Srnicek and Williams assume a large enough UBI to allow people to leave the labour market. A smaller basic income would worsen workers’ conditions.

The Impossibility of a Left Basic Income The question of UBI’s economic viability, though basically technical, is vital for determining its political character. That’s because UBI’s effects depend on the amount distributed and the conditions of its implementation. Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams, in their accelerationist manifesto, Inventing the Future, write that “the real significance of UBI lies in the way it overturns the asymmetry of power that currently exists between labour and capital.” Its establishment would allow workers to have “the option to choose whether to take a job or not.… A UBI therefore unbinds the coercive aspects of wage labour, partially decommodifies labour, and thus transforms the political relationship between labour and capital.” But to do this, the authors insist, it “must provide a sufficient amount of income to live on.” If the payment isn’t high enough to let people to refuse work, UBI might push wages down and create more “bullshit jobs.” Despite the key importance of size and implementation, the countless texts dedicated to establishing a UBI — including Srnicek and Williams’s work — rarely discuss the policy’s concrete details. Many of basic income’s benefits would only arrive if it provided a generous monthly amount, meaning that a moderate or low-amount version could have potentially negative effects.