The idea of a government-guaranteed income for everyone has made a meteoric rise to prominence in just the last few years, in the United States and around the world. Karl Widerquist (Georgetown University-Qatar) and Oren Cass (Manhattan Institute) will debate the merits of this, one of the hottest policy proposals of our time.

Co-sponsored by the Political Economy Project and the Nelson A. Rockefeller Center.

Moderator: Charles Wheelan '88, Senior Lecturer and Policy Fellow, Nelson A. Rockefeller Center for Public Policy and the Social Sciences.

Oren Cass is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and the author of The Once and Future Worker: A Vision for the Renewal of Work in America. His work on strengthening the labor market addresses issues ranging from the social safety net and environmental regulation to trade and immigration to education and organized labor. Before joining the Manhattan Institute, Cass held roles as the domestic policy director for Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign in 2012, as an editor of the Harvard Law Review, and as a management consultant in Bain & Company’s Boston and New Delhi offices. He earned a B.A. in political economy from Williams College and a J.D. from Harvard Law School.

Karl Widerquist is an Associate Professor at SFS-Qatar, Georgetown University. He specializes in political philosophy. His research is mostly in the area of distributive justice – the ethics of who has what. He holds two doctorates – one in Political Theory from Oxford University (2006) and one in Economics from the City University of New York (1996). He is the coauthor of Prehistoric Myths in Modern Political Philosophy (Edinburgh University Press 2017) and author of Independence, Propertylessness, and Basic Income: A Theory of Freedom as the Power to Say No (Palgrave Macmillan 2013). He is coeditor of "Basic Income: An Anthology of Contemporary Research" (Wiley-Blackwell 2013), "Alaska’s Permanent Fund Dividend: Examining its Suitability as a Model" (Palgrave Macmillan 2012), "Exporting the Alaska Model: Adapting the Permanent Fund Dividend for Reform around the World" (Palgrave Macmillan 2012), and "the Ethics and Economics of the Basic Income Guarantee" (Ashgate 2005). He was a founding editor of the journal Basic Income Studies, and he has published more than 20 scholarly articles and book chapters. His articles have appeared in journals such as Political Studies, the Eastern Economic Journal, Politics and Society, and Politics, Philosophy, and Economics. He has been the co-chair of Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN) for several years. Karl Widerquist was one of the founders of the U.S. Basic Income Guarantee (USBIG) Network and its coordinator its first 10 years (2000-2010). The NewsFlash editor for USBIG 2010-2015 and for BIEN 2010-2015. He was one of the founders of BIEN’s news website, Basic Income News, and its principle editor for its first four years.

Charles Wheelan is Senior Lecturer and Policy Fellow at the Nelson A. Rockefeller Center. He is also affiliated with the Department of Economics and the Department of Education. In addition to his work at Dartmouth, he has spent time as a speechwriter, a correspondent for The Economist, and a Congressional candidate and in other policy-related positions that inform my academic work. His goal is to make important academic ideas understandable to the broadest possible audience and to use these powerful ideas to address real social challenges.