A UBI challenges the foundational economic subjectivity of neoliberalism. Capitalism teaches people to see themselves as workers and consumers – to commodify their labor. A UBI teaches people to see themselves as part of an engaged and responsible community.

UBI and New Socioeconomic Subjectivities Here, we develop the idea that the adoption of a UBI might contribute to more sustainable subjectivities. Scholars have theorised how capitalist relations both produce and rely on particular forms of subjectivity, noting that economic rationality is not singular in time or place, and certainly not the innate or natural logic of human beings. Rather, as Callon (1998:51) elaborates, the economic actor under capitalism is a product of a process of configuration, “formatted, framed and equipped with prostheses, which help him in his calculations”. The economic subjects of capitalism must be understood as the product of historically specific modes of subjectivation. Dominant subjectivities configure the forms of collectivity and community that people consider feasible or even possible, establishing particular political horizons. A major challenge for transformative politics is thus the construction of a new subjectivity that can create new possibilities for coming into just and sustainable relations with a human and more-than-human world. Our argument here starts with the contention that the adoption of a UBI would have effects that go far beyond providing income. A truly universal and unconditional basic income program would be likely to result in new, and potentially profoundly changed, socioeconomic subjectivities. We draw on findings from broader cash transfer experiments—notably again there are no true long-term UBI programs in place—as cautiously suggestive of potential impacts. We focus here on the ways in which UBI might enable new socioeconomic subjectivities and the enactment of more sustainable futures. Briefly, we summarise the findings from previous and ongoing experiments to suggest that the adoption of a UBI: (1) reduces stress; (2) positively impacts health; and (3) increases educational attainment (Arnold 2018; Forget 2011; Ruckert et al. 2017). Each of these social outcomes correlates with likely positive impacts for the environment, such as increasing environmental awareness and reducing impulse purchases. We see this, for example, in the decrease in the purchasing of “temptation goods” such as alcohol in cash transfer studies (Evans and Popova 2017), despite the fact that increases in income correlate with more alcohol consumption in many low-income contexts. Thus, the effects of increasing income from wage labour do not parallel those of cash transfer; a different subject is being called into being. We are equally compelled by findings that cash transfers have a positive impact on “social cohesion”. Owusu-Addo et al.’s (2018) review of the literature suggests that cash transfers “were said to have improved social cohesion in diverse ways through improved security, increased sense of belonging, enhanced social status and state-citizen social contact”. Reports from a recently concluded experiment in Finland concur (Kela 2019).