Basic Income and Social Inequalities. A Matter of Life Chances

In this article, basic income is analyzed as a tool for social policy aimed at reducing social inequality understood in terms of life chances rather than mere distribution of wealth. Two key questions arise: the first concerns the definition of social inequality itself, which also conditions the way of thinking about the policies to contain it. Since basic income configures a relationship between the individual, the market and the community, there are different implications if, as a reference, we assume a concept of equality based on the mere distribution of resources (equality of what?) or if, to this quantitative dimension, we connect the question of the recognition between individual and collective subjects who have rights and between whom there are relations of power (equality of who?). Equally important is the concept of the individual taken as reference: whether the individual is isolated from an institutional and relational context, or rather socially embedded, not moved by personal interest alone, hence taking into account the importance of the social bond in the configuration of individual social positions.