Universal Basic Income (2024)
Karl Widerquist (1965)
255 pages
I’ve long been a supporter of the idea of having a Universal Basic Income program. It seems particularly necessary in the United States, where the dominance over the past half-century of a free market fundamentalist ideology focused on profits above all else has had the inevitable consequence of driving an ever-growing number of people into increasingly precarious situations relative to work and so income. And the rapid advances in AI and automation can only be expected to accelerate this trend.
But I’ll admit that my support of UBI has rested on a largely uninformed understanding of how it could be implemented and the challenges to it. So, when I discovered an introductory text entitled simply Universal Basic Income earlier this year (shout out to The Regulator Bookshop!), I decided it was time to address this gap. Written by Karl Widerquist and published as part of The MIT Press Essential Knowledge Series, the book jacket blurb promised “an accessible introduction” to UBI – and it definitely delivers on that claim.
Widerquist, according to the author’s bio, is a professor of philosophy specializing in distributive justice, having earned doctorates in political theory and economics. He acknowledges up-front his deep engagement in and support for the basic income movement, but argues that
whether you agree with my position on UBI or not, I think you can learn more from a passionate and honest attempt to argue the strongest points for it and refute the strongest points against it than from a dispassionate list of points on either side. (10)
So, a reader clearly understands his position going in.
Widerquist opens with a brief history of the UBI movement, then provides the definition of UBI he uses for the purposes of his book:
a periodic cash payment unconditionally delivered to all on an individual basis, without means-test or work requirement.” (11)
After explaining the individual elements of this definition, he points out other names used to refer to UBI, as well as alternative views on the key aspects it should include. He also differentiates it from other, related kinds of policies.
With nomenclature and definitions established, Widerquist describes sample implementations of UBI. Rather than getting into the weeds of specific potential program details, he focuses on presenting simplified, illustrative examples. Based on a roughly poverty level UBI payout and a simple flat tax, he demonstrates the net amount of money each person would receive given the amount of personal income they receive. By making these examples concrete – to the point of including tables of dollar amounts showing personal income and the taxes on it in the context of receiving a UBI – he illustrates clearly for readers how a program could work.
But how would such policies fare in the real world? Widerquist acknowledges that the lack of existing, broad-based implementations of UBI makes drawing firm conclusions difficult. Nevertheless, he reviews a variety of narrowly targeted UBI trials that have been done globally – including devoting a chapter to Alaskan’s experience with their oil revenue financed Permanent Fund Dividend – and discusses what can be learned from such programs, despite their limited scope.
Among the conclusions he draws, I found perhaps most impactful his comments regarding affordability concerns raised about UBI. He makes a compelling argument that, in terms of financing a UBI program, it’s more about the will to do so than a lack of available funding opportunities; he even proposes potential funding sources, including charging for mineral rights on public land or for the use of the broadcast spectrum – instead of giving these away to companies at little or no cost, only to have them turn around and make a profit selling the resulting products and services to consumers (that is, back to the original, public owners of those rights). Ultimately, he notes:
People who say “we can’t afford it” don’t usually mean that, objectively speaking, the spending required to support UBI is unsustainable; they mean that subjectively, it costs more than they think it’s worth. If you don’t like a policy to begin with, it’s subjectively unaffordable at any cost.
No evidence refutes these subjective beliefs. … The case for UBI is better built on the rejection rather than the accommodation of that belief. (130)
Beyond Widerquist’s clear and effective explanation of how a UBI could be implemented and financed, however, I found most enlightening his examination of the pros and cons of UBI programs. He gives a pointed description of the economic realities that make UBI necessary, persuasively refutes arguments raised against it, and explores which justifications can and cannot work in gathering support for it.
His fundamental argument for UBI, which he returns to repeatedly in the text, builds off a concept of distributive justice, and gets at the heart of the motivations driving our present-day economic system:
It’s wrong to come between anyone else and the resources they need to survive. But that’s exactly what we do. Our rules deny the vast majority of people access to the resources necessary to produce food, shelter, clothing, and the other things humans need unless they continue providing services [i.e., work] for existing property owners. Because our rules have that feature, we are all owed at least enough cash compensation to buy goods instead. (143)
He goes on to make a point that seems largely ignored, or perhaps forgotten, by too many, especially in the US:
People often say that work is a fact of nature, but that’s not true in the way we use work today. Work in the sense of “toil to convert resources into consumption” might be a fact of nature, but work in the contemporary sense of “time spent providing services for people who have money so you can get money to access resources” is no fact of nature. The current necessity of it is entirely the result of rules that have been imposed on us. (144)
Over a century ago, in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (my review linked to at right), Max Weber described this imposed basis of our current capitalist economic system as having arisen out of a distinctive form of ascetism introduced by the Protestant Reformation. The resulting society we have created, Weber recognized,
is an immense cosmos into which the individual is born, and which presents itself to him, at least as an individual, as an unalterable order of things in which he must live. It forces the individual, in so far as he is involved in the system of market relationships, to conform to capitalistic rules of action. The manufacturer who in the long run acts counter to these norms, will just as inevitably be eliminated from the economic scene as the worker who cannot or will not adapt himself to them will be thrown into the streets without a job.
Thus, the role of work in our present-day society is not a fact of nature and, as Widerquist unequivocally states, “we can change the rules.” (144)
A few lines later, I’ll admit I was fairly cheering him on as he highlighted a pet peeve I’ve long had regarding discussions about policy proposals (such as UBI) that might rein in some of the excesses of free market fundamentalism:
Labels such as “socialism” or “communism” are primarily used as meaningless scare words for any progressive policy. So many different ways to organize an economy are possible that it is folly to portray a continuum between “capitalism” and “socialism” as if it were all there is. There are thousands or millions of policy choices, all of which create differently working systems. (147)
As opposed to considering such options, however, in the US anything less than full-throated support for the free market system too often evokes the question ‘what do you want, communism?’ – which shuts down any chance for a constructive or nuanced conversation. This dogmatic mindset has been methodically inculcated into American thinking, as Naomi Orestes and Erik M. Conway point out in their trenchant history The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market (my review linked to at right):
By promoting a false dichotomy between laissez-faire capitalism and communist regimentation, market fundamentalists [have made] it difficult for Americans to have conversations about crucial issues, such as appropriate levels of taxation or the balance between federal and state authority, or even how to appraise the size of the federal government objectively.
Another element emphasized by defenders of our current economic system, notes Widerquist, is a requirement for “mandatory-participation” – that everyone who can work should be expected to. This expectation leads to an argument against UBI centered on the concern that it may allow some people – those willing to get by on a poverty-level income – to decide not to work. Widerquist argues, however, that what UBI actually provides is individual independence: rather than allowing a person to not work at all, it liberates a person from having to accept poor wages or working conditions simply to survive. And, as he points out to defenders of a mandatory-participation requirement:
If you think the market economy is going to fall apart without the forced participation of 99 percent of its workers, you must think it’s very fragile system. (147)
Addressing the related concern of incentive to work, he has a section that I was strongly tempted to quote in its entirety, as it provides a powerful and decisive rejoinder. I’ll limit myself here, however, to his penetrating observation that
When the subject is whether workers want available jobs at going wages, you always hear about “lazy workers” who won’t work (for going wages), but never about “cheap employers” who won’t pay the wages you need to get people to work voluntarily [rather than to survive]. (148-9)
As he goes on to point out: “If one person has a task that they want someone else to do, they should pay enough that someone wants to do it.” (149)
In that sense, UBI would address one of the critical consequences of sky-rocketing inequality: what some have come to label the precariat, those struggling to get by on whatever jobs and wages they can get. Implementing it would “reverse the growth of inequality … by giving workers greater power to command better wages and salaries.” (142) Thus, workers having a basic income would be able to leave a job with poor or abusive working conditions, or a poor salary, without immediately ending up homeless and unable to eat.
Fundamentally, Widerquist argues that with UBI “we can have a thriving market economy without poverty, homelessness, or the fear of economic destitution.” (142) Instead of working counter to our market economy
UBI is actually rather individualistic, giving power to middle- and working-class people against both private and governmental power structures. It’s compatible with any system that respects everyone’s power to say no. (148)
UBI simply gives people enough to survive – a poverty level income; to live better or afford more, a person would still have to find work.
Although Widerquist examines – and refutes – these and other arguments against UBI, he also touches on what I feel is the most serious impediment to implementing it: finding the political will. In what now, in early 2026, feels like a dramatic understatement, he notes:
One perennial antidemocratic problem in American politics is the power of the donor class. Studies in the United States consistently show that legislation is far more responsive to the opinions of the wealthy than to the opinions of voters as a whole. … [And] disturbing trends against the power of the people are present in the United States. Some state governments are attempting to establish permanent minority rule by disenfranchising voters, gerrymandering, and other anti-democratic tactics. (208-9)
The economist Martin Wolf examines the origins and consequences of such
disturbing trends in
The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism (my review linked to at right), in which he describes what he considers to be the fundamental, symbiotic relationship between democracy and capitalism, and argues that:
The health of our societies depends on sustaining a delicate balance between the economic and the political, the individual and the collective, the national and the global. But that balance is broken. Our economy has destabilized our politics and vice versa.
Corrupting the political process in their favor, the elite and big business continue to increase their wealth and power by lowering taxes for themselves while reducing job protections and social services for everyone else. Thus, for example, they have successfully lobbied to reduce marginal tax rates from highs of over 80% on the wealthiest during the middle of the 20th century down to 37%; and they have broken the back of both public and government support for unions, making it possible for businesses to increase profits by reducing wages and benefits. These powerful groups can be expected to fight mightily against higher taxes to support UBI, and against the possibility that their businesses could be forced, by a stronger bargaining position of their workers, into paying higher wages.
One could imagine that a sufficiently enraged and engaged populist progressive movement could potentially overcome this reactionary position. But the first step would be that enough people see through the economic ideology of free market fundamentalism that has become so ingrained in US social and economic thinking.
However, another barrier to the rise of such progressivism must also be overcome, as Widerquist points out: the successful creation by the elite and big business of a destructive social ideology.
Perhaps the biggest threat to the UBI movement is the rise of right-wing nationalism … convincing the mass of people that our economic problems are caused by some boogeyman [such as] immigrants; foreigners; LGBTQ people; racial, ethnic, or religious minorities; and any other vulnerable group they single out. America is particularly vulnerable to right-wing nationalism because white fear and distrust has extremely deep roots. (209)
The history of this challenge has been thoroughly examined by Heather McGhee, in her engaging
The Sum of Us (my review linked to at right), in which she explores how the elite in the US have for centuries instilled and then leveraged fear of
the other to protect their wealth and power:
The elite adds in the urgency of the zero-sum story – they are taking what you have; they are a threat to you – and it’s enough to keep a polity focused on scapegoats while no progress is made on the actual economic issues in most Americans’ lives.”
I would argue that together, these broadly and deeply held beliefs – in support of free market fundamentalism and against support for programs that also help other groups – pose a bigger challenge to getting UBI implemented than specific arguments against it. Because, in the end, these beliefs mean that those against UBI will always be motivated to find yet another argument against it.
Widerquist also explores the relationship between automation and UBI. While acknowledging that automation would seem to be a ready and convincing argument for UBI, he goes on to argue that he finds it a poor supporting point. He raises the concern that those opposed to UBI will simply push back with let’s wait and see if unemployment really rises before doing anything, since significant unemployment due to automation hasn’t yet occurred. He also argues that “automation might be more likely to cause increased inequality and precariousness” (195) in the near term, rather than direct job losses, and that in fact it already has, for centuries. As he points out,
[although] the term Luddite has come to refer to any person with an opposition to technological improvement … the real Luddites weren’t necessarily opposed to automation itself; they were demonstrating against the cruel way our labor market reacts to automation. (198)
Andreas Malm provides a fascinating review of the history leading up to the Luddite movement and, more broadly, the impact of automation on skilled labor, in Fossil Capital (my review linked to at right). Examining the origins of the Industrial Revolution in the English textile industry, he demonstrates how fossil fuels enabled business owners to automate, and so eliminate highly skilled workers, in order to increase profits. He quotes a manager in the 1930’s, who wrote
the machines never get drunk; their hands never shook from excess [work]; they were never absent from work; they did not strike for wages; they were unfailing in their accuracy and regularity.
Malm also describes how fossil fuels enabled a shift in production to densely populated cities, where business owners recognized that the
shadow of potential substitutes will keep a worker aware that she is fortunate to have her job. The threat of dismissal is ‘perhaps the most effective means yet discovered to impose labour discipline in class-divided societies.’ … a large, dense, concentrated supply [of workers] allows for ‘flexible labour turnover policies’, whereas a small, thin, spatially dispersed labour market forces firms to treat their employees as precious minerals.
Looking forward, however, Widerquist points out that
“We don’t need to stop technology to fix the problems that inspired the Luddites. We need to raise the floor [through, for example, UBI] to ease the transition.” (199)
Although Widerquist convincingly refutes many of the arguments against UBI, one I remain concerned about – not as a reason to not implement it, but rather as a challenge to any such implementation – is the potential inflationary impact. Widerquist acknowledges that although the government spending to finance UBI and its beneficiaries “demand for goods will create inflationary pressure.” (162) But, he argues, taxation policy, whether on wealthier members of society or also on businesses’ access to and use of raw materials (widely understood, from minerals to broadcast spectrum and beyond) can mitigate this.
In terms of the potential inflationary pressure of wages being driven up by giving people the ability to survive without working, he makes the argument (in a personal correspondence) that
wages going up does not always mean inflation goes up. Sometimes wages going up means profits going down while the overall price level remains the same. We need a good fiscal and monetary policy along with UBI to ensure any new spending is consisted with overall price stability.
While I certainly support the idea of lower profits as a fair exchange for more socially viable wages, and of the pursuit of fiscal and monetary policy that enables UBI to succeed, I still struggle to see how it's politically feasible. This remains the rub. How can UBI supporters overcome the entrenched power of a wealthy elite who believe that they merit whatever they can get, and that by hiding in gated communities they can protect themselves from the blowback of the impacts of the massive inequality they are creating?
Nevertheless, in Universal Basic Income, Widerquist makes a persuasive case for both how beneficial UBI would be for the increasing numbers of people in precarious living situations and how straightforward it could be to implement. Perhaps more importantly, he clearly lays out which arguments can be effective in pursuing support for UBI and cautions against others that may seem at first blush reasonable but contain pitfalls. His book provides a solid and engaging starting point for anyone interested in better understanding this important policy option.
Other notes and information:
More quotes from this book
Regarding the vaunted idea in the US of a deeply felt
work ethic, Widerquist calls it for what it is:
our society has no work ethic. It has, at best, a money-making ethic, as evidenced by the ability to buy yourself out of a genuine obligation to “work” with an inheritance, a lottery ticket, lucky investments, or nefarious business deals. (151)
