Overview

Examines the need and prospects for a UBI As jobs disappear and wages flat-line, paid work is an increasingly fragile and unattainable basis for dignified life. This predicament, deepened by the COVID-19 pandemic, is sparking urgent debates about alternatives such as a universal basic income (UBI). Highly topical and distinctive in its approach, In the Balance: The Case for a Universal Basic Income in South Africa and Beyond is the most rounded and up-to-date examination yet of the need and prospects for a UBI in a global South setting such as South Africa. Hein Marais casts the debate about a UBI in the wider context of the dispossessing pressures of capitalism and the onrushing turmoil of global warming, pandemics and social upheaval. Marais surveys the meaning, history and appeal of a UBI before even-handedly weighing the case for and against such an intervention. The book explores the vexing questions a UBI raises about the relationship of paid work to social rights, about prevailing notions of entitlement and dependency, and the role of the state in contemporary capitalism. Along with cost estimates for different versions of a basic income in South Africa, it discusses financing options and lays out the social, economic and political implications. This incisive new book advances both our theoretical and practical understanding of the prospects for a UBI.

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9781776146932

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Reviews

"""Hein Marais delivers a theoretically powerful, impressively documented, timely and urgent case for radical wealth redistribution... Crucially, the book supports a basic income not as a policy fix, but as a far-reaching political and imaginative response to the steady collapse of a wage-centered social order. This is a book destined to have lasting influence.""--Franco Barchiesi, Ohio State University, author of Precarious Liberation: Workers, the State, and Contested Social Citizenship in Post-apartheid South Africa ""If you have been searching for a way to clearly understand the concept of a Universal Basic Income (UBI), then this is the book that you have been waiting for.""--Awande Buthelezi, coordinator for the #UBIGNOW Campaign and activist with the Climate Justice Charter Movement ""This book is a major contribution to our understanding of the possibility for policies to achieve more equitable levels of well-being in the contemporary political economy of South Africa and the world.""--Peter B. Evans, Professor Emeritus Department of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley"

Hein Marais delivers a theoretically powerful, impressively documented, timely and urgent case for radical wealth redistribution... Crucially, the book supports a basic income not as a policy fix, but as a far-reaching political and imaginative response to the steady collapse of a wage-centered social order. This is a book destined to have lasting influence.--Franco Barchiesi, Ohio State University, author of Precarious Liberation: Workers, the State, and Contested Social Citizenship in Post-apartheid South Africa If you have been searching for a way to clearly understand the concept of a Universal Basic Income (UBI), then this is the book that you have been waiting for.--Awande Buthelezi, coordinator for the #UBIGNOW Campaign and activist with the Climate Justice Charter Movement This book is a major contribution to our understanding of the possibility for policies to achieve more equitable levels of well-being in the contemporary political economy of South Africa and the world.--Peter B. Evans, Professor Emeritus Department of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley

Author Information

Hein Marais is an independent writer and researcher specialising in political economy, development and public health. His previous books include Pushed to the Limit: The Political Economy of Change (2011) and Buckling: The Impact of AIDS in South Africa (2005).

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