UBI Requires Substantial Political Capital

Because it would be universal, UBI would allow government to eliminate a great deal of the wasteful bureaucracy and the time-consuming and often humiliating means-testing practices that accompany most current welfare programs. This is something of a double-edged sword. Some critics raise the specter of UBI being used as an opportunity for right-wing or rightward-leaning legislators to cut existing social-welfare programs.36 Here again, though, the same criticism could be leveled against any proposed social-welfare reform. Yes, reactionary elites will always have the inclination to intentionally underfund or otherwise undermine a beneficial reform, but that is not a legitimate objection to advocating for the reform in the first place. This criticism fails to recognize that the benefits of any such reform measure always depend(s) upon political will. For example, just because public funding of higher education in the United States has been inadequate for decades, this does not make higher education a bad idea. The public housing system in the United States is horrible, but that does not make public housing a bad idea. The success of any reform always depends, in the final analysis, on sufficient mobilization to not only win the gain but also maintain it over time. Therefore, the only legitimate aspect of this criticism of reforms like UBI is that the political mobilization needed to obtain it and sustain it over time will divert time and energy from other projects that may more directly advance us toward a solidarity economy. In short, it comes down to a judgment call on whether work on this reform merits the expenditure of time, effort, and political capital needed to secure it versus other projects that would advance the ball.