A recently published book deals with many of the issues mentioned in the 
query: Karl Widerquist, Michael Anthony Lewis and Steven Pressman 
(Eds.), *The Ethics and Economics of the Basic Income Guarantee*, 
Aldershot and Burlington, Ashgate, 2005. Part One of the book is about 
the history of guaranteed income proposals; it has four chapters which 
might be of interest: 
 
Ch. 2: Fred Block and Margaret Sommers, "In the shadow of Speenhamland: 
social policy and the old poor law" (13-54) 
 
Ch. 3: John Cunliffe and Guido Erreygers: "Inheritance and equal shares: 
early American views" (55-76) 
 
Ch. 4: Robert Harris: "The guranteed income movement of the 1960s and 
1970s" (77-94) 
 
Ch. 5: Robert A. Levine, Harold Watts, Robinson Hollister, Walter 
Williams, Alice O'Connor and Karl Widerquist: "A retrospective on the 
negative income tax experiments: looking back at the most innovative 
field studies in social policy" (95-106). 
 
A more general overview of the history of "basic income" and "basic 
capital" proposals can be found in John Cunliffe and Guido Erreygers 
(Eds.), *The Origins of Universal Grants. An Anthology of Historical 
Writings on Basic Capital and Basic Income*, Basingstoke and New York, 
Palgrave Macmillan, 2004 - sorry for this self-publicity. 
 
An interesting discussion on basic income was published by the *Boston 
Review*, Vol. 25(5), October/November 2000 
(http://bostonreview.net/BR25.5/contents.html). 
 
More information can also be found on the websites of BIEN, the Basic 
Income Earth Network (www.basicincome.org), and of USBIG, the U.S. Basic 
Income Guarantee Network (www.usbig.net). 
 
Guido Erreygers