Basic income feeds into austerity narratives

In developed welfare states where public experiments in lifting conditionalities have been dubiously titled ‘Basic Income’ experiments, the political pressure to seize this apparent opportunity to push Basic Income is great. The perceived need to test Basic Income, or even just elements of it, to demonstrate its efects, has led in practice to a decoupling of the elements. This may be a devil’s deal if a strategic accommodation simply leaves something like a Basic Income stuck without a real political understanding of how a real Basic Income might be reached, and why it matters. Relatedly, the idea of Basic Income as a form of simplifcation of mature welfare systems is a devil’s deal in a context of neo-liberal public austerity defined by the use of cuts and new public management methods to shrink the size of the state. Within national debates, the idea of simplifcation can mean removal of cumbersome behavioural checks, but there is also the risk that simplifcation can be understood as an extension of a drive to generate a single low level of income security. Opportunity for Basic Income could become a curse.

Tis juxtaposition also holds at the European level. For example, initiatives for a European Union-wide Basic Income come up against the reality of a fracturing European free movement project under the aegis of a panEuropean free market and public austerity reforms. Te prospect that a Euro-dividend might support frictionless and secure movement across European borders might be illusory, as the fexible regional labour market has coincided with rising intra-state inequality (Stiglitz 2012: 220). Te 2016 Brexit vote in Britain, combined with the rising infuence of protest parties across the continent, suggests that the legitimacy of European Union institutions is crumbling.