Err neg on the link. The more vague they are about implementation details, the more likely it is that the aff gets coopted.

On the surface, basic income does indeed appear radical, suggesting that its appeal ‘seems to lie partly in its very transgressiveness’ (Sloman, 2018: 638). But there are also dangers posed by its implementation, which is evident from the bourgeois support for UBI both historically and today.

A ‘shape-shifting social policy’

What makes the implications of basic income so challenging to assess is the difficulty in pinning down what it actually entails. Calnitsky describes it as a ‘shape-shifting social policy’ which seems to represent all things to all people (2018: 293). This has led to wildly different interpretations of UBI right across the political spectrum, allowing it to ‘be sold to different political constituencies as a solution to a variety of different problems’ (Sloman, 2018: 638). It can also lead to those involved in the debate talking past each other, moving the goal-posts of what can truly be considered “universal” or “basic”.

The language used to describe the variety of proposals reflects this. At various times in Britain, campaigners have referred to UBI as ‘a “vagabond’s wage”, a “state bonus”, a “social dividend”, a “new social contract”, a “basic income”, and a “citizen’s income”’, not to mention Friedman’s “negative income tax” in the US (Sloman, 2018: 626).

Clearly each of these terms ‘evokes a rather different set of connotations’, and as a result basic income has often paradoxically been seen as ‘unconditional’, ‘selective’, ‘unitary’ or ‘two-tiered’ depending on the ideology of its proponents and the intended audience of the proposals (Sloman, 2018: 626; Calnitsky, 2018: 293).

Guy Standing credits the myriad of opposing views within the BIEN (Basic Income Earth Network) group of which he is a part for its influence on the debate. Though he admits to ‘tensions between those who take a libertarian approach and those who have been more egalitarian’, Standing holds that ‘this “broad church” approach has been key to the success of BIEN’ due to the ‘knowledge base’ it has built and the fruitful contradictions that have influenced its research (2017: x). But while such an approach may be suitable for an organisation like BIEN, the irreconcilable attitudes and approaches to UBI from across the political spectrum pose real difficulties in determining how the policy is likely to be implemented in practice. Indeed, as Sloman argues, ‘[i]t is difficult to see how tech entrepreneurs and the TUC could ever be brought together in support of a particular scheme’ (2018: 639). While the Left sees basic income as emancipatory, reducing the exploitative nature of wage labour and constituting a radical reimagination of work, the Right view it as a continuation of their long-standing efforts to undermine the welfare state and cut the “red tape” of workers’ protections.