CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2022
| Author | Gedutyte, Grete Veronika |
|---|---|
| Title | To UBI or not to UBI: Can universal basic income policies solve worker exploitation? |
| Summary | Universal basic income (UBI) policies are a family of proposals to regularly endow every person in a given population with unconditional cash transfers. These policy proposals are becoming increasingly popular because they promise to mitigate various urgent socio-economic and political issues such as poverty, unemployment, and exploitation. According to one of the most influential UBI proponents Philipe van Parijs, this is because generous monetary transfers would not only improve people’s financial situation, but also allow them to freely enter and exit the job market since people would no longer need to rely on paid employment to survive. UBI is an interesting redistributive mechanism in a way that it attracts cross-ideological support, ranging from libertarians to socialists. The main argument in support of UBI from the left is that it helps address worker exploitation by increasing workers’ bargaining power. The aim of this thesis was to challenge this notion. Given the lack of one agreed-upon definition of worker exploitation, I first explored three different accounts - Marxian exploitation as unequal exchange of labor, Roemerian exploitation as unequal access to resources and Vrousalis’ exploitation as domination. Since Vrousalis’ account emerges as the most cohesive and convincing because it addresses the shortcomings present in Marx’s and Roemer’s accounts, I tested UBI against his definition. I found three main reasons why UBI fails to address worker exploitation interpreted as domination - the need for additional income, employment gaps, and the non-monetary goods of work. I concluded by offering an alternative of strengthening welfare policies and democratizing workplaces which are better suited to deal with the worker exploitation in the current political and economic setting. |
| Supervisor | Gheaus, Anca |
| Department | Political Science MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2022/gedutyte_grete.pdf |
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