of the Week

It may sound crazy to pay people whether or not they’re working or even looking for work. But the idea of providing an unconditional basic income to everyone, rich or poor, active or inactive, has long been advocated by such major thinkers as Thomas Paine, John Stuart Mill, and John Kenneth Galbraith. Now, with the traditional welfare state creaking under pressure, it has become one of the most widely debated social policy proposals in the world. Basic Income presents the most acute and fullest defense of this radical idea, and makes the case that it is our most realistic hope for addressing economic insecurity and social exclusion.

“They have set forth, clearly and comprehensively, what is probably the best case to be made today for this form of economic and social policy.”
—Benjamin M. Friedman, New York Review of Books

“A rigorous analysis of the many arguments for and against a universal basic income, offering a road map for future researchers.”
—Wall Street Journal

“What Van Parijs and Vanderborght bring to this topic is a deep understanding, an enduring passion and a disarming optimism.”
—Steven Pearlstein, Washington Post

We’ve been told, again and again, that life is unfair. But what if we’re wrong simply to resign ourselves to this situation? What if we have the power—and more, the duty—to change society for the better?

We do. And our very nature inclines us to do so. That’s the provocative argument Peter Corning makes in The Fair Society. Drawing on the evidence from our evolutionary history and the emergent science of human nature, Corning shows that we have an innate sense of fairness. While these impulses can easily be subverted by greed and demagoguery, they can also be harnessed for good. Corning brings together the latest findings from the behavioral and biological sciences to help us understand how to move beyond the Madoffs and Enrons in our midst in order to lay the foundation for a new social contract—a Biosocial Contract built on a deep understanding of human nature and a commitment to fairness. He then proposes a sweeping set of economic and political reforms based on three principles of fairness—equality, equity, and reciprocity—that together could transform our society and our world.

At this crisis point for capitalism, Corning reveals that the proper response to bank bailouts and financial chicanery isn’t to get mad—it’s to get fair.

The goals of health and human security are fundamentally valued in all societies, yet the breadth of their interconnections are not properly understood. This volume explores the evolving relationship between health and security in today's interdependent world, and offers policy guidelines for global health action.

This volume underscores three basic principles. First, recent developments in the changing security landscape present enormous challenges for human security and global health. Second, although the connections between health and security are long-standing, the current context of new conflicts, pervasive poverty, and accelerating global flows has brought the fields closer together. Finally, a human security approach dependent upon individual and collective action can identify new strategies for meeting the goals of global health and security.

The distinguished contributions to this volume were commissioned by Harvard University's Global Equity Initiative, a research unit supporting the work of the International Commission on Human Security.

The decade of the 1990s witnessed enormous changes in the international environment. The Cold War conclusively ended. Biotechnology and communications technology made rapid advances. Barriers to international trade and investment declined. Taken together, these developments created many opportunities for peace and prosperity.

At the same time, with the end of superpower domination, ethnically based intranational conflicts brought on widespread suffering. And while globalization expanded opportunity, growth, and incomes, it increased inequality of incomes and decreased human security. Moreover, as countries have become more closely linked, insecurity in one country has affected security in other countries.