Rationale
It is likely that the future of work and income will look very different to the past. Future generations might be less able than their parents were to find secure, long-term employment, supplying them with enough income to meet their basic living expenses. They will face new challenges and perhaps new opportunities, due to technological change, demographic dynamics, and environmental factors. Are these changes to be feared or welcomed? And how should we respond to them?
Various policy responses have been proposed to help us face these changes: a negative income tax, a citizen’s dividend, a universal basic income, a state-sponsored jobs guarantee, and so on. Others propose limiting or even abolishing work in its current form, proposing that socially necessary tasks can be completed on a more voluntary, less transactional basis. Many believe that social attitudes towards work are in need of dramatic transformation.
The Covid-19 crisis led to many radical income-support policies being brought in as emergency measures. It also led to a general rethinking of our relationship to our work. Disagreements emerged not only over the consequences of various policies but over deeper philosophical differences. Our project aims at deploying philosophical expertise to build a framework for political discussion. We hope to examine, on one hand, core normative commitments concerning value and fairness and, on the other hand, fundamental conceptual understandings of work, income, entitlement, welfare, and related notions.
On the normative side, conversations often focus on the economic and political constraints on various policies that involve subsidising the income of certain groups at the expense of others: it is asked whether such policies will have good or bad consequences on the incentives of various stakeholders. But there is a parallel discussion of normative aspects: which policies are fair? which respect the rights of citizens, the duties of the state, etc.? how should we value freedom against social obligations, solidarity, and so on? Policy analysts require a clear philosophical framework for the discussion of values, allowing fundamental differences to be identified, addressed, and in at least some cases resolved.
On the conceptual side, we believe that debate over radical policies concerning work and income can easily run aground on conceptual confusion. When we move from speaking about actual situations to possible or counterfactual ones, the conversation immediately becomes conceptual. ‘Work’ is a very broad notion, used sometimes to refer to paid employment, other times, more broadly, to activities with symbolic or economic value – though ‘value’ is an equally contested term. There are also difficulties around attempts to distinguish productive and non-productive activities. ‘Income’ is similarly tricky; it can be conceived in terms of money, resources, welfare, social status, power, or time. We believe that confusions over these concepts sometimes creep into debates about the politics of work. We aim at developing a shared language and domain of concepts, to allow researchers and other stakeholders to participate in constructive conversations without speaking at cross-purposes, and to challenge each other to think of the issues from new perspectives.
The project will cross disciplinary boundaries within academia. Our list of potential collaborators includes researchers in philosophy, economics, political theory, management, and sociology. It will also bring academics into contact with those working outside of academia, as we intend to include employees of education charities, policy think tanks, and government. Our workshops will provide a space for researchers, educators, advocates, and policymakers to find new opportunities to debate and collaborate.