The Universal Basic Income and utopian thought

Abstract

Universal Basic Income policy proposals are often presented as a utopian project aimed at building a new political, economic, and social reality. We formulate a critical view of such proposals based on two fundamental pillars: first, the skepticism of a theoretical, historical, and anthropological nature regarding projects based on utopian thinking; second, specific objections and constraints to the possible application of rbi in the field of public policy implementation. The article concludes that while rbi is an interesting idealization in the context of political theory, its implementation poses problems that are difficult to solve in most real contexts and, most importantly, rbi projects suffer from many of the risks characteristic of utopian projects and social constructivism.