A Basic Income triggers a mindset shift towards socialist movements – Alaska and Manitoba prove

Establishing a Theory of Change Around Universal Basic Income

We would benefit from more clarity on the assumed theory of change when advocating for UBI (or arguing against it). In “A Capitalist Road to Communism,” Van der Veen & Van Parijs (1986) attempted to indicate how we might progress to a just society through UBI. There are many potential routes from here to there, so this is an area where more work would be helpful. In an interesting recent contribution to this discussion, Gourevitch & Stanczyk (2018) worry that UBI proponents may be getting things backward—that the kind of UBI we would be able to get without organized labor would be too low. To think that the ruling and business class will simply acquiesce to an ambitious version of the proposal is naïve; it comes down to believing that they will consent to their own expropriation. The left, the authors argue, should refocus its priorities on rebuilding the labor movement.

There is much room in which to provide responses and alternative perspectives on the path forward to a just society and whether it may include UBI or not. One interesting avenue is the potential of normative change—which I would define as the capacity to alter one's own conception of justice. There is evidence that UBI could help shift the way people think of what they owe each other. Two examples come to mind. The first is the Mincome experiment in Dauphin, Manitoba, in the 1970s, where an unconditional cash program with universal entitlement was piloted. Calnitsky (2016) finds that those involved in the experiment changed their perspective on public assistance—from viewing it moralistically to viewing it pragmatically. Similar results were found in recent research on the Alaskan dividend fund, a universal cash program financed through a sovereign wealth fund (Harstad Strategic Research 2017). Years into the program, Alaskans were far more likely to support the dividend than they were initially. A large majority of those surveyed expressed that they would subscribe to an income-tax-funded dividend to replace the existing program if the fund were to run dry. This is a very important finding in a state largely opposed to taxation. The examples of normative change introduced above potentially suggest that by experiencing universal entitlements and living in a society where everyone gets to rely on a regular stepping-stone, people could change their attitude toward assistance and redistribution in general. If normative change through UBI is a promising avenue, there are grounds for thinking UBI can be a truly transformative policy.