In the next few decades, swathes of jobs will cease to exist thanks to the wonders of automation. From driverless vehicles to sophisticated artificial intelligence, technological breakthroughs are not only improving our lives, but they are threatening to remove our own means to survive.

Journalists, truck drivers and even lawyers could all be out of job before long, and the pace that jobs are being created is quite simply not adequate to keep the bulk of people in work.

One of the most popular solutions to this is universal basic income (UBI). Put simply, this would involve giving every citizen in any country regular payments that would provide them with enough to live on, regardless of whether or not they are in work.

Despite being a radical departure from the most common means-tested approach to welfare, UBI is steadily gaining support due to the potential benefits it can provide, and left-leaning parties in many countries are now starting to take the idea seriously.

However, given politicians’ ability to distort and corrupt even the purest of ideologies, even if we do get something termed UBI, it is quite possible it will bear little resemblance to the model that has been proposed.

The theory of UBI

If UBI is implemented in its proposed form, it could have significant benefits for humanity, as providing everyone with enough to live on regardless of whether they are in work or not would have a key impact on inequality.

It could also have a significant effect on the way that companies behave, changing the balance of power. Bad employers would no longer be able to subject their workers to poor conditions and expect them to stay and put up with it

The extreme financial poverty found in wealthy nations such as the US would – at least in theory – cease to exist, and individuals would be free to build their skill sets towards getting their dream jobs, rather than waste their lives in low-paid roles that offer little means of progression.

For many people, it would also be an opportunity to reduce their hours without putting them below the poverty line. Parents would be free to spend more time with their children, and people would have more time to spend doing activities, such as sports, that often get ignored due to long working hours.

An increase in the number of part-time roles could also result in more people having jobs in some fields, as the number of positions available would rise without companies needing to pay for more hours of work.

It could also have a significant effect on the way that companies behave, changing the balance of power. Bad employers would no longer be able to subject their workers to poor conditions and expect them to stay and put up with it; instead employees would simply leave, safe in the knowledge that they have enough to live on.

Then there is the matter of economics. UBI sounds like it would be prohibitively expensive for governments, but in theory it could actually save them money.

At present, welfare systems typically require means testing, which generates vast amounts of bureaucracy that governments have to pay for. With UBI this would be removed, resulting in significant savings; moreover benefit fraud would cease to exist, removing the need for organisations to identify and prosecute offending individuals.

Then there are the more intangible benefits. UBI would allow individuals to spend more time focusing on their interests, rather than earning money to survive, and so could lead to inventions, compositions and creations that may never have had a chance to occur otherwise.

But as fantastic as the potentials of UBI are, they all require the theory to be properly implemented.

Political compromise

It’s not uncommon for politicians to say one thing, but do another. Donald Trump, for example, has presented himself as the saviour of working Americans, but some of his proposals – such as the elimination of the estate tax – are clearly targeted at the very wealthy, and are likely to have little benefit for the working poor.

However, while these moves are usually relatively easy to spot, what is sometimes harder to identify is when politicians implement a theory, before corrupting it beyond recognition.

A prime example of this is former British Chancellor George Osborne’s ‘living wage’. A distant cousin of UBI, the living wage was heavily promoted by campaigners and is designed to ensure that everyone in the country earns enough to live on without their income needing to be supplemented by other sources.

Last year many understandably had cause for celebration when Osborne announced that he would be implementing the living wage. However, what he was actually proposing was not a living wage, but merely a higher minimum wage.

Even when it reaches its currently proposed highest amount of £9/hour by 2020, this ‘living wage’ will still be lower than the currently calculated wage required to maintain a decent standard of living in London. Add to this the fact that the fallout from Brexit is likely to increase the cost of living in the UK over the next few years, and that number is likely to fall woefully short of a true living wage for much of the country.

Universal basic income is highly likely to fall into this same trap. It has quickly become the trendy economic theory, and so is likely to be adopted by politicians in a bid to win support.

However, it represents a significant disruption to the current economic model, and disruption always results in opposition.

In this case, the opposition is most likely to come from organisations and wealthy individuals who perceive UBI to be a threat to the current status quo. They may – rightly or wrongly – perceive UBI as a gateway to higher taxes, and morally object to individuals being paid money without needing to do work.

With vested interests in keeping such groups happy, politicians are likely to seek to compromise UBI in a bid to please everyone. This, of course, will likely please no one, because a half-implemented UBI isn’t a UBI at all.

The possible future

There are a myriad ways in which UBI may be corrupted by politicians through a well-meaning desire for compromise.

One of the most likely scenarios is that the amount of money paid out to each person will not actually be enough to live on. This would eliminate UBI’s ability to remove the ‘poverty trap’, as those born into wealthy families would still be at an advantage, and would likely result in very little change to the current status quo. It could even result in power switching even further to employers, as jobs became increasingly scarce, with fewer rights afforded to employees.

UBI could be used as a means of social control. It’s easy to envision a scenario where UBI would be provided in a full and reasonable amount, but only on the condition that the recipient follows certain rules, or fulfils certain requirements

In this situation it’s quite possible that those protesting against this insufficient UBI would be painted as scroungers who simply wanted more money for no work. And if this happened, while the majority of voters were still in employment, it would be a very difficult perception to break.

Another potential scenario is that UBI would be implemented reasonably, but would not be made available to certain individuals, such as those who had served time in prison. This would likely be spun as a political narrative around rewarding good and honest citizens, but would ultimately serve to galvanise a subclass of people who would not have access to many of the opportunities that others would enjoy – a situation that, historically, has never ended well.

Finally, UBI could be used as a means of social control. It’s easy to envision a scenario where UBI would be provided in a full and reasonable amount, but only on the condition that the recipient follows certain rules, or fulfils certain requirements.

This could include ‘voluntary’ work, where an individual has to log a certain number of hours of free labour in order to receive their UBI payment, or an agreement to adhere to certain social practices or conventions.

If this were the case, then UBI would completely fail in its goal to reduce inequality, as only those who needed UBI would feel compelled to meet these requirements. The wealthy would simply opt not to collect it, giving them greater levels of freedom than their poorer counterparts.

Keeping it clean

Given the often duplicitous nature of politicians, campaigners who wish to see UBI implemented in its truest and purest state have a long road ahead of them to make this happen.

As some countries begin to make hesitant trials of the theory, campaigners will need to keep a close watch to ensure that the models being tested truly are UBI.

Whether it will be possible to battle against attempts to corrupt UBI remains to be seen, but it’s clear we’ll be hearing much more about UBI in the future.