How does basic income fit into the degrowth movement?

One of the things you hear whenever you talk about degrowth is that, if the economy doesn't grow, people are going to be without jobs, people will go hungry, and no one wants that. Rich countries might be able to afford slowing down their economies, but not poorer ones. You hear this argument mostly in countries from the Global South, like my own. This misses the point. Degrowth is a critique of our dependency on work. This idea that people have to work to stay alive, and thus the economy needs to keep growing for the sake of keeping people working.

Basic income goes well with the ideas of slowing down the economy, of becoming less dependent, and of stopping the increasing and continuous production of stuff that we don't really need. A UBI would precisely allow individuals the freedom to work less and to say no to negative jobs, for instance in the fossil fuels industry. It would also allow them to have more free time to take care of the people they care about.

You’ve mentioned care and freedom a couple times now. They seem central to your vision of a degrowth future. Could you say a little more about those?

In the economies that we have now, many of the policies that we have towards care are implicitly instrumental. Conditional cash transfers, for instance, revolve around the idea of building human capital. You give money to mothers to take care of their children, to send them to school, to send them to health check-ups, etc. This is not completely altruistic. It’s also about creating able citizens that will participate in economy.

Policies that truly care for others have freedom at their centre, and basic income seeks to enhance or maintain other people’s freedom. It gives them something, some livelihood, and a base from which to do something that might not necessarily contribute to GDP. It allows them to work if they want, but they might also chose to write poetry, take care of their garden, or do something else. This is the ultimate act of freedom – choosing what you do without anyone judging if you're actually contributing to the economy or to society.