The guaranteed income : next step in socioeconomic evolution? / edited by Robert Theobald.

Includes appendix.

Part I, The facts : The advance of cybernation: 1965-85 / Robert H. Davis -- Automation and the work force / Ben B. Seligman. Part II, Economic theory and socioeconomic reality : The background to the guaranteed-income concept / Robert Theobald -- Guaranteed income and traditional economics / Meno Lovenstein -- An end to the means test / Edward E. Schwartz. Part III, The guaranteed income: freedom or chaos : Conservation and the guaranteed income / William Vogt -- Guaranteed income: an institutionalist view / C. E. Ayres -- The psychological aspects of the guaranteed income / Erich Fromm -- Guaranteed income in the electric age / Marshall McLuhan -- Cultural change and the guaranteed income / Conrad M. Arensberg.

"The concept of the guaranteed income, or negative income tax - the idea that the government should guarantee each citizen an income sufficient to live with dignity - has been receiving rapidly growing attention as the advance of cybernation has made more and more jobs obsolete. In this volume, experts from several disciplines discuss its implications: Robert Davis shows the extent to which technological change will alter the whole of society's technique within the next twenty years; Ben B. Seligman outlines patterns of job loss and the accelerating elimination of job opportunities; Robert Theobald argues the need for the guaranteed income as the latest in the series of profound reorganizations Western society continues to make to distribute rights to increasing production; Meno Lovenstein discusses government responsibility for economic health; Edward Schwartz takes up the argument in terms of the individual; William Vogt examines the probable impact of the guaranteed income on population and mobility; Clarenec Ayres looks at the guaranteed income as an economic incentive; Marshall McLuhan sees it as facilitating new patterns of activity in an electronic era; Erich Fromm postulates the psychological effects of true freedom from want; and Conrad Arensberg uses historical and anthropological evidence to show that a wide range of human institutions is compatible with an effectively funcitoning economic system." -- From the back cover.