Universal basic income: utopian dream or libertarian nightmare?

Some free-market fanatics, meanwhile, have even advocated the idea of a relatively large UBI payment, but (and here’s the catch) only on the proviso that pesky public services – such as healthcare and education – are scrapped, i.e. privatised, and opened up to profit.

Far from strengthening the conquests made by previous generations, therefore, one can see how the demand for a UBI can equally be raised by those looking to roll back and destroy such gains. Rather than increasing the welfare state in a progressive way by redistributing society’s colossal wealth, a UBI could instead become a deeply regressive fig leaf for a wholesale attack on – and privatisation of – public services, bolstering the capitalist market instead of weakening it.