A universal basic income could support building a society in which well-being is not tethered to wage labour and production, says the writer. (Photo: Adobestock)

It’s odd how we cling to the idea that paid work is a necessary and sufficient basis for well-being – even when viable income-earning opportunities don’t exist for close to half of adults in our country.

The South African economy generates vast, maldistributed wealth without the paid labour of about 40% of the working-age population and by paying a substantial proportion of employed workers wages so low that their survival requires subsidies from family members and the state.

Unemployment is estimated to be the main cause of about half of poverty in South Africa; low earnings are a major cause for the other half. The trend stretches back decades and there is no current indication of significant change. Close to one-third of people with paid work in South Africa do not earn enough to regularly afford basic food and non-food items.

This crisis is likely to intensify as the dividend-boosting pressures of financialised capitalism persist, as fossil fuel-intensive industries are overhauled or phased out, and as digitalised and other job-replacing technologies are deployed more widely. In such an outlook, the pursuit of more jobs – and more decent jobs – is important and necessary, but it cannot substitute for a more encompassing drive to ensure everyone has the means for a dignified life.

Our social, economic and labour policies should be as radical as reality – which is one of many reasons why we need to think seriously about non-wage livelihood alternatives, including the possible introduction of a universal basic income.

A universal basic income is a fashionable, yet contested concept. Supporters are found across the ideological spectrum and they invest a UBI with different content and functions.

In a progressive form, a universal basic income would be a livable income that is paid unconditionally to every member of society and that supplements other social entitlements (such as free primary health care and school education, transport and housing subsidies, food programmes or free water and sanitation services), as well as industrial and labour policies. That final feature is vital.

This is different from the kind of basic income favoured in libertarian and neoliberal quarters. They see a limited universal basic income replacing most other forms of social protection, thereby turning social entitlements into private markets and boosting the compulsive power of the labour market. That would be a dystopian triumph for neoliberal ideology, making wellbeing a matter of “individual responsibility” and positioning the market as the arbiter of even the most elementary means of life. So a universal basic income is a slippery concept: we need to be clear about what we’re considering.

A universal basic income that supplements other basic entitlements and that provides a livable income would reduce both extreme poverty and, depending on how it is financed, income inequality. Studies of current cash grants suggest that it would contribute to a range of other desirable social outcomes, too, including improved public health (especially maternal and child health) and schooling performances, reduced petty crime, and greater autonomy for women.

Crucially, a universal basic income could help shift the balance of power between low-skilled workers and employers, by affording them the freedom not to sell their labour and to withdraw, at least temporarily, from the labour market’s “race to the bottom”.

By curbing employers’ ability to subject workers to super-exploitation, a livable income could also help boost the collective strength of workers. And by tightening the labour supply, a universal income (if large enough) would increase the reservation wage (or the lowest wage at which a worker is likely to perform a given task). This would boost wages at the low end of the wage spectrum, which should fuel consumer demand and, in turn, stimulate economic activity.

For that to be possible, the universal basic income payment must be big enough to enable workers to rebuff low-wage, super-exploitative jobs, should they wish to. Otherwise, it may end up subsidising employers, much as food vouchers and other welfare support in the US and UK currently do, enabling companies to depress wages.

Instead of having to accept dangerous, low-paying and insecure forms of employment, people would be able to put their labour and time to other uses – including performing socially useful or personally fulfilling work, studying or acquiring new skills, contributing to fairer divisions of labour in household and family life, and more.

So a progressive vision sees a universal basic income as more than a social policy tool to alleviate poverty and reduce inequality. It holds transformative potential, particularly if part of a broader push for social and economic change.

It would also be an important element of strategies to manage climate shocks and achieve a just transition away from fossil-fuel dependence and towards a sustainable economic model based on renewables. A universal basic income could counteract resistance to such a transition among workers in heavily affected sectors, by providing a universal safety that goes beyond retraining and re-skilling programmes and supports displaced workers and vulnerable communities.

In examining the pros and cons of a universal basic income there are lessons to be drawn from the unsuccessful basic income grant demand of the early 2000s in SA. One lesson is this: the cost and affordability of a universal basic income is obviously important, but it also comes down to politics and ideology. Back then the government dismissed the basic income grant demand as unaffordable – yet went on to massively grow the welfare system, especially the social grants component, over the next decade. A very big reason why the basic income grant campaign lost lay in the domains of ideology, discipline and control. The idea that everyone is entitled to a small share of a society’s wealth, irrespective of whether they have a job, offended deeply.

That’s one of the reasons why some people find a universal basic income so unsettling. It destabilises deeply-held beliefs about the role of work as a basis for social citizenship and about the claims we legitimately have on one another and on the state. It challenges key assumptions we use to assign worth and value to people.

In SA, many millions cannot achieve secure, viable livelihoods through waged work. They also have less and less access to traditional sources of subsistence and income outside the labour market, such as family farming, artisanal production and bartering systems. They are trapped between an ideology that insists they should sell their labour to “earn” any chance of a dignified life and an economic system that only needs the labour of a fraction of the adult population. And yet we stay sold on the idea that our basic entitlements depend on whether we work for a wage. The less attainable and rewarding paid work becomes, the more lustrously it is positioned in our thoughts.

By introducing scenarios that release people (at least temporarily) from demeaning labour without losing access to the means for a decent, fulfilling life, a universal basic income could support building a society in which well-being is not tethered to wage labour and production. Such a “post-work” vision has a rich pedigree on the Left among thinkers who have pictured scenarios in which wage relations gradually lose their pre-eminence in securing the means for life, organising social and economic life, and achieving what we may call “fulfilment” or “meaning”. Post-work, for them, refers not to a world without work, but to one where the (im)balance between waged work and life can be recalibrated.

Is such a universal basic income affordable? And even if it is, how would we prevent it from, eventually, being “captured” and used to chip away at other social entitlements and public goods? When it comes to risks and benefits, and social utility, how does a universal basic income compare with, say, a Jobs Guarantee or a Universal Basic Services scheme? We won’t know the answers until we’ve taken a clear-headed, searching look at an arrangement which, unlike any other on offer at the moment, confronts the horrid fact that paid work is not an available or viable basis for a dignified life in our country today – and there is no sign of that changing. MC

The full paper is available here.

Hein Marais is the author of Pushed to the Limit: The Political Economy of Change (2011) and South Africa: Limits to Change (2001).