The coronavirus pandemic has ripped up the rulebook in many ways, but one of the most surprising is the willingness for previously intervention-fearing governments to step in to support their population. Brazil, South Africa, Spain and the United States have all begun handing out money in something resembling a universal basic income (UBI) as a result of the wide-ranging effects of the coronavirus.

It has taken extraordinary circumstances – and a great deal of public pressure – for politicians to edge towards a UBI

“In those countries, it’s as radical a change as can be imagined,” says Luke Martinelli, research associate at the Institute for Policy Research at the University of Bath. But he and others monitoring these fast-moving changes are careful to caveat their analysis: nothing that has been announced is literally UBI. Governments, with one eye on public perception, have been quick to attach the tag to their extensive measures to intervene in the economy and offer a safety net to those who need it most. “They’ve borrowed that term because it’s got currency and it’s got a brand attached to it,” says Martinelli, “but what they’re talking about is a conditional means-tested benefit where there is none already.”

That doesn’t mean that it isn’t a significant step change, says Elizaveta Fouksman, Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the African Studies Centre, Oxford School of Global and Area Studies. “it’s important you now see governments willing to give cash to people who before they’d say: ‘Go out and get a job’,” she says. “Now governments are telling people: ‘Don’t get a job’.”

Both Fouksman and Martinelli agree that a fully universal basic income is likely a step too far for most governments — even at a time like this — but it could well be the closest we get to something like a UBI. More importantly, says Martinelli, “it shifts the narrative sufficiently that [a basic income] becomes more plausible.”

It has taken extraordinary circumstances  and a great deal of public pressure, with people-led campaigns in South Africa and Brazil forcing politicians’ hands — for politicians to edge towards a UBI, however. “Basic income keeps having these waves of interest. There was a wave in the early 20th century in the UK, in the 60s and 70s in the US, then a resurgence in the 2010s around the rise of automation and machine learning,” says Fouksman. This time around the focus is less on robots taking our jobs, but instead a more fundamental discussion about basic income operating as an instrument for economic security against all sorts of crises.

There’s also the risk that the timing and presentation of this social market intervention could be used as a stick to discredit the idea of a universal basic income once and for all

The debate has been rumbling on around the world for many years, and as with many other areas of society, the sudden arrival of Covid-19 has caused a crystallisation of thought, with people recognising the issues. The debate around basic income taking place today in various countries is the result of long-term structural changes in the labour market, including the rise of precarious work and the failure of traditional welfare systems to serve them. The pandemic is the straw that broke the camel’s back. “This has shone a light on the fact that this isn’t a small group: large parts of the world have nothing to fall back on if something like this happens,” says Martinelli.

But rapid shifts are destabilising, and potentially damaging to the reputation of UBI in the long run, reckons Fouksman, who supports the notion. “It’s a dangerous time,” she says. “The problem is If you make an argument for basic income on the basis of a particular crisis and then the crisis passes, the arguments die with it.”

There’s also the risk that the timing and presentation of this social market intervention could be used as a stick to discredit the idea of a universal basic income once and for all. Governments implementing half-measures that they label as a universal basic income, which don’t share the full characteristics required, could easily falter and be used as an excuse for why it can’t work in the future. There’s also the risk of introducing such a radical policy at such an uncertain time, making this an economic high wire act. These are not normal fiscal times; countries are staring down the barrel of an enormous global recession. “Maybe someone will point to it and say the results weren’t what universal basic income advocates promise, so we shouldn’t do it,” says Fouksman. — Chris Stokel-Walker

(Picture credit: Unsplash)

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