Basic income at a level sufficient to allow a dignified life, provided universally and unconditionally, can, help to eliminate poverty by guaranteeing access to necessary resources. Its multiple beneficial feedback loops include improved public health , and, in a longer-term perspective, cost savings for the public purse by reducing aggregate health expenditure. In contrast to mainstream ‘welfare’ policy, universal basic income can enhance recipient dignity and well-being by reducing the stress and stigma associated with poverty and targeted or conditional benefits. Further, a substantive body of work suggests that basic income enables investments in human capital by removing financial barriers to (further) education , whilst also facilitating upgrades in fixed capital in the form of people’s housing or productive assets. With regards to work, basic income offers the potential to promote ‘real freedom’ in the labour market by giving people meaningful choice over whether or not to accept a job and space to collectively organise around labour improvements, which in turn may reduce exploitation of workers. Beyond this, perhaps the most transformative claim associated with basic income is that it could address inequality, so long as it is funded through progressive taxation or measures such as those outlined in the Special Rapporteur’s proposals on financing global social protection. Basic income funded in this way could meaningfully address long-standing inequalities that operate along the lines of race, gender, wealth, and political participation, whilst also addressing the contemporary rise of far-right anti-democratic forces that trade on economic precarity. Universal basic income guarantees should not come at the cost of public provisioning of universal basic services: this proposal must be read in tandem with the universal basic service provisions proposed in this chapter.
Taken together, these proposals ensure that basic needs are met through institutional guarantees rather than the drive for economic expansion that may one day trickle down to everyone.
