Objections and answers
The objections to basic income are not all made in bad faith, and several are better than many of the arguments in favour. Here they appear in their strongest form, not the easiest one to knock down. Where we have no convincing answer, we say so.
«We cannot afford it»
This is the main objection and it deserves to be taken seriously: the sums involved are enormous.
The partial answer is that gross cost is not net cost. If basic income is paid to everyone and recovered progressively through income tax on higher earners, the effective expenditure is the difference, not the total. And part of it replaces existing benefits, along with the cost of administering them.
But a fact remains: even net of everything, a basic income sufficient to live on requires either higher taxation or a deep recomposition of public spending. Anyone claiming it finances itself is not credible. The honest question is not whether it costs, but whether it costs less than the alternatives — including the alternative of doing nothing while work transforms.
«People would stop working»
This is the most widespread fear and the one the evidence supports least. In the Finnish experiment recipients worked slightly more than the control group.
The answer needs qualifying, though, because the amount was low and the group narrow. With a sum sufficient to live on, some effect on labour supply is plausible, particularly on second household incomes and on the worst-paid occupations. Anyone claiming the effect would be zero is going beyond the data as much as anyone predicting collapse.
One question is rarely asked: if an economic activity stands up only because people cannot afford to refuse it, should that work be defended or rethought?
«It would push prices up, especially rents»
This is technically the strongest objection, and the answer is less solid than we would like.
In a housing market with inelastic supply — the situation in almost every European city — part of any cash transfer ends up with landlords as higher rents.
This is not an argument against basic income, but it is a decisive argument against the idea that it suffices on its own. Without policies on housing supply, part of the benefit would be absorbed. Anyone proposing a basic income while saying nothing about rents has not thought the problem through.
«It would dismantle the welfare state»
This objection comes from the left and it is legitimate, because a version of basic income exists that consists of exactly that: a payment per head and everything else dismantled, health and education included.
The position defended on this site is the opposite: basic income adds a floor, it does not replace universal services. Health, education, social housing and disability services must remain, because they answer needs that a sum of money does not cover. Someone with high medical needs is not helped by a cheque identical to everyone else's.
This distinction has to be held firmly, because two opposite proposals circulate under the same name.
«Why at European level and not national?»
A serious objection. Social protection is a member state competence, median incomes vary enormously across the Union, and a single figure would mean very different things in Luxembourg and in Bulgaria.
The answer is that the European level is for coordination, not for setting the amount. A country introducing a generous basic income alone, inside a single market with free movement, would face pressures no government wants to face by itself. Defining a common framework, with amounts anchored to national living costs, is precisely the kind of problem a Union exists to solve.
An objection we cannot answer well
The transition. Even granting that an end state with basic income is better than the present one, getting from here to there involves tax systems, contracts, pension expectations and political balances in twenty-seven countries.
No credible, detailed transition plan exists today. People who support basic income should spend less time defending the principle and more time writing that plan.