ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to determine the political feasibility of those public policies which would give poor people income as a right. Such a task involves little more than outlining the steps through which any policy must necessarily pass, while providing an assessment of the chances of passage. An analysis of political feasibility is based on traditional assumptions, one of which presumes that the usual bargaining, logrolling, and coalition building will take place in the future much as it has in the past. The chapter looks at those aspects of income by right—effectiveness, dignity, bureaucracy, equality, incentives, taxes—that create special political problems. The concern with dignity will be viewed as reward for laziness and worse by most people. Effectiveness might be judged simply by considering how much of the so-called poverty gap is filled by each of the proposed plans; the most effective would eliminate the greatest number of people from the ranks of the poor.
