Comment by Jean-Marie Harribey

Would the payment of a basic income to the whole population foster the same macroeconomic mechanism (i.e. a demand-led stimulation)? Yes if such payments anticipate additional production. But, by definition, the unconditional basic income is isolated from any anticipation and therefore from any social validation, as it is unconditional. The utility value of free work (for example the social link or the domestic work) escapes from the value domain as soon as we define value – as Marx did – as a labour unit socially validated. To state the opposite, like all basic income theoreticians do, means embracing the neoclassical thesis pervading the pseudo economic science.