Theme: Political Economy | Content Type: Journal article

A Social Guarantee to Meet Everyone's Needs within Environmental Limits

Anna Coote

micheile-henderson-money-and-plant

Micheile Henderson

| 1 min read

The Social Guarantee is part of the everyday economy and contributes a distinctive, normative approach. It maintains that the primary purpose of the economy is to meet everyone's needs within the limits of the natural environment. It offers a principled framework for policy and practice to address three interlinked crises that are all rooted in a failed economic system: soaring living costs, widening inequalities and the climate emergency. The starting point is that everyone should have a sufficient income. Crucially, this is derived not only from wages and cash transfers, but also from publicly funded services, infrastructure and other collective measures that constitute in-kind benefits. These make a substantial contribution to living standards, they are highly redistributive and they are far more ecologically sustainable than aggregated market transactions. It is time to reassert the collective ideal and put in-kind benefits at the heart of Labour's programme.

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Volume 96, Issue 3

Latest Journal

Volume 96, Issue 3

This issue features a collection titled 'The Intellectual and Political Legacy of David Marquand', who died in April 2024, edited by Colin Crouch, Ben Jackson and Peter Sloman. In this collection, authors including Jean Seaton, Will Hutton and Hilary Wainwright consider Marquand's legacy as a great progressive thinker, his biography of Ramsay MacDonald, Labour's first prime minister, and the role of socialism for Marquand. Other articles include a commentary by Deborah Mabbett titled 'Welfare reform by numbers'; Jeremy Gilbert and Alex Williams on 'The Vices of Values: Matthew Goodwin and the Politics of Motivation'; Helen McCarthy on 'Why the WASPI has no Sting: Gender, Generation and Pension Inequalities'; and Sam Taylor Hill, Tariq Modood and John Denham on 'Multicultural Nationalism: Saving the White Working Class from Blue Labour?' A selection of book reviews feature Edmund Fawcett's review of 'Nationalism: A World History' by Eric Storm and Samuel Cohn's review of 'Controlling Contagion: Epidemics and Institutions from the Black Death to Covid' by Sheilagh Ogilvie.

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