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Abstract: This article discusses three policy ideas that address the limitations of the traditional welfare state: universal basic income (UBI), universal basic services (UBS), and the social economy. As a lens from which to evaluate these policy alternatives, we develop a concept of active citizenship as an interactive and recursive process between people’s equal political influence and the institutional conditions in which they are placed. While the social policy discourse on active citizenship has centred on the debate between increasing individual responsibilities or enhancing people’s capabilities, our conception recentres the political dimension of active citizenship as people’s capacity, not only to exercise individual self-determination, but also collective self-determination over shared conditions. We conclude that, in addition to the conditions for security and autonomy, opportunities for organised social cooperation are necessary to achieve a virtuous cycle between people’s political influence and the institutions that support it.
Abstract: Universal basic income (UBI) is an increasingly popular policy proposal, but there is no evidence regarding its longer-term consequences. We find that UBI generates large welfare losses in a general equilibrium model with imperfect capital markets, labor market shocks, and intergenerational linkages via skill formation and transfers. This conclusion is robust to various alternative ways of financing UBI. By using observationally equivalent models that eliminate different sources of endogenous dynamic linkages (equilibrium capital market and parental investment in child skills), we show that the latter are largely responsible for the negative welfare consequences.
Abstract: In the wake of several recent crises, universal basic income has emerged as a serious policy solution. Not only is basic income pitched as a tool to mitigate the effects of a diverse set of emergencies, it has been argued that successive crises have importantly contributed to the surge in media and policy interest in basic income. In this article we critically examine this proposition. We first argue against the inherent functionalism of many accounts and instead propose a political economy framework that ties basic income directly to a series of mechanisms that may explain the opening up of basic income policy windows during recent crises, including the Covid-19 pandemic. It is equally important to carefully distinguish between different types of crises and we argue that two key competing types – cyclical and permanent crises – face a distinctive set of political economy constraints. We illustrate our approach by analysing the prospects of basic income in six distinct crisis events.
Abstract: Trade unions are often said to be hostile to a universal basic income (UBI). Their judgement may be affected by factors such as their work ethic, perceptions of the unemployed and preferences for labour decommodification. Yet, most studies fail to sketch out the reasons for which unions oppose or support a UBI from a normative standpoint. To understand the impact of ideology on unions’ appreciation for a UBI, I integrate results from 62 questionnaires with 27 in-depth qualitative interviews. This study illustrates that unions’ preferences for a UBI are associated with their theoretical understanding of labour, diverging substantially across welfare regimes. Whereas unions from Bismarckian and Nordic countries are generally opposed to a UBI, organizations from Liberal and Mediterranean countries tend to see UBI as a legitimate policy option. However, in some circumstances they set aside the policy for pragmatic reasons, thus disconnecting their normative orientations from perceptions of its concrete viability.
Abstract: After decades of debates on the economic and philosophical merits and shortcomings of a universal basic income (UBI), more recent literature has started to investigate the politics of a UBI. While several studies shed new light on the individual characteristics associated with higher or lower support for a UBI, we still do not know what features of a UBI itself are attractive or not to people, nor whether other slightly different policy alternatives like means-tested and minimum incomes would be more popular. This article addresses this gap by employing a conjoint experiment fielded in Finland, where a UBI has received significant media and political attention. Our findings show that the most contentious dimension of a UBI is – surprisingly – not its universality, but instead its unconditional nature. Individuals are more likely to support policies that condition receipts upon searching for employment or being genuinely unable to work, and less likely to support policies that are fully unconditional. On the funding side, support tends to be lower for a UBI that is linked to reducing existing benefits, but higher if the UBI is to be funded by increasing taxes, especially on the rich. These findings contribute to a wider literature on the politics of UBI and to our understanding of the potential popularity of competing policy reform alternatives.
Abstract: Is universal basic income (UBI) a policy idea whose time has come? Recent historical scholarship now enables us to comprehend the twentieth century evolution of this and similar ideas. UBI is intriguing in having vociferous backers drawn both from the libertarian right—such as, notably, Milton Friedman in the form of his negative income tax proposal—but also from the emancipation-embracing left—such as Michel Foucault and Phillipe Van Parijs. In this review, scepticism is expressed about whether UBI can seriously help to address issues of inequality, as opposed to preventing the poverty that liberal market economies tend insistently to generate.
Abstract: Organizations in various countries have launched large-scale randomized field experiments to evaluate the empirical effects of basic income. Surprisingly, scholars have paid only scarce attention to the way basic income experiments are actually run. To address this shortcoming, I present three case studies of basic income experiments in the Netherlands, Spain, and the United States. I ask: Why do experiments’ designs only remotely resemble the ‘paradigmatic’ model of basic income they are in fact interested in – universal, unconditional, individual payments, no means tests, and no work requirements? Interviewed researchers identify three types of constraints that prevent basic income experiments from successfully testing basic income – politics, money, and the law – which I explain through the mechanism of ‘boundary work’ between science and politics. I conclude by cautioning against overstated expectations about the policy impact of both current and future basic income experiments.
Abstract: There is a long-standing debate in academic and policymaking circles about the normative merits and economic effects of a universal basic income (UBI). However, existing literature does not sufficiently address the question of which factors are associated with individual support for a UBI. While a large literature in political economy has focused on individual preferences for existing welfare state benefits, it has not analysed the case of a UBI. Using the eighth wave of the European Social Survey (ESS), this article seeks to remedy this gap by analysing individual support for a UBI in 21 European countries. The findings from logistic regression analyses with country fixed effects are partly consistent with the expectations of previous social policy and political economy literatures. Younger, low-income, left-leaning individuals and the unemployed are more likely to support a UBI. Individuals with positive views of benefit recipients and/or high trust in political institutions are also more supportive, while anti-immigration attitudes are associated with lower support. By contrast, the patterns across occupations are mixed and male respondents appear slightly more supportive. Trade union membership is not statistically significant, perhaps because of contradictory effects: unions typically support new welfare state policies but they also have a key role in many existing welfare state schemes and may worry about individuals’ attachment to the labour market. At the cross-national level, support tends to be higher where benefit activation is more pronounced and unemployment benefits less generous. These results suggest one possible reason why countries with high support for a UBI have not introduced it: the mixed support among the left means a pro-UBI coalition has to draw on right-wing voters who may support it only with lower taxes and/or extensive replacement of welfare state benefits, which in turn may further alienate parts of the left.
Abstract: The newly emerging concept of sustainable welfare refers to welfare systems which aim to satisfy everyone's needs within planetary boundaries and to decouple the welfare-growth nexus. Both Universal Basic Income (UBI) and Universal Basic Services (UBS) have been discussed as suitable, but potentially competing, approaches that could support sustainable welfare. This paper contributes to this debate by asking how UBI and UBS compare in relation to four sustainable welfare criteria: a) planetary boundaries, b) needs satisfaction, c) fair distribution, and d) democratic governance. The paper argues that UBI and UBS are not so much conflicting but complementary approaches for supporting sustainable welfare. UBI focuses on the consumption side of the economy while UBS addresses the production side more directly, both of which would be relevant in any sustainable welfare system. Sustainable welfare outcomes of UBI and UBS would be shaped by the institutional contexts within which they operate, especially by the governance of markets, collective provisioning systems and decision-making at all levels. More attention needs to be paid to these institutional contexts when discussing potential sustainable welfare outcomes of UBI and UBS.
Abstract: There are some ideas that capture people’s imagination to the extent that many become convinced they are the silver bullet that can solve all social, economic and environmental problems. Sovereign money is one; universal basic income (UBI) is another. Perhaps it’s because they share the sense of giving access to a secret ‘cheat code’ that unlocks the basic operating system of our economy: the money supply (sovereign money) or the labour market (UBI).
Abstract: At the onset of the COVID‐19 pandemic, governments have struggled to address both the healthcare crisis and rapidly devolving economic conditions. These events have pushed governments to consider large economic relief programs. In the United States, congress approved an over $2 trillion relief package to combat the devastating economic decline. However, most families spent their one‐time cash payment on rent and food during the month it was provided. This left many to face uncertain futures as their ability to earn an income diminished and the promise of additional relief waned. Universal basic income (UBI) is one program which provides a regular disbursement to individuals without means testing or other action on the part of recipient (Van Parijs, 2013). The program is one potential tool for combating recession, mass unemployment, and wide‐spread business closures. Within the context of the COVID‐19 pandemic, this article discusses the use of UBI to meet these challenging circumstances. Given the depth of the economic issues, UBI may be suited to address these challenges as opposed to, or in conjunction with, other relief measures. Discussion is focused on how UBI may serve as a public policy response to the COVID‐19 pandemic and its implications.
Abstract: The Covid‐19 crisis promises to be as big a shock to the UK economy as the 2007‐08 financial crisis. The Office for Budget Responsibility recently published a scenario of the likely economic impact of the coronavirus shock to the economy. Making a number of assumptions, it suggested that real national income would fall by about a third in the second quarter of 2020. Public sector net borrowing would rise to about 14 per cent of national income, and this would be the highest annual deficit since the second world war. One idea for relieving the economic effects of the crisis is to implement a universal basic income. A basic income promises: 'regular, non‐means‐tested cash transfers to all residents of a political territory on an individual basis, without means‐test or work requirement'. A universal basic income has five key parts, namely, that it: is regular; is paid in cash; is provided to the individual; is universal with no means test; and is unconditional with no requirement to work or seek work.
Abstract: This article evaluates the effects of a revenue-neutral tax reform introducing a universal basic income scheme coupled with a flat income tax which replaces the existing minimum income benefit, several other conditional benefits and the existing progressive income taxation. To this aim we use a Micro–Macro simulation model for the French economy. Interestingly, our results show that the reform induces not only a significant reduction in income inequalities and poverty, but also a slightly positive effect at the macroeconomic level, implying that the equity-efficiency trade-off would not be produced.
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