If UBI were meant as a substitute for the existing safety net, I would also reject it. If it were meant as an admission of defeat in the struggle to create good quality work, I would oppose it. And, if it were to be funded through normal taxation, I would campaign against it.
Back in the 1980s, I was unimpressed by early UBI proposals. Class warriors fighting the corporate corner, notably Milton Friedman, endorsed UBI as a means of tearing up the postwar safety net which had done much to ameliorate poverty. In 2015 I felt their brunt when, as Greece’s finance minister, I fought tooth and nail the infamous troika who were pushing me to replace existing benefits with a measly, ‘minimum guaranteed income’ – a naked attempt to eradicate what was left of our welfare state.
So, why am I supporting a form of UBI now? Because the world changed drastically in 2008. Today, a therapeutic, non-divisive, progressive form of UBI – which I refer to as a Universal Basic Dividend, or UBD – is both feasible and necessary. In fact it is an essential complement to an indispensable safety net, a Green New Deal, and a jobs’ guarantee program.
Let's begin with its feasibility: In the post-2008 world, there is no need to tax struggling workers so as to pay a monthly allowance to layabout surfers or the rich. But, if not through taxation, how shall we pay for this UBD?
Since 2008, central banks have been maximising inequality by pumping gargantuan liquidity into private banks which lend it to corporations which, then, use it to buy back their own shares – with zero green, good quality jobs added. Why not, instead, pay much smaller amounts into every resident’s bank account? And here is a second idea: Legislate into existence a Public Equity Depository where corporations must deposit, say, 10% of their shares – in recognition of the fact that everyone contributes to the corporations’ capital stock (through tax-funded research, by using Google’s search engine, or writing up a review in Amazon). The accumulating dividends can then fund part of a UBD. Why is such a UBD necessary? For three reasons: First, because safety nets often entrap people while offering no protection to the millions forced to join the ranks of the precariat – or those who do unwaged care work. Secondly, a poor person’s trust fund (a UBD!) would boost workers’ severely diminished bargaining power more effectively than even a sizeable Green New Deal. Thirdly, because without a UBD to fall back on, an otherwise laudable jobs guarantee program may resemble a Victorian workhouse.
A Green New Deal, stronger safety nets, job guarantees, and legal impediments to the unbearable robotisation of the precariat are necessary. But they are not sufficient. Nothing short of the re-distribution of property rights over socially produced money and capital (that a UBD would kickstart) can reverse the post-2008 triumph of socialism for the very few and of stagnation for the many.