Reject any evidence that claims general support for UBI — the aff needs cards to prove specific support for its specific policy design.
Chrisp and Martinelli 22 — Joe Chrisp, Public Policy, Master in Science, University of Bristol, Philosophy, Politics and Economics, Bachelor of Arts, University of Oxford, Social Policy, Doctor of Philosophy, Political feasibility of a universal basic income in advanced welfare states, University of Bath, Post-doctoral research fellow, University of Bergen, Luke Martinelli, Visiting Lecturer at Bath Spa University, 2022 (“The Case for a Basic Income in the Emergent Digitalized Economy', in Marius R. Busemeyer and others (eds), Digitalization and the Welfare State (Oxford, 2022; online edn, Oxford Academic, 21 Apr. 2022), Available Online at https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192848369.003.0010, Accessed 07-12-2023 TC)
The pertinence of the preceding analysis of basic income attitudes to basic income’s practical political feasibility does have limits. Asking respondents for their position on abstract welfare preferences is limiting because we do not know whether they would be willing to expend real political capital, the strength of their preferences vis-à-vis alternatives, and/or if they are fully aware of the implications and trade-offs their choice involves. It is very likely that people might favor basic income in abstract terms, but that support would fall substantially in the context of budgetary constraints. Although the ESS question does state that the policy would be financed through a combination of tax rises and benefit cuts, the full implications of the trade-off are not apparent. More generally, then, we have concerns that questions regarding such a specific (and rather hypothetical) welfare policy reform as basic income would be subject to high levels of “non-attitudes” (Converse 1974), particularly without a response option for “neither support or oppose.”
The “hypothetical” nature of the basic income question—and the related issue that respondents do not have a concrete example of the policy in mind—ties in with an issue that is quite specific to basic income. In light of a myriad alternative “modes of implementation” regarding payment levels, funding options, and interactions with the wider system of welfare benefits, attitudes to basic income are likely to depend on which specific policy design features are envisaged by the respondent. As we mentioned previously, Martinelli (2020) shows that basic income policy design is subject to a three-way trade-off between fiscal, distributional, and bureaucratic goals. Alternative forms of basic income give rise to a specific pattern of winners and losers and are likely to appeal to (or dissuade) different coalitions of political actors. Thus, it is likely that apparently broad-based support will not survive the specification of a concrete direction for reform.