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The State of the UBI Debate: Mapping the Arguments for and against UBI

The State of the UBI Debate: Mapping the Arguments for and against UBI 1IntroductionAmong the many divergent visions for the future of social policy, the idea of a Universal Basic Income (UBI) stands out prominently for a number of reasons. It is unique not only in the way that it combines a clear revolutionary social potential with high levels of salience, popularity, and simplicity, but also in its notable capacity to adapt to different social contexts. In the face of challenges ranging from a financial crisis to changes in the nature of work and a global pandemic, UBI has been proposed again and again as a solution to the problems that accompany them. These attributes make UBI an ideal object for public and popular discussion on social policy topics that are otherwise exclusively dominated by experts; but they pose two major challenges for those participating in these debates. First, since UBI’s prima facie accessibility as a policy is the precondition for its immense popularity, it makes differentiated discussions that actually advance the concept of UBI increasingly difficult. The more people participate in UBI debates, the more complex the arguments about this centuries-oldOver time, the interpretation of what “UBI” means has changed and expanded to encompass a greater variety of positions. The basic ideas behind UBI have been discussed for centuries, whereas specific definitions of it under the “UBI” label are somewhat more modern.idea become. In turn, this makes it difficult for researchers, activists, and the interested public to avoid getting lost in the granular details of the debate. Second, and related to this, UBI debates increasingly appear to be reaching argumentative deadlocks whose origins and patterns are difficult to pinpoint. As we argue further below, this article aims to contribute to addressing both challenges in a concise fashion.To do so, it is necessary to define UBI precisely in order to avoid confusion, while overly narrow understandings run the risk of crowding out relevant dimensions and positions within the debate. As a starting-point, we broadly rely on the definition provided by Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN)—arguably the leading global network of researchers and advocates of the idea of a basic income. According to this definition, UBI is described as “a periodic cash payment unconditionally delivered to all on an individual basis, without means-test or work requirement” (Basic Income Earth Network, 2021). However, as will become clear throughout the article, we do not apply this definition in a restrictive, but rather in an expansive way. It provides a starting-point for what we mean when we discuss the idea of UBI, but the aforementioned complexities of the UBI debate imply that their analysis presupposes some degree of openness to proposals that slightly diverge from the basic definition but nevertheless include arguments that are still immediately relevant for UBI itself. Thus, we also take into consideration policies that contain elements of universality, basicness, and income receipt in order to not privilege any single definition ex ante that may not necessarily be well-known to some supporters of UBI. Chosen based on the contents that the term ‘UBI’ suggests, these three elements were partially dependent on how the authors contributing to the debate interpreted them. ‘Basicness’ could equally entail just a very basic income floor, or a life in basic dignity, as long as the authors clearly referred to UBI in their arguments and as long as the UBI level proposed did not aim to (nearly) cover people’s entire income. ‘Income’ largely referred to regular monetary payments, while ‘universality’ precluded factors like ascribed neediness as conditions for the right to access the income. We applied this extensive approach as more limited alternatives would restrict the scope of our research in a way that would have contradicted its goals. However, we caution that some historical sources we cite discuss the underlying concepts in different social contexts and therefore primarily serve to illustrate how specific arguments have persisted over time.These goals consist in addressing the two challenges described above by overviewing the key themes that characterise arguments for and against UBI. This article explicitly does not provide an in-depth engagement with these arguments but rather aims to provide a bird’s-eye view of what basic arguments are floated in UBI debates. To achieve this, we undertake a systematic qualitative analysis of the key arguments commonly used to argue for and against UBI and its most closely-related concepts. In prioritising breadth over depth, our approach is limited to providing a compact overview, but therefore allows us to identify some of the patterns in UBI debates that potentially lead to argumentative deadlocks. Thus, this article (1) provides a concise compilation of diverse sources from which interested readers can branch out for in-depth inquiries, and (2) identifies strengths and weaknesses in the prominent arguments of UBI opponents and proponents which can be used to constructively advance the debate.As an initial step, we expand on a thorough review of debate contributions by key stakeholders. Combining results from our prior work (Afscharian et al., 2021) with additional research, we compile a list of all points raised for and against UBI that are sufficiently unique in fundamental ways to qualify as essentially distinct lines of argument. Second, we identify the most important themes that characterise these arguments. Third, after organising all these arguments into groups, we critically assess the implications that this exercise has for the state of UBI debates today. In doing so, we address the following main research question: What are the themes that guide contemporary and historical UBI debates? Based on this, we also engage with a set of sub-questions: Which themes are dominant, and in which areas can proponents and opponents of UBI still considerably expand the coverage of their arguments? How can larger sets of complex and diverse arguments be effectively subsumed to make UBI debates more accessible to the wider public? Throughout all these steps, we focus on arguments around UBI as it is defined by BIEN, but we also take into account adjacent concepts if (1) the arguments used about (i.e., for and against) them could also be plausibly applied to UBI as defined above, if (2) the concept under discussion is explicitly framed as “UBI” despite exhibiting minor differences from the basic definition, or if (3) the concept is particularly similar to the definition above, containing clear elements of universality, basicness, and income receipt, and only slightly diverges from it overall. We make these exceptions to be able to do justice to the aim of this article rather than ex ante excluding debate contributions that might publicly be perceived as parts of the UBI debate but would formally be excluded under the BIEN definition. This article provides a new methodological perspective on the key arguments for and against UBI; it presents a new thematic breakdown of UBI debates that addresses the problems with similar prior attempts; and it draws conclusions for contemporary public debates, bridging an often-neglected divide between academic research and political reality.1.1State of the ResearchAs the existing literature on UBI is rather extensive, arguments for and against the policy have already been summarised on various occasions. However, these summaries are often presented merely as ways to set the scene for altogether different research purposes. In the vast range of existing research on UBI in general, a few contributions stand out in terms of their focus on systematically engaging with the arguments around the policy.A good starting-point for getting a broad overview of UBI debates can be found in the review of edited books on UBI. Downes and Lansley (2018) set out to summarise the global debate on UBI and offer a concise overview of different waves of UBI literature, engaging with various issues around UBI that have the potential to spark controversial debates. However, their systematic examination of UBI debates largely frames a collection of articles that go into depth regarding specific subtopics within the UBI debate. The same is true of other edited books, such as Torry’s (2019) Handbook of Basic Income, Exploring Universal Basic Income (Gentilini et al., 2019), or Basic Income: An Anthology of Contemporary Research (Widerquist et al., 2013). Such contributions tend to offer practical introductions to the way that the UBI literature is structured, and to the sheer ideological diversity of the accounts of why UBI is desirable or otherwise. Yet they do not systematically apply analytical tools such as thematic breakdowns to compilations of arguments. Edited books often benefit from the opportunity of engaging with certain sub-fields of UBI debates in-depth while sacrificing the potential benefits of a concise at-a-glance overview of all the relevant arguments. Furthermore, they tend to focus on arguments for UBI while attempting to solve arguments against UBI—such as, for instance, the issue of funding. Other books in a similar vein offer historical overviews of how UBI debates developed (Cunliffe & Erreygers, 2004). Such approaches tend not to cover contemporary arguments, and examine UBI debates through a predominantly procedural lens rather than compiling all the arguments and analysing their underlying structures.Some other work is closer to this article but still sets its priorities differently. Chohan (2017) provides a concise review of UBI debates and summarises many important points at a glance; but the paper dispenses with a thematic analysis of the resulting overview of arguments. In an IMF working paper, Francese and Prady (2018) propose an analytical framework, but gear it towards differentiating between different UBI proposals, and engage with some of the associated arguments in this context. As they focus on UBI proposals, they consider a rather limited number of sources, and barely engage with the rich body of work that goes beyond evaluating extant proposals to offer additional arguments. Finally, a rigorous overview of the political theory behind UBI is offered by Bidadanure (2019), who focuses predominantly on more contemporary arguments. However, due to the normative nature of the arguments employed, more technical perspectives on policy implementation are missing; at the same time, her analysis predominantly engages with arguments in defence of UBI.As this brief overview indicates, there are many valuable contributions that provide useful summaries of specific areas of wider UBI debates. However, this approach can result in these debates becoming overly narrow at times (Prabhakar, 2018), and makes it difficult for participants in the debates to keep a synoptic sense of what is going on overall. Thus, this article adds to the literature by (1) applying a broader understanding of UBI, (2) considering historical sources as well, and (3) examining the themes that structure the arguments in the debates, rather than discussing the arguments themselves in-depth.2MethodIn our analysis, we combined several steps to examine the various facets of UBI debates. We took our own prior work as a starting-point (Afscharian et al., 2021), in which we compiled a corpus of historical and contemporary contributions to UBI debates. The contributions we examined covered a broad range of sources in order to address the aim of integrating diverse facets of UBI debates. They included popular and public debates, academic contributions such as published articles and books, political statements, and reports by organisations such as the UN, the EU, and the OECD. We selected sources based on individual qualitative case-by-case judgements of their relevance, both in terms of academic impact and public potential. As criteria for document types, we aimed to represent the main spheres in which UBI is being debated, namely academia, politics, international organisations, media, think tanks, and civil society. We excluded sources such as niche blog entries and discussions in online fora if they were not published through channels that could be considered impactful either academically or publicly. However, we included contributions by recognised experts, influential actors, and media platforms with particularly considerable reach, such as the online resources of the UBI advocate Scott Santens, or pieces in press outlets like The Guardian. Given the considerable audience of these actors or outlets, they satisfied the criterion of a high potential for public attention. To reduce the risk of our sources being arbitrary, we had several recognised experts from the field validate the corpus along with the list of arguments. The fact that most of our sources are written in English represents an important limitation to our work, as it is likely to overrepresent debates from affluent economies. As such sources reach the largest audiences and tend to have the highest impact, we made that choice to make our research manageable within the limited scope available to us. Nonetheless, we added a few German and French sources due to the prevalence of UBI debates in some associated countries.We then parsed the texts to extract and identify all the arguments used for and against a UBI. Besides expanding on and refining the choice of sources we used for our prior work, the main contribution of this article consists in a more systematic analysis of the contents of the arguments in question. We engaged with the arguments and conducted a thematic analysis (Terry et al., 2017) with predominantly inductive and a few deductive elements. As we already had prior knowledge of the materials, we started with a rough categorisation into social, economic, and political arguments; we then refined and reworked these categories, largely guided by the available data. By implication, our approach was largely based on inductive elements. This is in line with our way of dealing with questions of restrictiveness and expansiveness in the many available definitions of UBI. By applying the expansive understanding of UBI outlined above, the steps we describe respond to the need to respect the diversity of UBI’s three main elements of universality, basicness, and income receipt. Furthermore, it became clear throughout our analysis that, although seemingly marked by superficial differences, several perspectives on variants of UBI share considerable substantive overlap in terms of how those who engage with them frame and articulate their arguments for and against UBI. Thus, even if debate contributions might formally be addressing subtly different policy designs, the arguments they employ are often still equally applicable irrespective of their definitional differences.Our approach was primarily semantic, since most of the arguments we identified were fairly direct in their formulations. However, we encountered many similar formulations of the same basic ideas. We did not list each and every argument word-for-word. Rather, we extrapolated the basic logic of each argument and formulated it in a more general way, in order to make it easier to cluster together sufficiently similar points. Thus, arguments from the source material may differ slightly in their wording but share their underlying logic with the arguments that we list below. Furthermore, we radically simplified arguments as the bird’s-eye view needed for this article would otherwise not have been feasible. Thus, many of the points presented here are ‘core arguments’ around which the cited pieces construct further in-depth arguments. For instance, we adopted the basic argument of UBI facing challenges with reciprocity, but not all of the fine-grained reasons that authors list to back up this point. This choice was part of an unavoidable trade-off between the depth and breadth of our research, which we acknowledge and identify as a clear limitation to our findings. Importantly, not all authors cited as sources personally subscribe to the arguments in question. Rather, the sources we used are examples for where the debate engages with specific arguments—potentially by refuting them as well. This choice was based on the fact that our study does not aim to demonstrate who precisely takes which positions in the debate, but rather what arguments characterise the debate overall. We organised the resulting arguments into thematic breakdowns, at first independently, and later via collaborative comparison and reworking. We deconstructed the themes to identify their key characteristics, found differences and similarities in these characteristics, and separated them so that they were analytically clearly-defined. Finally, we used this breakdown to identify the themes that we considered most appropriate to characterise UBI debates.2.1ThemesBased on our examination, we propose grouping the arguments for and against UBI into seven basic themes, which can in turn be arranged into three main categories. Neither the main categories nor the themes within them are exclusively the “objectively correct” way of organising arguments. Due to the complexity of UBI and the considerations involved, many arguments have strong connections to several themes at once. However, we believe that the following structure organises the underlying principles of UBI debates best.2.2Core Principles of UBIThe first category of themes concerns the core principles of UBI. It contains two themes: social justice and equality, and freedom and the individual. The category is largely defined by the fact that the arguments within its themes are not only normative in the sense that they speak for or against UBI, but normative in a more philosophical sense. To be acceptable to a participant in UBI debates, these arguments depend on their underlying philosophical assumptions in a more fundamental way than arguments from other categories. Arguments within the theme of social justice and equality only function properly based on assumptions of what social constellations are just. The question of whether UBI would actually contribute to a just or unjust society is thus only the secondary argumentative step.Arguments that fall under this category are, for instance, the hope that UBI would alleviate monetary poverty (Drucker, 1949; Hamilton & Martin-West, 2019; Jones & Marinescu, 2018; King, 1968; Laín, 2019; More, 2016; Standing, 2017, p. 53; Vives, 2002; Yang, 2018, p. 161)Pieces by authors like More, Vives, Montesquieu, and Cole—and further below Tobin, Pechman, and Mieszkowski—are examples for cases in which the idea of UBI is used comparatively loosely, or in which only specific elements of UBI are prioritised. While these pieces are less directly relevant for UBI debates than others, they nonetheless contain important information on how key elements of UBI are discussed. We include these sources for reasons of thoroughness while acknowledging and explicitly emphasising that not all cited sources can occupy equal positions within UBI debates in terms of their impact and general relevance.and that it would foster a social system in which nobody falls through the security net (Bellamy, 1888; De Wispelaere & Stirton, 2012, p. 106; Galbraith, 1984; Hamilton & Martin-West, 2019, p. 323; Torry, 2013, p. 8; More, 2016), as—among others—foreshadowed in work by de Montesquieu (1748). Based on such argumentation, the case for UBI within this line of argument is typically substantiated by claims that UBI would reduce the costs of being poor (MacNeill & Vibert, 2019, p. 6) (e.g. through consumption of cheap but low-quality goods) and generally limit the stigmatisation of the needy (Calnitsky, 2016; McDonough & Bustillos Morales, 2019; Theobald, 1963). By satisfying the fundamental right to subsistence, UBI would provide social stabilisation in risky and uncertain phases of life (Barr, 2001; Drucker, 1949; Hamilton & Martin-West, 2019, p. 321; McLuhan, 1966; Stern, 2016)While Barr does not prominently and explicitly discuss UBI, we recommend his work as a basis for understanding debates on social stabilisation.as a right, independent of prior life choices. Here, arguments from debates on UBI are interconnected with debates on a guaranteed minimum income in general, as the idea of a right to subsistence (Cole, 1935, 1944; Fourier, 1836; Rhys-Williams, 1943; Theobald, 1963) by itself might not exclusively justify a UBI as such, but is still often employed in UBI debates. Furthermore, UBI would prevent discrimination through definitions of “desert” (Heller, 2018) and limit extreme inequality (Van Parijs, 1992, p. 7) by raising the lowest possible level of income, potentially financed through redistributive taxes. From all of this, UBI proponents derive the claim that the scheme would be fundamentally just, and effectively institutionalise the provision of a fair share of general economic growth for everyone (Bidadanure, 2019, p. 482; Fromm, 1966; Wignaraja, 2020)—an idea that was foreshadowed at various points of historical social policy debates associated with elements of modern UBI conceptions (Cole, 1935, 1944; Douglas, 1935; Paine, 1797; Spence, 2004/1797). This all ties into the argument that justice has many different potential meanings (Bidadanure, 2019; Sen, 2010; Widerquist, 2013), and that an individualised and democratic society can best provide justice by granting universal basic rights such as the right to income. Furthermore, UBI would separate different spheres of justice to a certain degree by ensuring a basic level of unremovable decommodification (Knoll, 2015, p. 87–88; Precht, 2018; Wright, 2005; Walzer, 1983, p. 106):Walzer himself does not explicitly discuss UBI, but only the related idea of a negative income tax. However, his concept of spheres of justice represents an efficient framework to summarise a specific type of arguments in UBI debates that emphasises the role of money provided independently from market processes for questions of justice. Argumentative references to Walzer are explicitly picked up by Knoll, and implicitly in Precht’s overall focus on individual independence from the markets.irrespective of what happens in the various partly market-oriented areas of one’s social life, a certain income is always guaranteed.Opponents of UBI claim in terms of justice and equality that poverty is not just a monetary issue, so it is not something that UBI could fully solve (Coote & Yazici, 2019). By giving money to the rich, UBI would neither address needs, nor change unequal capital distribution (Butterwegge, 2015; Henderson, 2017), rendering the scheme unjust from specific points of view. Similarly, UBI would unjustly ignore individual contributions as a basis for payments (Van Parijs, 1992, p. 8). This might, so another argument goes, enhance long-run inequalities and lead to exploitation of workers ‘by the lazy’ (Elster, 1986, p. 719). Critiques based on reciprocity issues play a major role in these parts of the debate (White, 2003), as Howard overviews effectively (2005). More generally, Birnbaum (2012) summarises arguments rooted in economic and social justice well.Similar to the arguments on social justice and equality, arguments concerning freedom and the individual again fundamentally rely on philosophical considerations of the nature of freedom, the role of the individual in society, and the desirability of UBI’s various associated implications. This does not apply to each argument to the same degree; for instance, higher life-satisfaction is typically less normatively controversial than the increased individualisation of society. However, the key normative reflection remains whether a UBI would actually contribute to the points raised in the way anticipated, and whether these arguments are to be prioritised.Proponents of UBI make claims to freedom (Van Parijs, 1995) and individuality by pointing to UBI’s capacity to emancipate individuals and groups (Standing, 2017, p. 49–51), particularly vulnerable ones (Pega et al., 2017). Both in and of itself (OECD, 2018), as well as through the increased room it creates for education (Bregman, 2016, p. 28) and skills development due to financial independence (Haarmann et al., 2019; Standing, 2013), UBI might increase social mobility and opportunities and provide different kinds of freedom in terms of enhanced capabilities (Dent, 2019; Milevska, 2014; Sen, 2010, Widerquist, 2013).See Sen’s work not for a discussion of UBI itself but for a better understanding of the capability approach that is implicitly or explicitly employed by the other authors.On top of this, individuals would benefit from higher life-satisfaction (Fromm, 1966; Hamilton & Martin-West, 2019: 323–24; Laín, 2019; Mead, 1970), improved (mental) health (Haagh & Rohregger, 2019; Laín, 2019), and stabilised rights to freedom of movement, such as within the EU (Bruzelius et al., 2017). All of this is based on the fundamental claim that 21st-century social policy has to respond to the needs produced by an individualised society that both fosters and relies on individualised life decisions (Bidadanure, 2019; Sen, 2010; Widerquist, 2013), and that UBI would be able to address this effectively.Opponents reject this perspective on UBI’s links to freedom and individuality. They fear that UBI might isolate some groups from society, as they might end up receiving less specialised forms of the attention and care they require (Luterman, 2019). In conjunction with this, there could be a risk of women being ‘pushed back’ into household work—something that feminist UBI proponents reject by pointing out the need for decommodification from the labour markets (Christensen, 2003). Furthermore, opponents argue that UBI might lower incentives to obtain an education (Mookherjee & Napel, 2019) and might lead people to forget how to live independently (Banerjee et al., 2019, p. 960; Levy, 2006, p. 13). Critics also go a step further and suggest that UBI might not just respond to individualism, but in fact reinforce a highly-individualised society, thus eroding collective solidarity (Lombardozzi & Pitts, 2020; Pitts et al., 2017).A few patterns stand out in these arguments. In terms of justice, proponents of UBI tend to root their positions more strongly in fundamental rights, whereas UBI-sceptics employ argumentative patterns linked to assumptions traditionally found in needs-tested social-policy discourses. This category of arguments illustrates well why opposition to UBI can remain strong even when many arguments against it prove empirically questionable (Afscharian et al., 2021). As UBI is, at its core, a policy geared towards a just and free society, it is crucial that the basic assumptions of what is just are shared for such a policy to stand a chance of being pursued. Thus, arguments from the other main themes are logically conditional on arguments around the core principles of UBI being shared. More precisely, it is the area of social justice that is fundamental here. While opponents of UBI rarely focus their arguments on rebutting the claim that it enhances freedom, they continually emphasise the alleged injustices inherent to UBI. In popular debates, such considerations usually take simple forms, such as not wanting to give money to the rich. However, the underlying key question is whether proponents of UBI can (1) make a convincing point that UBI is socially just despite not addressing needs, capital distribution, and contributions, or (2) that UBI’s benefits are ‘worth it’ despite its alleged problematic traits when viewed through the lens of social justice. Crucially, this does not mean that proponents of UBI make no strong claims to justice. Rather, it shows which specific assumptions and ideals different actors buy into when they opt to support or reject UBI.2.3UBI and Capitalist SocietyThe second category of themes largely comprises arguments that are strongly associated with the workings of a capitalist society. These arguments are often heavy on economic reasoning and can be grouped under the themes business and consumption and labour, work, and employment. Both themes are interconnected, as they focus explicitly or implicitly on relations between labour and capital and on factors that keep these relations stable (or otherwise). The theme of business and consumption is largely self-explanatory; it concerns arguments that deal with a UBI’s positive and negative effects on business development and the associated field of consumption of goods and services.The second theme is more diverse in its implications, as it covers a very wide sweep of arguments relating to work. These include points on the quality of work, unemployment, and labour market effects. Both themes from this umbrella category differ from the core principles of UBI, as their reasoning is more functional in nature. While questions on the desirability of a well-functioning capitalist society are highly normative and controversial, the largely economic arguments from this category usually focus on empirical claims. For instance, they might ask whether wages, employment, or consumption will rise or decline if a UBI is made available, rather than whether they should do so. This is not to say that the normative components of the associated debates are not considerable, but their priority is slightly lower compared to the heavy philosophical influence in the first category.More concretely, proponents of UBI use arguments that can be framed in the context of efficiency: UBI, so the claim goes, would give businesses and individuals more options for financial planning and saving (Hamilton & Mulvale, 2019; Standing, 2013), thus supporting consumption and investment smoothing. By reducing economically harmful risk-aversion (Santens, 2016), increasing flexibility for (small) business owners (Santens, 2016), stimulating business development (Jones & Marinescu, 2018; Vanderborght, 2006, p. 6), and enhancing an efficient matching between jobs and individual talents and interests (Santens, 2017; Van Parijs, 1992, p. 8), UBI might contribute to stronger, more sustainable economic developments within societies at large. In contrast, opponents fear that increased consumption might focus on undesirable and harmful goods such as alcohol and drugs (Banerjee et al., 2019, p. 960), while prices for goods might increase along with increased incomes, thus rendering the beneficial net effects of UBI small to non-existent (Santens, 2016). Harmful consumption plays a particularly important role in ecological branches of the debate (Bohnenberger, 2020).In terms of labour, work, and employment, the arguments on either side are respectively even more strongly-opposed. Supporters of UBI argue that the policy would enhance workers’ bargaining power (Birnbaum & De Wispelaere, 2021, p. 915; Calnitsky, 2017; Vanderborght, 2006, p. 5–6), ultimately strengthening the power of labour relative to capital (Wright, 2005). This will result in better working conditions and reimbursement for hard work (Zimmermann, 2016) as it was the goal of associated historical social policy debates (Milner & Milner, 1918), and in an improved work-life balance (Hamilton & Martin-West, 2019, p. 323–24; Laín, 2019). Similarly, a UBI might positively counter the misrepresentation of women’s contributions in the current economic system (Weeks, 2020). Beyond this, UBI might enable more cautious and ethical career choices (Santens, 2017), thus reducing the number of people employed in “bullshit jobs” (Abrahamian, 2018; Graeber, 2018; Kuiper, 1976; Schmid, 1984)—a goal that characterised debates historically associated with elements of UBI (Charlier, 1848, 1894; Meade, 1988, 1937, 1938; Milner & Milner, 1918; Morris, 1908)—and leading to more fulfilling work (Sheahen, 2012). In extremis, UBI might even reconceptualise the fundamental meaning of work (Vanderborght, 2006, p. 6–7; Zelleke, 2008, p. 5; Howard, 2005), leading away from work-for-income (Miller, 2017, p. 18; van der Veen & Van Parijs, 1986) towards a more holistic understanding of contributing to society.Opponents of UBI strongly disagree with these points. One of the most popular arguments against UBI concerns this specific category of arguments: allegedly, UBI or some of its elements by themselves would create a negative work incentive (Bick et al., 2018; Caillé, 1994; Fourier, 1836; Gorz, 1985, 1999; Hamilton & Martin-West, 2019, p. 322; Jones & Marinescu, 2018; Laín, 2019; McLuhan, 1966; Midões, 2019; Mill, 1849; Rhys-Williams, 1943; Zelleke, 2008, p. 5), thus not only failing to solve (Jones & Marinescu, 2018; Krämer, 2019), but even worsening unemployment, resulting in a society in which nobody would continue to do hard but essential jobs (Heaven, 2019). As UBI cannot replace the dignity and fulfillment provided by work (Coote & Yazici, 2019, p. 24), this would have particularly harmful effects. Furthermore, UBI-sceptics are concerned that working conditions would either be unaffected (Birnbaum & De Wispelaere, 2021, p. 916) or even deteriorate: as employers know that workers can sustain a living anyway, they might pay lower wages (Coote & Yazici, 2019, p. 24; Standing, 2017, p. 51) and increase the number of part-time jobs (Gaskell, 2018). On the other hand, should wages actually rise, this would increase costs for producers (Tcherneva, 2005, p. 9), potentially driving companies out of business. Finally, more economically left-wing actors argue that UBI would distract from and reproduce the systemic problems associated with capitalism (Bayon, 2021; Lombardozzi & Pitts, 2020; Mathers, 2020, p. 333) and from organising workers (Gourevitch & Stanczyk, 2018), thus preventing actually meaningful liberation of workers. Authors like Howard and Wright object to this and consider UBI and socialism compatible (Howard, 2005; Wright, 2005).Again, some patterns emerge from the thematic examination of these arguments. Regarding business and consumption, arguments in favour of UBI are more widespread than those against it. However, this is not to say that business-owners largely support the policy. After all, it has to be funded somehow and corporate taxation might be one major source of the necessary revenue. This implies that some arguments against UBI from a business perspective are not arguments against the policy itself but rather against its funding schemes.It is in the area of labour, work, and employment that opponents of UBI find some of their most popular and potentially impactful arguments. Fears of negative work incentives from the political right and of an erosion to the central role of work in society from the political left make this theme a key element for argumentative attacks on UBI. Importantly, such arguments remain popular despite their dubious empirical verifiability, and irrespective of the strong counterarguments that can be levelled against them (Afscharian et al., 2021).2.4UBI and the StateThe third and final category includes three themes that concern the relationship between the state and UBI: welfarism and the welfare state, taxation and public expenditure, and democracy and citizenship. This category is particularly interesting, as UBI has somewhat paradoxical implications for the state’s role in society, based on whether it entails strong individual dependence or conversely enables strong individual independence in relation to state institutions. While the second theme in this category evidently also carries strong economic connotations, the discussion here focuses primarily on the political side of the arguments in question.The first theme includes arguments on the relationship between UBI and the existing organs of the welfare state. Many of these arguments tend to be rather popular, as UBI is a comparatively radical proposal that is logically connected to welfarist aspects of social policy. Arguments from this theme tend to revolve around a key question: should and would UBI replace (parts of) the welfare state? These arguments then focus on various assumptions regarding the political desirability of the welfare state’s role on the one hand, and on very concrete questions of policy design on the other.The second theme largely deals with fiscal issues. Unlike the arguments relating to welfarism and the welfare state, those focused on taxation and public expenditure are less concerned with direct action by the state in the form of social policy, and rather more with questions of financing such action and the (un)intended spillover effects of choices in this policy area. Again, the arguments under this theme have strong and closely-interconnected functional and normative implications: (how) can a UBI be financed, and do the benefits outweigh the costs? Many arguments involved are not novel for UBI but could also be found (partly to lesser extents) in other social-policy debates. Thus, the combination of the first two themes in the third category strongly anchors UBI debates in the traditional political left-right spectrum. Depending on how participants in a UBI debate prioritise the different arguments involved, the result would fit better into politically left or right discourses. Noticeably, however, the arguments involved do not determine that only one political “camp” can be in favour of UBI. Subject to the preconditions imposed by the priorities imported from other themes, UBI can be equally attractive to very different political ideologies.Finally, the theme of democracy and citizenship takes a route that focuses more on the meta-level of state debates. While the two prior themes emphasise state action, this theme discusses some characteristics of a desirable state, and to what extent a UBI can help foster or reinforce them. Although these questions of course have strong normative implications, most arguments do not directly discuss the normative dimension. Rather than asking whether a certain result (e.g., voter mobilisation) is desirable or not, most arguments assume that they are (or are not) desirable, and instead focus on whether UBI will or will not contribute to their achievement.Regarding the welfare state, supporters of UBI consider the scheme necessary because targeted benefits ultimately lead to exclusions and individual deprivation over time (Hamilton & Mulvale, 2019), implying that the state fails its duty of public assistance (More, 2016; Spence, 2004/1797; Vives, 2002). Once implemented, a UBI might further lead to savings for other welfare schemes (Milevska, 2014), enhance the acceptance of social policy amongst the middle class through its element of universality (Rothstein, 2001, p. 219–223), and do so without having to restrict existing welfare states (Tobin et al., 1967)Tobin et al. discuss a negative income tax, but the basic argument of the policy not necessarily having to restrict the welfare state remains logically applicable in the case of UBI.and without adding too much bureaucracy (United Nations Human Rights Council, 2017, p. 1). More fundamentally, UBI would break the triangle of dependence in social policy making (Berggren & Trägårdh, 2016, pp. 86–94; Christensen, 2003, pp. 19–20; Daly, 2010, p. 139), as it would be a policy that maximises independence from the markets, from societal institutions, and from scrutiny by the state at the same time.Arguments against UBI from the perspective of traditional welfare regimes fear that the opposite would happen: rather than complementing the welfare state, UBI might replace it with insufficient flat-rate payments, either actively or indirectly via incentives for governments to do less in terms of social policy (Coote & Yazici, 2019, p. 12; Friedman, 1962, 1980; Rhys-Williams, 1943). Furthermore, anti-migrant arguments around welfare magnetism might easily also be pushed in reference to UBI (Milevska, 2014; Van Parijs & Vanderborght, 2017, pp. 218–219).Concerning taxation and public expenditure, arguments in favour of UBI tend to be used to counter arguments against UBI from other categories. For instance, claims that UBI is distributively unjust are countered by the argument that the scheme could be a widely accepted way of justifying high taxes, thus leading to indirect redistribution (Van Parijs, 2004, p. 13). Similarly, very different policies such as carbon taxes could be justified by framing them as funding for UBI (Valk, 2018) as delivering on the historical idea of a proportional quotient of societal resources (Milner & Milner, 1918; Russell, 1918) in the form of a fixed cash income (Charlier, 1848, 1894; Paine, 1797; Roosevelt & Townsend, 1936; Spence, 2004). Similarly, many authors argue that UBI or similar policies could be funded without serious problems as long as the poitical will is there (Cole, 1935, 1944; Friedman, 1962, 1980; George, 1879; Ghatak & Jaravel, 2020; von Hayek, 1944; Huet, 1853; Major, 2016; Meade, 1988/1935, 1937, 1938; Mill, 1849; Paine, 1987; Rhys-Williams, 1943; Roosevelt & Townsend, 1936; Spence, 2004/1797; Tobin et al., 1967; Widerquist, 2017; Widerquist & Arndt, 2020).This argument responds to the widespread criticism that UBI would be very expensive (Coote & Yazici, 2019: 24; Kearney & Mogstad, 2019), or perhaps even impossible to fund at the appropriate levels (Gourevitch & Stanczyk, 2018). Similarly, opponents of UBI argue that the money could be spent more efficiently elsewhere (Coote, 2019)—for instance, targeted at poorer members of society (de Condorcet, 1988; Paine, 1797; Spence, 2004)Paine’s work in particular is yet another example of work that only partially refers to UBI—in this case due to it being limited to particular groups within the population. However, this specific argumentative context demonstrates why it is important to include such work in analyses of UBI debates, as the discussion of partial basic income schemes can entail implicit statements on the desirability of a basic income that is fully universal.—that the taxes necessary for funding would drive businesses and the rich away (Bakija & Slemrod, 2004), and that fixed income levels would be an intrusion into the functioning of markets that would ultimately lead to economic distortions (Drucker, 1949).Finally, democracy and citizenship debates are largely dominated by arguments in favour of UBI. These consist in claims that a some form of basic income could be envisioned as an essential component of citizenship (Cole, 1935, 1944; Jordan, 2012; Meyer et al., 1981; Mitschke, 2001; Parker, 1988) that would enhance the social dimension of the respective political system or governing body (Baute & Meuleman, 2020; Ghebrea, 2018; Milevska, 2014) through very palpable benefits from being a member of society (Ferry, 1995, 2000; Viehoff, 2017). UBI might further democratise citizenship for women in particular (Pateman, 2004). Through enhancing the opportunities for democratic participation by low-income groups (Ciaian et al., 2019) and by appealing to middle-class individuals, UBI might be a strong tool for voter mobilisation (Bartha et al., 2020, pp. 67–69; Baute & Meuleman, 2020; Meuleman et al., 2018; Roosma & Van Oorschot, 2020, p. 203) and might enhance chances for parties to govern even after elections, as it might enable the formation of new coalitions across otherwise rather different ideologies (De Wispelaere & Yemtsov, 2019, p. 195). For governance at large, potentially positive spillover effects into other policy fields (Bregman, 2016, p. 28; More, 2016; Vives, 2002) might make UBI a strong catalyst for effective democratic governance. From an ecological perspective, arguments used for UBI in this context revolve around reduced work-related consumption, post-growth ways of life (Bohnenberger, 2020), and more attainable environmentally friendly goods (MacNeill & Vibert, 2019, p. 6).In contrast to these hopes, opponents of UBI fear primarily two negative consequences. First, UBI could weaken collective cohesion (Lombardozzi & Pitts, 2020; Pitts et al., 2017) with associated negative effects on the meaning of citizenship and democracy. Second, UBI could be a risky project that might be harmful to vote shares (Arthur, 2016, p. 3) and would generally not be sufficient to boost the electoral performance of a party on its own (Pitts et al., 2017).The arguments concerning UBI and the state shed light on a few interesting findings. Regarding the welfare state, UBI debates have evolved into disputes between competing assumptions. As the long-term political impacts of UBI on the welfare state cannot (for obvious reasons) as yet be empirically tested, opposing positions boil down to whether the welfare state will be replaced or not. Given that arguments against UBI rest entirely on the political will of the decision-makers involved, a paradoxical situation emerges: pro-welfare opponents of UBI reject embracing the scheme out of scepticism that anti-welfare proponents of UBI might use it to erode the welfare state, ignoring the rejoinder that they could simply develop a pro-welfare version of UBI that fits their preferences and might effectively prevent an anti-welfare version of UBI from dominating public discourse.Finally, the areas of taxation and democracy are characterised by contrasting patterns. In terms of taxation and expenditure, UBI proponents tend to use defensive arguments. As a massively popular claim against UBI is that the scheme cannot be funded properly, UBI supporters focus on explaining why this claim is wrong. More independent pro-UBI claims that it is a way to save costs in the welfare state clash with other pro-UBI arguments in the area of welfarist social policy; as a result, this area is largely dominated by UBI-sceptics. In contrast, democracy and citizenship is a theme largely promoted by idealistic claims in favour of UBI, although there is some potential for further arguments to be developed in this specific area of debate. While this field of discussion has begun to receive more attention recently (Wehner, 2019), arguments on the potential impacts of UBI on the functioning of democracies and political systems at large are comparatively rare in public debates.2.5Breaking the Argumentative DeadlockBased on these themes, it is possible to draw some conclusions regarding the arguments employed in UBI debates. As we briefly discussed while examining the patterns within the respective themes, some argumentative areas are dominated by proponents of UBI, while others chiefly feature its opponents. An underlying pattern that cuts across the different themes is that many of the most popular arguments in favour of UBI are comparatively idealistic, while arguments against the scheme often use pragmatic and functional claims. For instance, UBI might be praised as a way of fostering individual freedom and making societies more democratic and emancipated. Such arguments rely on assumptions of universalistic basic rights in a way that presupposes that these are actually put into effect: rather than simply being allowed to do something, individuals should be guaranteed basic capabilities to actually make use of their rights. In contrast, arguments against UBI caution that the scheme could be detrimental to labour and that it would be difficult if not impossible to finance. While such arguments can be intuitively effective, they run the risk of being disproved through empirical case-studies; nevertheless, opponents can fall back on a strong line of defence, as their assumptions of a just society are largely reflected in the status quo. In a public discourse that negotiates political-economic outcomes largely between deregulated markets on the one side and needs-tested welfare systems on the other, UBI would be a fundamental paradigm shift that can easily be rejected based on the predominant assumptions of social justice.This leads to an argumentative deadlock. If UBI is initially rejected on the basis of pragmatic considerations, increased empirical work to test these concerns appears to be a plausible way out. If, however, pragmatic claims are primarily ostensible arguments based on fundamental assumptions about the true character of a socially-just society, empirical case-studies can only drive back opposition against UBI to this much more fundamental reasoning, rather than resolving it altogether. Research on UBI has made significant progress in clarifying the empirically plausible effects of UBI as much as possible through pilots, other empirical studies, and reviews of older experiments (Hamilton & Mulvave, 2019; Laín, 2019; Widerquist, 2018). Such work was vital for the debate in order to set it on an empirically sound footing, and has provided valuable background information regarding the plausibility of many of the arguments we collected in this article. However, the question of social justice still remains to be debated in far more publicly-accessible spheres. Thus, for UBI debates to effectively evolve beyond this argumentative deadlock and for the policy to come closer to being politically embraced on a large scale, UBI supporters would have to find more effective communicative strategies to establish UBI as socially just among the general public.3ConclusionThis article conducted a thematic analysis of UBI debates to unearth patterns that indicate in which areas these debates are more or less developed. We found that UBI debates can be largely organised along seven themes (social justice and equality; freedom and the individual; business and consumption; labour, work, and employment; welfarism and the welfare state; taxation and public expenditure; democracy and citizenship) in three main categories (core principles of UBI; UBI and the capitalist society; UBI and the state). Within these categories and themes, arguments in favour of UBI aspire to an idealistic vision of a free, emancipated society; while arguments against UBI are mainly concerned with attacking the functional feasibility of UBI while presupposing the justice of needs-tested welfare systems as a safety-net.Our findings make several contributions to the state of UBI research. First, they organise an increasingly complex debate, and distil arguments that are superficially diverse but fundamentally only slightly different down to their essential cores. Second, by doing so, our findings reveal the areas in which UBI debates are already comparatively mature and where in particular arguments for and against UBI still have considerable potential to be developed further. Third, and finally, by exploring how these different themes relate to each other, our article has clarified how, and why, UBI debates can quickly become stuck in a deadlock rooted in the more fundamental question of what social justice means in the increasingly individualised and open societies of the 21st-century. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Basic Income Studies de Gruyter

The State of the UBI Debate: Mapping the Arguments for and against UBI

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Publisher
de Gruyter
Copyright
© 2022 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
ISSN
1932-0183
eISSN
1932-0183
DOI
10.1515/bis-2021-0030
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

1IntroductionAmong the many divergent visions for the future of social policy, the idea of a Universal Basic Income (UBI) stands out prominently for a number of reasons. It is unique not only in the way that it combines a clear revolutionary social potential with high levels of salience, popularity, and simplicity, but also in its notable capacity to adapt to different social contexts. In the face of challenges ranging from a financial crisis to changes in the nature of work and a global pandemic, UBI has been proposed again and again as a solution to the problems that accompany them. These attributes make UBI an ideal object for public and popular discussion on social policy topics that are otherwise exclusively dominated by experts; but they pose two major challenges for those participating in these debates. First, since UBI’s prima facie accessibility as a policy is the precondition for its immense popularity, it makes differentiated discussions that actually advance the concept of UBI increasingly difficult. The more people participate in UBI debates, the more complex the arguments about this centuries-oldOver time, the interpretation of what “UBI” means has changed and expanded to encompass a greater variety of positions. The basic ideas behind UBI have been discussed for centuries, whereas specific definitions of it under the “UBI” label are somewhat more modern.idea become. In turn, this makes it difficult for researchers, activists, and the interested public to avoid getting lost in the granular details of the debate. Second, and related to this, UBI debates increasingly appear to be reaching argumentative deadlocks whose origins and patterns are difficult to pinpoint. As we argue further below, this article aims to contribute to addressing both challenges in a concise fashion.To do so, it is necessary to define UBI precisely in order to avoid confusion, while overly narrow understandings run the risk of crowding out relevant dimensions and positions within the debate. As a starting-point, we broadly rely on the definition provided by Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN)—arguably the leading global network of researchers and advocates of the idea of a basic income. According to this definition, UBI is described as “a periodic cash payment unconditionally delivered to all on an individual basis, without means-test or work requirement” (Basic Income Earth Network, 2021). However, as will become clear throughout the article, we do not apply this definition in a restrictive, but rather in an expansive way. It provides a starting-point for what we mean when we discuss the idea of UBI, but the aforementioned complexities of the UBI debate imply that their analysis presupposes some degree of openness to proposals that slightly diverge from the basic definition but nevertheless include arguments that are still immediately relevant for UBI itself. Thus, we also take into consideration policies that contain elements of universality, basicness, and income receipt in order to not privilege any single definition ex ante that may not necessarily be well-known to some supporters of UBI. Chosen based on the contents that the term ‘UBI’ suggests, these three elements were partially dependent on how the authors contributing to the debate interpreted them. ‘Basicness’ could equally entail just a very basic income floor, or a life in basic dignity, as long as the authors clearly referred to UBI in their arguments and as long as the UBI level proposed did not aim to (nearly) cover people’s entire income. ‘Income’ largely referred to regular monetary payments, while ‘universality’ precluded factors like ascribed neediness as conditions for the right to access the income. We applied this extensive approach as more limited alternatives would restrict the scope of our research in a way that would have contradicted its goals. However, we caution that some historical sources we cite discuss the underlying concepts in different social contexts and therefore primarily serve to illustrate how specific arguments have persisted over time.These goals consist in addressing the two challenges described above by overviewing the key themes that characterise arguments for and against UBI. This article explicitly does not provide an in-depth engagement with these arguments but rather aims to provide a bird’s-eye view of what basic arguments are floated in UBI debates. To achieve this, we undertake a systematic qualitative analysis of the key arguments commonly used to argue for and against UBI and its most closely-related concepts. In prioritising breadth over depth, our approach is limited to providing a compact overview, but therefore allows us to identify some of the patterns in UBI debates that potentially lead to argumentative deadlocks. Thus, this article (1) provides a concise compilation of diverse sources from which interested readers can branch out for in-depth inquiries, and (2) identifies strengths and weaknesses in the prominent arguments of UBI opponents and proponents which can be used to constructively advance the debate.As an initial step, we expand on a thorough review of debate contributions by key stakeholders. Combining results from our prior work (Afscharian et al., 2021) with additional research, we compile a list of all points raised for and against UBI that are sufficiently unique in fundamental ways to qualify as essentially distinct lines of argument. Second, we identify the most important themes that characterise these arguments. Third, after organising all these arguments into groups, we critically assess the implications that this exercise has for the state of UBI debates today. In doing so, we address the following main research question: What are the themes that guide contemporary and historical UBI debates? Based on this, we also engage with a set of sub-questions: Which themes are dominant, and in which areas can proponents and opponents of UBI still considerably expand the coverage of their arguments? How can larger sets of complex and diverse arguments be effectively subsumed to make UBI debates more accessible to the wider public? Throughout all these steps, we focus on arguments around UBI as it is defined by BIEN, but we also take into account adjacent concepts if (1) the arguments used about (i.e., for and against) them could also be plausibly applied to UBI as defined above, if (2) the concept under discussion is explicitly framed as “UBI” despite exhibiting minor differences from the basic definition, or if (3) the concept is particularly similar to the definition above, containing clear elements of universality, basicness, and income receipt, and only slightly diverges from it overall. We make these exceptions to be able to do justice to the aim of this article rather than ex ante excluding debate contributions that might publicly be perceived as parts of the UBI debate but would formally be excluded under the BIEN definition. This article provides a new methodological perspective on the key arguments for and against UBI; it presents a new thematic breakdown of UBI debates that addresses the problems with similar prior attempts; and it draws conclusions for contemporary public debates, bridging an often-neglected divide between academic research and political reality.1.1State of the ResearchAs the existing literature on UBI is rather extensive, arguments for and against the policy have already been summarised on various occasions. However, these summaries are often presented merely as ways to set the scene for altogether different research purposes. In the vast range of existing research on UBI in general, a few contributions stand out in terms of their focus on systematically engaging with the arguments around the policy.A good starting-point for getting a broad overview of UBI debates can be found in the review of edited books on UBI. Downes and Lansley (2018) set out to summarise the global debate on UBI and offer a concise overview of different waves of UBI literature, engaging with various issues around UBI that have the potential to spark controversial debates. However, their systematic examination of UBI debates largely frames a collection of articles that go into depth regarding specific subtopics within the UBI debate. The same is true of other edited books, such as Torry’s (2019) Handbook of Basic Income, Exploring Universal Basic Income (Gentilini et al., 2019), or Basic Income: An Anthology of Contemporary Research (Widerquist et al., 2013). Such contributions tend to offer practical introductions to the way that the UBI literature is structured, and to the sheer ideological diversity of the accounts of why UBI is desirable or otherwise. Yet they do not systematically apply analytical tools such as thematic breakdowns to compilations of arguments. Edited books often benefit from the opportunity of engaging with certain sub-fields of UBI debates in-depth while sacrificing the potential benefits of a concise at-a-glance overview of all the relevant arguments. Furthermore, they tend to focus on arguments for UBI while attempting to solve arguments against UBI—such as, for instance, the issue of funding. Other books in a similar vein offer historical overviews of how UBI debates developed (Cunliffe & Erreygers, 2004). Such approaches tend not to cover contemporary arguments, and examine UBI debates through a predominantly procedural lens rather than compiling all the arguments and analysing their underlying structures.Some other work is closer to this article but still sets its priorities differently. Chohan (2017) provides a concise review of UBI debates and summarises many important points at a glance; but the paper dispenses with a thematic analysis of the resulting overview of arguments. In an IMF working paper, Francese and Prady (2018) propose an analytical framework, but gear it towards differentiating between different UBI proposals, and engage with some of the associated arguments in this context. As they focus on UBI proposals, they consider a rather limited number of sources, and barely engage with the rich body of work that goes beyond evaluating extant proposals to offer additional arguments. Finally, a rigorous overview of the political theory behind UBI is offered by Bidadanure (2019), who focuses predominantly on more contemporary arguments. However, due to the normative nature of the arguments employed, more technical perspectives on policy implementation are missing; at the same time, her analysis predominantly engages with arguments in defence of UBI.As this brief overview indicates, there are many valuable contributions that provide useful summaries of specific areas of wider UBI debates. However, this approach can result in these debates becoming overly narrow at times (Prabhakar, 2018), and makes it difficult for participants in the debates to keep a synoptic sense of what is going on overall. Thus, this article adds to the literature by (1) applying a broader understanding of UBI, (2) considering historical sources as well, and (3) examining the themes that structure the arguments in the debates, rather than discussing the arguments themselves in-depth.2MethodIn our analysis, we combined several steps to examine the various facets of UBI debates. We took our own prior work as a starting-point (Afscharian et al., 2021), in which we compiled a corpus of historical and contemporary contributions to UBI debates. The contributions we examined covered a broad range of sources in order to address the aim of integrating diverse facets of UBI debates. They included popular and public debates, academic contributions such as published articles and books, political statements, and reports by organisations such as the UN, the EU, and the OECD. We selected sources based on individual qualitative case-by-case judgements of their relevance, both in terms of academic impact and public potential. As criteria for document types, we aimed to represent the main spheres in which UBI is being debated, namely academia, politics, international organisations, media, think tanks, and civil society. We excluded sources such as niche blog entries and discussions in online fora if they were not published through channels that could be considered impactful either academically or publicly. However, we included contributions by recognised experts, influential actors, and media platforms with particularly considerable reach, such as the online resources of the UBI advocate Scott Santens, or pieces in press outlets like The Guardian. Given the considerable audience of these actors or outlets, they satisfied the criterion of a high potential for public attention. To reduce the risk of our sources being arbitrary, we had several recognised experts from the field validate the corpus along with the list of arguments. The fact that most of our sources are written in English represents an important limitation to our work, as it is likely to overrepresent debates from affluent economies. As such sources reach the largest audiences and tend to have the highest impact, we made that choice to make our research manageable within the limited scope available to us. Nonetheless, we added a few German and French sources due to the prevalence of UBI debates in some associated countries.We then parsed the texts to extract and identify all the arguments used for and against a UBI. Besides expanding on and refining the choice of sources we used for our prior work, the main contribution of this article consists in a more systematic analysis of the contents of the arguments in question. We engaged with the arguments and conducted a thematic analysis (Terry et al., 2017) with predominantly inductive and a few deductive elements. As we already had prior knowledge of the materials, we started with a rough categorisation into social, economic, and political arguments; we then refined and reworked these categories, largely guided by the available data. By implication, our approach was largely based on inductive elements. This is in line with our way of dealing with questions of restrictiveness and expansiveness in the many available definitions of UBI. By applying the expansive understanding of UBI outlined above, the steps we describe respond to the need to respect the diversity of UBI’s three main elements of universality, basicness, and income receipt. Furthermore, it became clear throughout our analysis that, although seemingly marked by superficial differences, several perspectives on variants of UBI share considerable substantive overlap in terms of how those who engage with them frame and articulate their arguments for and against UBI. Thus, even if debate contributions might formally be addressing subtly different policy designs, the arguments they employ are often still equally applicable irrespective of their definitional differences.Our approach was primarily semantic, since most of the arguments we identified were fairly direct in their formulations. However, we encountered many similar formulations of the same basic ideas. We did not list each and every argument word-for-word. Rather, we extrapolated the basic logic of each argument and formulated it in a more general way, in order to make it easier to cluster together sufficiently similar points. Thus, arguments from the source material may differ slightly in their wording but share their underlying logic with the arguments that we list below. Furthermore, we radically simplified arguments as the bird’s-eye view needed for this article would otherwise not have been feasible. Thus, many of the points presented here are ‘core arguments’ around which the cited pieces construct further in-depth arguments. For instance, we adopted the basic argument of UBI facing challenges with reciprocity, but not all of the fine-grained reasons that authors list to back up this point. This choice was part of an unavoidable trade-off between the depth and breadth of our research, which we acknowledge and identify as a clear limitation to our findings. Importantly, not all authors cited as sources personally subscribe to the arguments in question. Rather, the sources we used are examples for where the debate engages with specific arguments—potentially by refuting them as well. This choice was based on the fact that our study does not aim to demonstrate who precisely takes which positions in the debate, but rather what arguments characterise the debate overall. We organised the resulting arguments into thematic breakdowns, at first independently, and later via collaborative comparison and reworking. We deconstructed the themes to identify their key characteristics, found differences and similarities in these characteristics, and separated them so that they were analytically clearly-defined. Finally, we used this breakdown to identify the themes that we considered most appropriate to characterise UBI debates.2.1ThemesBased on our examination, we propose grouping the arguments for and against UBI into seven basic themes, which can in turn be arranged into three main categories. Neither the main categories nor the themes within them are exclusively the “objectively correct” way of organising arguments. Due to the complexity of UBI and the considerations involved, many arguments have strong connections to several themes at once. However, we believe that the following structure organises the underlying principles of UBI debates best.2.2Core Principles of UBIThe first category of themes concerns the core principles of UBI. It contains two themes: social justice and equality, and freedom and the individual. The category is largely defined by the fact that the arguments within its themes are not only normative in the sense that they speak for or against UBI, but normative in a more philosophical sense. To be acceptable to a participant in UBI debates, these arguments depend on their underlying philosophical assumptions in a more fundamental way than arguments from other categories. Arguments within the theme of social justice and equality only function properly based on assumptions of what social constellations are just. The question of whether UBI would actually contribute to a just or unjust society is thus only the secondary argumentative step.Arguments that fall under this category are, for instance, the hope that UBI would alleviate monetary poverty (Drucker, 1949; Hamilton & Martin-West, 2019; Jones & Marinescu, 2018; King, 1968; Laín, 2019; More, 2016; Standing, 2017, p. 53; Vives, 2002; Yang, 2018, p. 161)Pieces by authors like More, Vives, Montesquieu, and Cole—and further below Tobin, Pechman, and Mieszkowski—are examples for cases in which the idea of UBI is used comparatively loosely, or in which only specific elements of UBI are prioritised. While these pieces are less directly relevant for UBI debates than others, they nonetheless contain important information on how key elements of UBI are discussed. We include these sources for reasons of thoroughness while acknowledging and explicitly emphasising that not all cited sources can occupy equal positions within UBI debates in terms of their impact and general relevance.and that it would foster a social system in which nobody falls through the security net (Bellamy, 1888; De Wispelaere & Stirton, 2012, p. 106; Galbraith, 1984; Hamilton & Martin-West, 2019, p. 323; Torry, 2013, p. 8; More, 2016), as—among others—foreshadowed in work by de Montesquieu (1748). Based on such argumentation, the case for UBI within this line of argument is typically substantiated by claims that UBI would reduce the costs of being poor (MacNeill & Vibert, 2019, p. 6) (e.g. through consumption of cheap but low-quality goods) and generally limit the stigmatisation of the needy (Calnitsky, 2016; McDonough & Bustillos Morales, 2019; Theobald, 1963). By satisfying the fundamental right to subsistence, UBI would provide social stabilisation in risky and uncertain phases of life (Barr, 2001; Drucker, 1949; Hamilton & Martin-West, 2019, p. 321; McLuhan, 1966; Stern, 2016)While Barr does not prominently and explicitly discuss UBI, we recommend his work as a basis for understanding debates on social stabilisation.as a right, independent of prior life choices. Here, arguments from debates on UBI are interconnected with debates on a guaranteed minimum income in general, as the idea of a right to subsistence (Cole, 1935, 1944; Fourier, 1836; Rhys-Williams, 1943; Theobald, 1963) by itself might not exclusively justify a UBI as such, but is still often employed in UBI debates. Furthermore, UBI would prevent discrimination through definitions of “desert” (Heller, 2018) and limit extreme inequality (Van Parijs, 1992, p. 7) by raising the lowest possible level of income, potentially financed through redistributive taxes. From all of this, UBI proponents derive the claim that the scheme would be fundamentally just, and effectively institutionalise the provision of a fair share of general economic growth for everyone (Bidadanure, 2019, p. 482; Fromm, 1966; Wignaraja, 2020)—an idea that was foreshadowed at various points of historical social policy debates associated with elements of modern UBI conceptions (Cole, 1935, 1944; Douglas, 1935; Paine, 1797; Spence, 2004/1797). This all ties into the argument that justice has many different potential meanings (Bidadanure, 2019; Sen, 2010; Widerquist, 2013), and that an individualised and democratic society can best provide justice by granting universal basic rights such as the right to income. Furthermore, UBI would separate different spheres of justice to a certain degree by ensuring a basic level of unremovable decommodification (Knoll, 2015, p. 87–88; Precht, 2018; Wright, 2005; Walzer, 1983, p. 106):Walzer himself does not explicitly discuss UBI, but only the related idea of a negative income tax. However, his concept of spheres of justice represents an efficient framework to summarise a specific type of arguments in UBI debates that emphasises the role of money provided independently from market processes for questions of justice. Argumentative references to Walzer are explicitly picked up by Knoll, and implicitly in Precht’s overall focus on individual independence from the markets.irrespective of what happens in the various partly market-oriented areas of one’s social life, a certain income is always guaranteed.Opponents of UBI claim in terms of justice and equality that poverty is not just a monetary issue, so it is not something that UBI could fully solve (Coote & Yazici, 2019). By giving money to the rich, UBI would neither address needs, nor change unequal capital distribution (Butterwegge, 2015; Henderson, 2017), rendering the scheme unjust from specific points of view. Similarly, UBI would unjustly ignore individual contributions as a basis for payments (Van Parijs, 1992, p. 8). This might, so another argument goes, enhance long-run inequalities and lead to exploitation of workers ‘by the lazy’ (Elster, 1986, p. 719). Critiques based on reciprocity issues play a major role in these parts of the debate (White, 2003), as Howard overviews effectively (2005). More generally, Birnbaum (2012) summarises arguments rooted in economic and social justice well.Similar to the arguments on social justice and equality, arguments concerning freedom and the individual again fundamentally rely on philosophical considerations of the nature of freedom, the role of the individual in society, and the desirability of UBI’s various associated implications. This does not apply to each argument to the same degree; for instance, higher life-satisfaction is typically less normatively controversial than the increased individualisation of society. However, the key normative reflection remains whether a UBI would actually contribute to the points raised in the way anticipated, and whether these arguments are to be prioritised.Proponents of UBI make claims to freedom (Van Parijs, 1995) and individuality by pointing to UBI’s capacity to emancipate individuals and groups (Standing, 2017, p. 49–51), particularly vulnerable ones (Pega et al., 2017). Both in and of itself (OECD, 2018), as well as through the increased room it creates for education (Bregman, 2016, p. 28) and skills development due to financial independence (Haarmann et al., 2019; Standing, 2013), UBI might increase social mobility and opportunities and provide different kinds of freedom in terms of enhanced capabilities (Dent, 2019; Milevska, 2014; Sen, 2010, Widerquist, 2013).See Sen’s work not for a discussion of UBI itself but for a better understanding of the capability approach that is implicitly or explicitly employed by the other authors.On top of this, individuals would benefit from higher life-satisfaction (Fromm, 1966; Hamilton & Martin-West, 2019: 323–24; Laín, 2019; Mead, 1970), improved (mental) health (Haagh & Rohregger, 2019; Laín, 2019), and stabilised rights to freedom of movement, such as within the EU (Bruzelius et al., 2017). All of this is based on the fundamental claim that 21st-century social policy has to respond to the needs produced by an individualised society that both fosters and relies on individualised life decisions (Bidadanure, 2019; Sen, 2010; Widerquist, 2013), and that UBI would be able to address this effectively.Opponents reject this perspective on UBI’s links to freedom and individuality. They fear that UBI might isolate some groups from society, as they might end up receiving less specialised forms of the attention and care they require (Luterman, 2019). In conjunction with this, there could be a risk of women being ‘pushed back’ into household work—something that feminist UBI proponents reject by pointing out the need for decommodification from the labour markets (Christensen, 2003). Furthermore, opponents argue that UBI might lower incentives to obtain an education (Mookherjee & Napel, 2019) and might lead people to forget how to live independently (Banerjee et al., 2019, p. 960; Levy, 2006, p. 13). Critics also go a step further and suggest that UBI might not just respond to individualism, but in fact reinforce a highly-individualised society, thus eroding collective solidarity (Lombardozzi & Pitts, 2020; Pitts et al., 2017).A few patterns stand out in these arguments. In terms of justice, proponents of UBI tend to root their positions more strongly in fundamental rights, whereas UBI-sceptics employ argumentative patterns linked to assumptions traditionally found in needs-tested social-policy discourses. This category of arguments illustrates well why opposition to UBI can remain strong even when many arguments against it prove empirically questionable (Afscharian et al., 2021). As UBI is, at its core, a policy geared towards a just and free society, it is crucial that the basic assumptions of what is just are shared for such a policy to stand a chance of being pursued. Thus, arguments from the other main themes are logically conditional on arguments around the core principles of UBI being shared. More precisely, it is the area of social justice that is fundamental here. While opponents of UBI rarely focus their arguments on rebutting the claim that it enhances freedom, they continually emphasise the alleged injustices inherent to UBI. In popular debates, such considerations usually take simple forms, such as not wanting to give money to the rich. However, the underlying key question is whether proponents of UBI can (1) make a convincing point that UBI is socially just despite not addressing needs, capital distribution, and contributions, or (2) that UBI’s benefits are ‘worth it’ despite its alleged problematic traits when viewed through the lens of social justice. Crucially, this does not mean that proponents of UBI make no strong claims to justice. Rather, it shows which specific assumptions and ideals different actors buy into when they opt to support or reject UBI.2.3UBI and Capitalist SocietyThe second category of themes largely comprises arguments that are strongly associated with the workings of a capitalist society. These arguments are often heavy on economic reasoning and can be grouped under the themes business and consumption and labour, work, and employment. Both themes are interconnected, as they focus explicitly or implicitly on relations between labour and capital and on factors that keep these relations stable (or otherwise). The theme of business and consumption is largely self-explanatory; it concerns arguments that deal with a UBI’s positive and negative effects on business development and the associated field of consumption of goods and services.The second theme is more diverse in its implications, as it covers a very wide sweep of arguments relating to work. These include points on the quality of work, unemployment, and labour market effects. Both themes from this umbrella category differ from the core principles of UBI, as their reasoning is more functional in nature. While questions on the desirability of a well-functioning capitalist society are highly normative and controversial, the largely economic arguments from this category usually focus on empirical claims. For instance, they might ask whether wages, employment, or consumption will rise or decline if a UBI is made available, rather than whether they should do so. This is not to say that the normative components of the associated debates are not considerable, but their priority is slightly lower compared to the heavy philosophical influence in the first category.More concretely, proponents of UBI use arguments that can be framed in the context of efficiency: UBI, so the claim goes, would give businesses and individuals more options for financial planning and saving (Hamilton & Mulvale, 2019; Standing, 2013), thus supporting consumption and investment smoothing. By reducing economically harmful risk-aversion (Santens, 2016), increasing flexibility for (small) business owners (Santens, 2016), stimulating business development (Jones & Marinescu, 2018; Vanderborght, 2006, p. 6), and enhancing an efficient matching between jobs and individual talents and interests (Santens, 2017; Van Parijs, 1992, p. 8), UBI might contribute to stronger, more sustainable economic developments within societies at large. In contrast, opponents fear that increased consumption might focus on undesirable and harmful goods such as alcohol and drugs (Banerjee et al., 2019, p. 960), while prices for goods might increase along with increased incomes, thus rendering the beneficial net effects of UBI small to non-existent (Santens, 2016). Harmful consumption plays a particularly important role in ecological branches of the debate (Bohnenberger, 2020).In terms of labour, work, and employment, the arguments on either side are respectively even more strongly-opposed. Supporters of UBI argue that the policy would enhance workers’ bargaining power (Birnbaum & De Wispelaere, 2021, p. 915; Calnitsky, 2017; Vanderborght, 2006, p. 5–6), ultimately strengthening the power of labour relative to capital (Wright, 2005). This will result in better working conditions and reimbursement for hard work (Zimmermann, 2016) as it was the goal of associated historical social policy debates (Milner & Milner, 1918), and in an improved work-life balance (Hamilton & Martin-West, 2019, p. 323–24; Laín, 2019). Similarly, a UBI might positively counter the misrepresentation of women’s contributions in the current economic system (Weeks, 2020). Beyond this, UBI might enable more cautious and ethical career choices (Santens, 2017), thus reducing the number of people employed in “bullshit jobs” (Abrahamian, 2018; Graeber, 2018; Kuiper, 1976; Schmid, 1984)—a goal that characterised debates historically associated with elements of UBI (Charlier, 1848, 1894; Meade, 1988, 1937, 1938; Milner & Milner, 1918; Morris, 1908)—and leading to more fulfilling work (Sheahen, 2012). In extremis, UBI might even reconceptualise the fundamental meaning of work (Vanderborght, 2006, p. 6–7; Zelleke, 2008, p. 5; Howard, 2005), leading away from work-for-income (Miller, 2017, p. 18; van der Veen & Van Parijs, 1986) towards a more holistic understanding of contributing to society.Opponents of UBI strongly disagree with these points. One of the most popular arguments against UBI concerns this specific category of arguments: allegedly, UBI or some of its elements by themselves would create a negative work incentive (Bick et al., 2018; Caillé, 1994; Fourier, 1836; Gorz, 1985, 1999; Hamilton & Martin-West, 2019, p. 322; Jones & Marinescu, 2018; Laín, 2019; McLuhan, 1966; Midões, 2019; Mill, 1849; Rhys-Williams, 1943; Zelleke, 2008, p. 5), thus not only failing to solve (Jones & Marinescu, 2018; Krämer, 2019), but even worsening unemployment, resulting in a society in which nobody would continue to do hard but essential jobs (Heaven, 2019). As UBI cannot replace the dignity and fulfillment provided by work (Coote & Yazici, 2019, p. 24), this would have particularly harmful effects. Furthermore, UBI-sceptics are concerned that working conditions would either be unaffected (Birnbaum & De Wispelaere, 2021, p. 916) or even deteriorate: as employers know that workers can sustain a living anyway, they might pay lower wages (Coote & Yazici, 2019, p. 24; Standing, 2017, p. 51) and increase the number of part-time jobs (Gaskell, 2018). On the other hand, should wages actually rise, this would increase costs for producers (Tcherneva, 2005, p. 9), potentially driving companies out of business. Finally, more economically left-wing actors argue that UBI would distract from and reproduce the systemic problems associated with capitalism (Bayon, 2021; Lombardozzi & Pitts, 2020; Mathers, 2020, p. 333) and from organising workers (Gourevitch & Stanczyk, 2018), thus preventing actually meaningful liberation of workers. Authors like Howard and Wright object to this and consider UBI and socialism compatible (Howard, 2005; Wright, 2005).Again, some patterns emerge from the thematic examination of these arguments. Regarding business and consumption, arguments in favour of UBI are more widespread than those against it. However, this is not to say that business-owners largely support the policy. After all, it has to be funded somehow and corporate taxation might be one major source of the necessary revenue. This implies that some arguments against UBI from a business perspective are not arguments against the policy itself but rather against its funding schemes.It is in the area of labour, work, and employment that opponents of UBI find some of their most popular and potentially impactful arguments. Fears of negative work incentives from the political right and of an erosion to the central role of work in society from the political left make this theme a key element for argumentative attacks on UBI. Importantly, such arguments remain popular despite their dubious empirical verifiability, and irrespective of the strong counterarguments that can be levelled against them (Afscharian et al., 2021).2.4UBI and the StateThe third and final category includes three themes that concern the relationship between the state and UBI: welfarism and the welfare state, taxation and public expenditure, and democracy and citizenship. This category is particularly interesting, as UBI has somewhat paradoxical implications for the state’s role in society, based on whether it entails strong individual dependence or conversely enables strong individual independence in relation to state institutions. While the second theme in this category evidently also carries strong economic connotations, the discussion here focuses primarily on the political side of the arguments in question.The first theme includes arguments on the relationship between UBI and the existing organs of the welfare state. Many of these arguments tend to be rather popular, as UBI is a comparatively radical proposal that is logically connected to welfarist aspects of social policy. Arguments from this theme tend to revolve around a key question: should and would UBI replace (parts of) the welfare state? These arguments then focus on various assumptions regarding the political desirability of the welfare state’s role on the one hand, and on very concrete questions of policy design on the other.The second theme largely deals with fiscal issues. Unlike the arguments relating to welfarism and the welfare state, those focused on taxation and public expenditure are less concerned with direct action by the state in the form of social policy, and rather more with questions of financing such action and the (un)intended spillover effects of choices in this policy area. Again, the arguments under this theme have strong and closely-interconnected functional and normative implications: (how) can a UBI be financed, and do the benefits outweigh the costs? Many arguments involved are not novel for UBI but could also be found (partly to lesser extents) in other social-policy debates. Thus, the combination of the first two themes in the third category strongly anchors UBI debates in the traditional political left-right spectrum. Depending on how participants in a UBI debate prioritise the different arguments involved, the result would fit better into politically left or right discourses. Noticeably, however, the arguments involved do not determine that only one political “camp” can be in favour of UBI. Subject to the preconditions imposed by the priorities imported from other themes, UBI can be equally attractive to very different political ideologies.Finally, the theme of democracy and citizenship takes a route that focuses more on the meta-level of state debates. While the two prior themes emphasise state action, this theme discusses some characteristics of a desirable state, and to what extent a UBI can help foster or reinforce them. Although these questions of course have strong normative implications, most arguments do not directly discuss the normative dimension. Rather than asking whether a certain result (e.g., voter mobilisation) is desirable or not, most arguments assume that they are (or are not) desirable, and instead focus on whether UBI will or will not contribute to their achievement.Regarding the welfare state, supporters of UBI consider the scheme necessary because targeted benefits ultimately lead to exclusions and individual deprivation over time (Hamilton & Mulvale, 2019), implying that the state fails its duty of public assistance (More, 2016; Spence, 2004/1797; Vives, 2002). Once implemented, a UBI might further lead to savings for other welfare schemes (Milevska, 2014), enhance the acceptance of social policy amongst the middle class through its element of universality (Rothstein, 2001, p. 219–223), and do so without having to restrict existing welfare states (Tobin et al., 1967)Tobin et al. discuss a negative income tax, but the basic argument of the policy not necessarily having to restrict the welfare state remains logically applicable in the case of UBI.and without adding too much bureaucracy (United Nations Human Rights Council, 2017, p. 1). More fundamentally, UBI would break the triangle of dependence in social policy making (Berggren & Trägårdh, 2016, pp. 86–94; Christensen, 2003, pp. 19–20; Daly, 2010, p. 139), as it would be a policy that maximises independence from the markets, from societal institutions, and from scrutiny by the state at the same time.Arguments against UBI from the perspective of traditional welfare regimes fear that the opposite would happen: rather than complementing the welfare state, UBI might replace it with insufficient flat-rate payments, either actively or indirectly via incentives for governments to do less in terms of social policy (Coote & Yazici, 2019, p. 12; Friedman, 1962, 1980; Rhys-Williams, 1943). Furthermore, anti-migrant arguments around welfare magnetism might easily also be pushed in reference to UBI (Milevska, 2014; Van Parijs & Vanderborght, 2017, pp. 218–219).Concerning taxation and public expenditure, arguments in favour of UBI tend to be used to counter arguments against UBI from other categories. For instance, claims that UBI is distributively unjust are countered by the argument that the scheme could be a widely accepted way of justifying high taxes, thus leading to indirect redistribution (Van Parijs, 2004, p. 13). Similarly, very different policies such as carbon taxes could be justified by framing them as funding for UBI (Valk, 2018) as delivering on the historical idea of a proportional quotient of societal resources (Milner & Milner, 1918; Russell, 1918) in the form of a fixed cash income (Charlier, 1848, 1894; Paine, 1797; Roosevelt & Townsend, 1936; Spence, 2004). Similarly, many authors argue that UBI or similar policies could be funded without serious problems as long as the poitical will is there (Cole, 1935, 1944; Friedman, 1962, 1980; George, 1879; Ghatak & Jaravel, 2020; von Hayek, 1944; Huet, 1853; Major, 2016; Meade, 1988/1935, 1937, 1938; Mill, 1849; Paine, 1987; Rhys-Williams, 1943; Roosevelt & Townsend, 1936; Spence, 2004/1797; Tobin et al., 1967; Widerquist, 2017; Widerquist & Arndt, 2020).This argument responds to the widespread criticism that UBI would be very expensive (Coote & Yazici, 2019: 24; Kearney & Mogstad, 2019), or perhaps even impossible to fund at the appropriate levels (Gourevitch & Stanczyk, 2018). Similarly, opponents of UBI argue that the money could be spent more efficiently elsewhere (Coote, 2019)—for instance, targeted at poorer members of society (de Condorcet, 1988; Paine, 1797; Spence, 2004)Paine’s work in particular is yet another example of work that only partially refers to UBI—in this case due to it being limited to particular groups within the population. However, this specific argumentative context demonstrates why it is important to include such work in analyses of UBI debates, as the discussion of partial basic income schemes can entail implicit statements on the desirability of a basic income that is fully universal.—that the taxes necessary for funding would drive businesses and the rich away (Bakija & Slemrod, 2004), and that fixed income levels would be an intrusion into the functioning of markets that would ultimately lead to economic distortions (Drucker, 1949).Finally, democracy and citizenship debates are largely dominated by arguments in favour of UBI. These consist in claims that a some form of basic income could be envisioned as an essential component of citizenship (Cole, 1935, 1944; Jordan, 2012; Meyer et al., 1981; Mitschke, 2001; Parker, 1988) that would enhance the social dimension of the respective political system or governing body (Baute & Meuleman, 2020; Ghebrea, 2018; Milevska, 2014) through very palpable benefits from being a member of society (Ferry, 1995, 2000; Viehoff, 2017). UBI might further democratise citizenship for women in particular (Pateman, 2004). Through enhancing the opportunities for democratic participation by low-income groups (Ciaian et al., 2019) and by appealing to middle-class individuals, UBI might be a strong tool for voter mobilisation (Bartha et al., 2020, pp. 67–69; Baute & Meuleman, 2020; Meuleman et al., 2018; Roosma & Van Oorschot, 2020, p. 203) and might enhance chances for parties to govern even after elections, as it might enable the formation of new coalitions across otherwise rather different ideologies (De Wispelaere & Yemtsov, 2019, p. 195). For governance at large, potentially positive spillover effects into other policy fields (Bregman, 2016, p. 28; More, 2016; Vives, 2002) might make UBI a strong catalyst for effective democratic governance. From an ecological perspective, arguments used for UBI in this context revolve around reduced work-related consumption, post-growth ways of life (Bohnenberger, 2020), and more attainable environmentally friendly goods (MacNeill & Vibert, 2019, p. 6).In contrast to these hopes, opponents of UBI fear primarily two negative consequences. First, UBI could weaken collective cohesion (Lombardozzi & Pitts, 2020; Pitts et al., 2017) with associated negative effects on the meaning of citizenship and democracy. Second, UBI could be a risky project that might be harmful to vote shares (Arthur, 2016, p. 3) and would generally not be sufficient to boost the electoral performance of a party on its own (Pitts et al., 2017).The arguments concerning UBI and the state shed light on a few interesting findings. Regarding the welfare state, UBI debates have evolved into disputes between competing assumptions. As the long-term political impacts of UBI on the welfare state cannot (for obvious reasons) as yet be empirically tested, opposing positions boil down to whether the welfare state will be replaced or not. Given that arguments against UBI rest entirely on the political will of the decision-makers involved, a paradoxical situation emerges: pro-welfare opponents of UBI reject embracing the scheme out of scepticism that anti-welfare proponents of UBI might use it to erode the welfare state, ignoring the rejoinder that they could simply develop a pro-welfare version of UBI that fits their preferences and might effectively prevent an anti-welfare version of UBI from dominating public discourse.Finally, the areas of taxation and democracy are characterised by contrasting patterns. In terms of taxation and expenditure, UBI proponents tend to use defensive arguments. As a massively popular claim against UBI is that the scheme cannot be funded properly, UBI supporters focus on explaining why this claim is wrong. More independent pro-UBI claims that it is a way to save costs in the welfare state clash with other pro-UBI arguments in the area of welfarist social policy; as a result, this area is largely dominated by UBI-sceptics. In contrast, democracy and citizenship is a theme largely promoted by idealistic claims in favour of UBI, although there is some potential for further arguments to be developed in this specific area of debate. While this field of discussion has begun to receive more attention recently (Wehner, 2019), arguments on the potential impacts of UBI on the functioning of democracies and political systems at large are comparatively rare in public debates.2.5Breaking the Argumentative DeadlockBased on these themes, it is possible to draw some conclusions regarding the arguments employed in UBI debates. As we briefly discussed while examining the patterns within the respective themes, some argumentative areas are dominated by proponents of UBI, while others chiefly feature its opponents. An underlying pattern that cuts across the different themes is that many of the most popular arguments in favour of UBI are comparatively idealistic, while arguments against the scheme often use pragmatic and functional claims. For instance, UBI might be praised as a way of fostering individual freedom and making societies more democratic and emancipated. Such arguments rely on assumptions of universalistic basic rights in a way that presupposes that these are actually put into effect: rather than simply being allowed to do something, individuals should be guaranteed basic capabilities to actually make use of their rights. In contrast, arguments against UBI caution that the scheme could be detrimental to labour and that it would be difficult if not impossible to finance. While such arguments can be intuitively effective, they run the risk of being disproved through empirical case-studies; nevertheless, opponents can fall back on a strong line of defence, as their assumptions of a just society are largely reflected in the status quo. In a public discourse that negotiates political-economic outcomes largely between deregulated markets on the one side and needs-tested welfare systems on the other, UBI would be a fundamental paradigm shift that can easily be rejected based on the predominant assumptions of social justice.This leads to an argumentative deadlock. If UBI is initially rejected on the basis of pragmatic considerations, increased empirical work to test these concerns appears to be a plausible way out. If, however, pragmatic claims are primarily ostensible arguments based on fundamental assumptions about the true character of a socially-just society, empirical case-studies can only drive back opposition against UBI to this much more fundamental reasoning, rather than resolving it altogether. Research on UBI has made significant progress in clarifying the empirically plausible effects of UBI as much as possible through pilots, other empirical studies, and reviews of older experiments (Hamilton & Mulvave, 2019; Laín, 2019; Widerquist, 2018). Such work was vital for the debate in order to set it on an empirically sound footing, and has provided valuable background information regarding the plausibility of many of the arguments we collected in this article. However, the question of social justice still remains to be debated in far more publicly-accessible spheres. Thus, for UBI debates to effectively evolve beyond this argumentative deadlock and for the policy to come closer to being politically embraced on a large scale, UBI supporters would have to find more effective communicative strategies to establish UBI as socially just among the general public.3ConclusionThis article conducted a thematic analysis of UBI debates to unearth patterns that indicate in which areas these debates are more or less developed. We found that UBI debates can be largely organised along seven themes (social justice and equality; freedom and the individual; business and consumption; labour, work, and employment; welfarism and the welfare state; taxation and public expenditure; democracy and citizenship) in three main categories (core principles of UBI; UBI and the capitalist society; UBI and the state). Within these categories and themes, arguments in favour of UBI aspire to an idealistic vision of a free, emancipated society; while arguments against UBI are mainly concerned with attacking the functional feasibility of UBI while presupposing the justice of needs-tested welfare systems as a safety-net.Our findings make several contributions to the state of UBI research. First, they organise an increasingly complex debate, and distil arguments that are superficially diverse but fundamentally only slightly different down to their essential cores. Second, by doing so, our findings reveal the areas in which UBI debates are already comparatively mature and where in particular arguments for and against UBI still have considerable potential to be developed further. Third, and finally, by exploring how these different themes relate to each other, our article has clarified how, and why, UBI debates can quickly become stuck in a deadlock rooted in the more fundamental question of what social justice means in the increasingly individualised and open societies of the 21st-century.

Journal

Basic Income Studiesde Gruyter

Published: Dec 1, 2022

Keywords: UBI; thematic analysis; debate

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