Philippe Van Parijs

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Philippe Van Parijs (born 1951) is a Belgian philosopher and political economist, mainly known as a proponent and main defender of the basic income concept. He was also secretary of the Basic Income European Network. Van Parijs's work is often associated with the September Group of analytic Marxism, though he is not himself a committed Marxist.

In Real Freedom for All: What (if anything) can justify capitalism?^[1] (1995) he argues for both the justice and feasibility of a universal basic income. It promotes the achievement of a real freedom to make choices. I can't, for instance, really choose to stay at home to raise my kids or start my own business if I can't afford to. As proposed by Parijs, such freedom should be feasible through taxing the scarce, valued social good of jobs, as a form of income redistribution.

Part of Van Parijs' work is about the economy of linguistic communication. In order to compensate countries with a small language for their expenses on teaching and translation he has proposed a language tax^[2], which would be paid by countries with a widespread language, for their savings on the domains mentioned.

Van Parijs holds the Hoover Chair in Economics and Social Ethics at the Université catholique de Louvain in Belgium and is a regular visiting professor of Philosophy at Harvard University. In 2001, he was awarded the Francqui Prize for Human Sciences.[1]

[edit] References

^ Philippe Van Parijs, Real Freedom for All, What (if anything) can justify capitalism : Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1995
^ Philippe Van Parijs, Europe's three language problems, Multilingualism in Law and Politics