In an article (reproduced as Chapter 23) on basic income, Philippe Van Parijs mentions three major objectives: enhancing individual freedom, promoting universal rights and procuring economic security. I fully share these objectives but claim that basic income is not the way progressives will want to realise them.

Individual freedom is extremely important but can never be dissociated from collective responsibility. In fact, this focus on individual freedom shows that basic income is fundamentally a liberal proposal. Progressives will always point to the collective, social dimension of all our needs and to the interdependence of all people. This is a different philosophy with direct consequences for the division of labour. There certainly is a need for more leisure time and for a drastic reduction of working hours, but there is also socially necessary labour that should be shared by all. By focusing only on individual freedom, many advocates of basic income forget that individual rights cannot exist or lose their meaning without collective rights.

Basic income should be a universal right. Our rights are indeed universal, as is said in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: the right to an adequate standard of living. Our rights are universal, but not the allowances, not the money. If non-poor people have an adequate standard of living, do they have a right to more? If disabled people have major needs, should they not receive more? We have equal, universal rights precisely because we are all different and hence have different needs. Moreover, many needs should not be fulfilled with monetary allowances, but possibly with public services or other types of assistance. This is precisely what our systems of social assurances are for, based on a horizontal structural solidarity, from all according to means, to all according to needs. Universal social protection systems or welfare states, coupled to fair tax systems, are the progressive answer to social needs. With a basic income, giving the same amount to everyone, irrespective of income or resources, inequality remains unchanged.

Economic security is extremely important. Today it is threatened by new forms of precarity and informality in the labour market.