Getting Tough or Rolling Back the State? Why Neoliberals Disagreed on a Guaranteed Minimum Income

This article explores why neoliberals associated with the Mont Pelerin Society disagreed on legitimacy of a guaranteed income in 1960s and 1970s United States. Participants this debate are categorized along spectrum between “libertarians” like Milton Friedman George Stigler, who favoured minimum-income plan, “paternalists” Henry Hazlitt, opposed one any form. While these figures were united their desire to roll back welfare state, two means they advocated achieve task stark contradiction assumptions. Divisions over commonly reflected wider disagreements economic methodology, consumer choice, citizenship, policing, moral implications dependency. Previous analysts have tended emphasize unity amongst model “paternalist” paradigm. By recovering origins libertarian paradigm, demonstrates instead that there was never an orthodox neoliberal approach reform. “What does reform do?” is shown be question requiring more complex answers than been recognized literature.