Karl Widerquist

Widerquist is not the first to recognize that poverty effectively forces individuals to work in service to more advantaged individuals, nor is he the first to argue that basic income can relieve that effective force. The unique feature of his theory is the central role that it gives to “the power to say no” in an individual's status as a free person and the central role status freedom plays in his theory of justice. Since the mid-2010s, this line of argument seems to have become more important to the movement for basic income with two of the movement's long-term leaders, Philippe Van Parijs and Guy Standing, arguing along these lines in a TEDx Talk, “The Instrument of Freedom” and an interview (respectively).

Widerquist is the co-founder of the U.S. Basic Income Guarantee (USBIG) Network, which was the first Basic Income network in the United States. He was co-chair of the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN) 2008-2017, and he co-founded Basic Income News in 2011. He has been a commentator on several television, radio, and print networks. According to the Atlantic Monthly, Karl Widerquist is "a leader of the worldwide basic income movement."

Widerquist has been a supporter of some form of basic income guarantee since he heard the topic discussed on an episode of Milton Friedman's television show Free to Choose at the age of 15 in 1980. He did not start writing, working, or publishing on the topic until the late 1990s. Widerquist has worked on basic income as an economist, a political theorist, a public policy analyst, and an organizer. In 1999, Widerquist co-founded the U.S. Basic Income Guarantee (USBIG) Network along with Michael A. Lewis, Fred Block, Erik Olin Wright, Charles M. A. Clark, and Pamela Donovan. Widerquist chaired the organization until 2008 and edited its email NewsFlash until 2014. Widerquist was the co-chair of the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN) since 2008-2017. In 2011, together with Yannick Vanderborght, Widerquist co-founded BIEN's news website, Basic Income News, serving as its principal writer and editor until 2014, and he still periodically contributes to it. Along with BIEN's other co-chair, Louise Haagh, Widerquist chartered BIEN as a non-profit organization in 2016 and oversaw the expansion of BIEN's activities.

Widerquist's writing on basic income includes several articles reexamining the results of the negative income tax experiments conducted in the United States and Canada in the 1970s. He and Michael Howard co-edited two books on Alaska's Permanent Fund Dividend, addressing it as a working model of a small basic income. He has contributed to studies estimating that the United States could provide a full basic income at a cost of 2.95% of GDP per year and that the United Kingdom could provide a full basic income at a cost about 3.4% of GDP.

Widerquist was born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1965, and grew up in Cassopolis, Michigan. Before entering academia, he was a musician, including a stint as bass player for Michael McDermott, and played in several indie bands. He completed a Ph.D. in economics at the Graduate Center, CUNY in 1996, and one in Political Theory at the University of Oxford in 2006. Since 2009, he has been at Georgetown University-Qatar. He has appeared frequently in print, and on radio and television news networks.

Karl Widerquist has collaborated with anthropologist Grant S. McCall to use anthropological evidence to debunk claims in contemporary political theory. They argue that, since the 1600s, most forms of social contract theory and natural property rights theory—especially those associated with a “Lockean proviso” or a Hobbesian justification of the state—have relied on the false empirical claim that Widerquist and McCall identify as “the Hobbesian hypothesis." That is, everyone is better off in a state society with a private property rights regime than everyone is, was, or would be in a society with neither of those institutions. Their book shows how the Hobbesian hypothesis has reappeared throughout the history of political thought since then and that it continues to be passed on in twenty-first century political theory. They argue that few of the philosophers who pass on the Hobbesian hypothesis offer any evidence to support it.