The idea of a universal basic income (UBI) has gained new momentum worldwide as a response to the dire consequences of the coronavirus outbreak. Not long ago, in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, the deterioration of living conditions for millions of workers, deprived of jobs and incomes, led to calls for social justice and widespread interest in UBI.
Today, to help the economy to stay afloat, policy responses to the coronavirus outbreak focused on providing emergency relief packages in which substantial monetary transfers with no ties attached, ended up lifting a great number of the targeted beneficiaries out of poverty and doubling or tripling their regular net income (as in Brazil, Argentina, and the United States, to mention a few cases). This trend will not last. But it has made clear that the value of a basic income matters if it is to make a real difference.&nbsp;
<h3>Reconsidering social policies</h3>
Social policies are at a crossroads. Their effectiveness has been consistently eroded by the structural changes underway in contemporary capitalism. Income transfers continue to gain traction as the pillar of social protection schemes - whatever their design- to the detriment of de-commodified public goods (health care, education, care, housing, water and sanitation facilities) whose provision has deteriorated over time due to austerity policies.
This trend is well-known, and it has strengthened over the past two decades under the sway of neoliberalism and financialization. In high-income nations, once the paragons of social security, the social state has been increasingly dismantled. In middle- and low-income countries, where welfare regimes are generally incomplete or non-existent, the trend has been towards adopting targeted anti-poverty programs based on direct cash transfers.
Cash transfers have gained growing importance as a social policy tool. In the mid-1990s, when conditional cash transfer (CCTs) programs were first launched in Latin America, the prevailing mindset in several prominent multilateral organizations was that giving money directly to the poor would only reinforce vices, bad consumption and ultimately wastefulness. It did not take long, however, for these views to change.
Latin America was indeed ahead of time with local experiments to support a broader case for conditional cash transfers. Soon the continent was praised for having implemented a monetary safety net in virtually every country.<a href="#_edn1" name="_ednref1">[i]</a> This milestone swiftly acquired a global reach. Endorsed by the World Bank and other United Nations organizations, conditional cash transfers became a role model, popularized by scholars in works such as Just Give Money to the Poor (Hanlon et al. 2010) or Give a Man a Fish (Ferguson 2015). The argument, probably excessive, is that cash transfers constitute a brand-new politics of redistribution (Ferguson 2015), coupled with a politics of recognition (Leisering 2019).
Prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, more than 2.5 billion people in the Global South were already recipients of state-guaranteed cash transfers, predominantly conditioned and means-tested.<a href="#_edn2" name="_ednref2">[ii]</a> Across all the regions, monetary transfers make up over 50% of welfare spending and more than half of the population receives some sort of cash benefit. In the poorest quintile of the distribution, that ratio rises to at least two-thirds (Lavinas 2020). This means that the coverage, although broad, still falls short of demand. In addition, the benefit amount varies significantly across countries and among recipients. Disbursements tend to be of small value, barely helping to mitigate severe poverty. At the same time, cash transfers have sparked higher monetization levels, especially in areas where market income is still scarce. Because they are low-cost (rarely above 1% of GDP), cash transfers became flagship programs even in countries with restrained fiscal space.
Thus, in a few decades, providing a direct cash income with ties attached for those in poverty has gone from a fringe proposal and moral call-to-arms, to a mainstream model for social policy - especially in the Global South - that is widely endorsed by governments, the G20, and other leading global institutions.
Conversely, in developed countries, contributory, and non-contributory benefits have long been an essential dimension of comprehensive welfare regimes. However, in the wake of continued welfare state reforms, benefits such as job allowances, welfare transfers, and a large array of monetary schemes - aimed at offsetting income deficits - have proven inadequate to respond to people&rsquo;s mounting needs. Income insecurity and the risk of falling into poverty only increase along with involuntary unemployment, intermittent jobs, zero-hour contracts, and underemployment. This is prompted by rapid technological changes, new tasks and labor forms. The neoliberal era is marked by a never-ending re-structuring of economic activities that has profoundly altered the dynamics of labor markets. The pandemic has exacerbated these trends, adding new burdens by enhancing care activities, home office and platform work, and dragging down wages.
<h3>UBI For precarious times</h3>
As the pandemic swung into full force, countless voices stood up again, seeking to leave behind social programs rooted in means-testing, conditionalities and high administrative costs, and steer social policy towards a universal and unconditional basic income.
This is not an incremental move, but rather a far-reaching shift towards radical values of emancipation, freedom and equality: emancipation from the logic of the market, subservience to capital, and the countless forms of domination that have taken root in our lives; freedom from bureaucracy, controls and poor jobs; and a true ideal of equality grounded on a very simple principle that everyone gets the same, regardless of origins, sex, age, color, status, or any other discriminatory trait. This entitlement is thus individual, universal, paid in cash, lifelong and obligation-free. As stressed by Philippe Van Parijs and Yannick Vanderborght on the cover of their latest book (2017), &ldquo;basic income [is] a radical proposal for a free society and a sane economy,&rdquo; because it provides socioeconomic security to support&nbsp; a more genuine life and prevent critical downturns.
Within a context of great uncertainty, the claim for a UBI is back on track, this time benefiting from much wider support, public visibility, and a sense of urgency. The World Bank,<a href="#_edn3" name="_ednref3">[iii]</a> UN agencies such as ECLAC,<a href="#_edn4" name="_ednref4">[iv]</a> entrepreneurs,<a href="#_edn5" name="_ednref5">[v]</a> politicians, and policymakers from different political backgrounds all have joined calls coming from the progressive camp endorsing UBI as a sound public policy, worthy of serious consideration. It is however unlikely that they share the same belief in the significance and potential of a UBI.
Until now, the limited UBI experiments that have been carried out in developed and developing countries have failed to conform to a truly universal basic income scheme, except for calling off conditionalities, which is not a minor issue. Most trials were targeted to specific populations, and tested new modalities of unemployment and welfare benefits. Studies indicated that people&acute;s lives improved significantly thanks notably to waiving bureaucracy. But often, as in the Finnish trial,<a href="#_edn6" name="_ednref6">[vi]</a> the benefit was not enough to meet the recipients&acute; needs.
Given that labor income is not contingent on people's will to work, these findings raise a fundamental issue about the adequate amount of a basic income for all. In my opinion, it should be tailored to eradicate extreme poverty, whose threshold must be set in accordance with each country's living conditions, keeping in mind that huge gaps between nations will not discourage global migrations.
In this respect, Grimalda et al. (2020) recommend the creation of a global universal basic income (GUBI) as a foundational stone to foster global citizenship, set at a level of US$ 2,7 per capita a day or an annual individual benefit significantly high, around US$ 1,000. It would be financed through global taxation (a Wealth Tax and a Tobin Tax) reaching 6.3% of world GDP. The proposal faces two major pitfalls: First, the weaknesses of multilateralism makes it difficult to promote a global UBI. Would rich countries be willing to cooperate, especially after unfairly denying debt write-offs for the poorest countries in the world to help them better handle the COVID-19 crisis? Second, there is no legitimate political leadership to enforce a radical overhaul in global taxation and rein in financial markets and financial institutions, which run freely around the world at the expenses of the real economy.
It is absolutely necessary to revalue minimum and living wages to prevent UBI from turning into a subsistence cushion, funded by the State, that would allow employers to implicitly deduct this floor from worker&acute;s salaries, thereby devaluing labor. Indeed, a UBI may strengthen the work force&rsquo;s bargaining power, but if and only if it is set at a dignified level.
Finally, the major asset of a UBI is to de-commodify labor. In times of financialized capitalism, that squeezes public provision, it is equally crucial to de-commodify the social reproduction of labor, by ensuring that education, healthcare, day-care, training, and other basic needs will also be fully de-commodified or at least made affordable to the majority. Otherwise, UBI will serve as a powerful pro-market mechanism, providing collateral, underwritten by the State, for improving people&rsquo;s credit worthiness (Lavinas 2019). Such a move would bolster income-related and highly segmented private services mostly through the financial sector, deepening household debt. In this case, UBI could fuel, rather than overturn, discrimination and inequality. However, UBI alone will certainly not suffice.
<hr>
<a href="#_ednref1" name="_edn1">[i]</a> Five countries did not implement means-test anti-poverty programs prior to the pandemic: El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. <a href="#_ednref2" name="_edn2">[ii]</a> World Bank 2018 &ndash; The State of Social Safety Nets 2018, Washington, DC: World Bank. <a href="#_ednref3" name="_edn3">[iii]</a> World Bank. 2020. Exploring Universal Basic Income. A Guide to Navigating Concepts, Evidence, and Practices. World Bank Group, Washington, DC: World Bank. <a href="#_ednref4" name="_edn4">[iv]</a> ECLAC. 2020. Informe Especial No. 3, Covid-19, El Desafio Social en Tiempos del Covid-19, Santiago de Chile. <a href="#_ednref5" name="_edn5">[v]</a> Refer to Lavinas L. 2018. Renda B&aacute;sica de Cidadania: a pol&iacute;tica social do s&eacute;culo XXI? Li&ccedil;&otilde;es para o Brasil. An&aacute;lise No. 47/2018, Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES), S&atilde;o Paulo. <a href="#_ednref6" name="_edn6">[vi]</a> In Finland 2,000 unemployed, aged 25-58 years old, were granted 560 Euros per month, tax-free, for two years, also preserving other income sources.
<hr>
References
<ul>
<li>
Ferguson J. 2015.&nbsp;Give a Man a Fish: Reflection on the politics of distribution.&nbsp;Duke University Press.
</li>
<li style="font-size: 10pt;">
Grimalda G., Filgueira F., Fleurbaey M., and Lo Vuolo R. 2020. Global Safety Nets and Global Action to Release Vaccines: necessary tools to face global pandemics.
</li>
<li style="font-size: 10pt;">
Gabriel Felbermayer editor, The World Economy after the Coronavirus Shock: restarting globalization?&nbsp;Kiel Institute for the World Economy, Kiel, p. 65-74.
</li>
<li style="font-size: 10pt;">
Hanlon J., Barrientos, A., and Hume D. 2010.&nbsp;Just Give Money to the Poor. The development revolution from the Global South. Kumarian Press.&nbsp;
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<li style="font-size: 10pt;">
Lavinas L. 2020. The Collateralization of Social Policy by Financial Markets in the Global South.&nbsp;The Routledge International Handbook of Financialization, edited by P.
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<li style="font-size: 10pt;">
Mader, D. Mertens and N. Van der Zwan, London: Routledge, p. 312-323.
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<li style="font-size: 10pt;">
Lavinas L. 2019. Can UBI Survive Financialization? Project Syndicate, 06/13/2019. 
</li>
<li style="font-size: 10pt;">
Leisering L. 2019.&nbsp;The Global Rise of Social Cash Transfers. Oxford University Press.
</li>
<li style="font-size: 10pt;">
Van Parijs P. and Vanderborght Y. 2017. Basic Income. A Radical Proposal for a Free Society and a Sane Economy. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
</li>
</ul>

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