publications
Henderson, Troy, Spies-Butcher, Ben, and Klein, Elise. 2024. Flash in the pan or eureka moment? What can be learned from Australia's natural experiment with basic income during COVID-19. International Social Security Review, 77(1-2): 103-120.
The COVID-19 pandemic led to widespread social and economic policy experimentation as governments sought to protect household finances while locking down economies. Cash transfers emerged as one of the most popular policy measures, leading many to reflect on new possibilities for enacting universal basic income through temporary or emergency interventions. We take Australia’s pandemic response, and particularly its Coronavirus Supplement, as an example of this broader experimentation. We analyse the Supplement through the lens of an emergency basic income, arguing the measure reflected existing institutional structures and norms, forms of national and international policy learning, and vulnerabilities in Australia’s liberalized housing and labour markets. While temporary, we consider how its apparent success might suggest ongoing policy relevance, either as a form of capitalist “crisis management” or as an alternative pathway for implementing forms of basic income.
Spies-Butcher, Ben, and Bryant, Gareth. 2024. The history and future of the tax state: Possibilities for a new fiscal politics beyond neoliberalism. Critical Perspectives on Accounting, 98.
Neoliberalism is marked by fiscal austerity. Yet, in response to the COVID-19 crisis states again, briefly, began to exercise fiscal discretion. We reflect on the potential for a more enduring shift in fiscal politics beyond neoliberalism by placing recent developments in the historical context of the ‘tax state’. We make two claims. First, we argue that different phases of capitalism are reflected in, and can be understood through, changes in fiscal accounting practices that demarcate public and private, and mark turning points for the role of the state within capitalism. Charting the unravelling of the Keynesian welfare state, we propose a fiscal understanding of neoliberalism in which asymmetric applications of capital accounting practices facilitated the financialisation of the state. Second, we argue democratic pressures are giving rise to forms of ‘fiscal hybridity’ that reassert accounting symmetries between public and private wealth to potentially create ‘fiscal space'. We examine how the fiscal actions taken by states in response to COVID-19 express hybridity, reflecting contestation over neoliberal policy models that was emerging prior to the pandemic, as fiscal politics shifts the state’s focus to its role as creditor, underwriter and investor.
Staines, Zoe. 2025. Securing women’s economic security, safety, and freedom: the role of universal basic income in Australia. Routledge.
Universal basic income (UBI) as a policy measure for supporting economic security has attracted worldwide attention. This book contributes to the discussion by focusing on UBI’s potential impacts for women, including women of colour and First Nations women. Utilizing a “scenario interviewing” approach, the author worked with 26 diverse Australian women to imagine the potential implications of UBI for their own lives, as well as for women more broadly. The women talked about a range of possible impacts including poverty reduction, economic security, improved autonomy, and freedom from violence, which are sorted into overarching themes and chapters. Integrating these women’s narratives into the key arguments for and against UBI, this book provides a robust and readable introduction to relevant literature.
Spies-Butcher, Ben, Phillips, Ben, and Henderson, Troy. 2023. Between universalism and targeting: Exploring policy pathways for an Australian Basic Income. The Economic and Labour Relations Review, 31(4): 502-523.
Despite growing interest in proposals for a universal basic income, little advance has been made in implementation. Here we explore policy options for an Australian Basic Income. Our analysis responds to concerns that Basic Income is both too expensive and too radical a departure from existing welfare state structures to be a feasible policy option. Drawing on policy and Basic Income scholarship we identify changes to Australia’s current means-tested benefits structures that move substantially towards Basic Income while remaining consistent with historic policy norms, which we call ‘affluence testing’. Using microsimulation we explore fiscal and distributional trade-offs associated with the implementation of an affluence-tested Basic Income. Our results suggest Basic Income has the potential to significantly reduce inequality and poverty while also requiring taxes to rise substantially. Placing these trade-offs in international context we find the policy would reduce inequality to levels similar to Nordic welfare states while increasing overall taxation to approximately the OECD average
Staines, Zoe, Perales, Francisco (Paco), and Klein, Elise. 2025. Public Attitudes Towards Remunerating Unpaid Care: Exploring Socio-Demographic and Political Predictors. Australian Feminist Studies, 31(4): 502-523.
Despite growing interest in proposals for a universal basic income, little advance has been made in implementation. Here we explore policy options for an Australian Basic Income. Our analysis responds to concerns that Basic Income is both too expensive and too radical a departure from existing welfare state structures to be a feasible policy option. Drawing on policy and Basic Income scholarship we identify changes to Australia’s current means-tested benefits structures that move substantially towards Basic Income while remaining consistent with historic policy norms, which we call ‘affluence testing’. Using microsimulation we explore fiscal and distributional trade-offs associated with the implementation of an affluence-tested Basic Income. Our results suggest Basic Income has the potential to significantly reduce inequality and poverty while also requiring taxes to rise substantially. Placing these trade-offs in international context we find the policy would reduce inequality to levels similar to Nordic welfare states while increasing overall taxation to approximately the OECD average
Patulny, Roger, and Spies-Butcher, Ben. 2023. Come together? The unusual combination of precariat materialist and educated post-materialist support for an Australian Universal Basic Income. Journal of Sociology, 59(4): 894-913.
International studies using the European Social Survey (ESS) reveal higher support for Universal Basic Income (UBI) in poorer countries with less generous welfare systems, and among individuals with lower income and education, and leftist political leanings. We present data from the 2019−20 Australian Survey of Social Attitudes mirroring the ESS question. Australia falls in the middle of European opinion, with 51% supporting a UBI, increasing slightly during the onset of Covid-19. We also find higher support among two different groups: (1) those facing greater ‘material’ precarity, including younger, low-income, unemployed, suburban renters, and (2) those who have more post-materialist concerns, including Green-left voters and those favouring redistributive values. Unlike in other countries, higher education predicts more support, while homeownership predicts less. The article concludes with challenges to introducing UBI to Australia, including potentially contradictory strategies for different support bases (material vs post-material), ongoing commitments to means-testing, and negative framing in the media.
Cannizzo, Fabian, and Spies-Butcher, Ben. 2023. A basic income for a complex society: special issue introduction. Journal of Sociology, 59(4): 799-807.
Proposals for a Universal Basic Income (UBI) have a long history, but a surge of interest since the global financial crisis suggests a connection to growing inequality and insecurity. The pandemic intensified interest through the global explosion in the use of cash transfers. This special issue arose from pre-pandemic debates among Australian sociologists connecting global interest around UBI to emerging patterns of inequality and insecurity stemming from Australia's precarious labour market and expensive housing market. Those discussions broadened to reflect on Australia's colonial history and patriarchal economy, and the potential to recognise more diverse contributions and values. Evolving through the Covid crisis, the issue now incorporates the remarkable alternatives that were, briefly, made possible. The articles reflect both scepticism and optimism towards UBI, but all reveal how basic income can provide a useful lens for Australian sociology – a simple tool responding to an increasingly complex society.
Staines, Zoe. 2023. Work and wellbeing in remote Australia: Moving beyond punitive ‘workfare’. Journal of Sociology, 59(4): 808-827.
Australia's remote-focused ‘workfare’ program (Community Development Program, CDP) has produced overwhelmingly negative impacts, most of which have been borne by its ∼80% Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander participants. The Australian government has announced that CDP will end in 2023, though a replacement policy/program is not yet decided. Here, I bring three public proposals for replacement policies (wage subsidy, Job Guarantee, Liveable Income Guarantee) into conversation with one another, and compare these to the possibilities offered by a basic income. Drawing on documentary evidence, I discuss potential advantages and disadvantages of these alternatives, asking whether they might improve wellbeing and alleviate the harms experienced under CDP-style workfare.
Henderson, Troy. 2023. Disentangling the normative justification of basic income from the structure of the capitalist wage relation and the culture of the work ethic, Journal of Sociology, 59(4): 844-859.
This article contributes to the literature on basic income and work by articulating the case for disentangling the normative justification of basic income from the structural and temporal imperatives of the capitalist wage relation and the work ethic. It begins with a survey of the major normative justifications of basic income and their respective orientations towards capitalist development and labour markets. Next it presents an argument against tying the justification of basic income to posited labour supply responses based on predicted technological change, the extant empirical evidence from pilots or technical policy simulations. It then addresses the politico-cultural barrier to basic income presented by the wage relation and the work ethic, and critically evaluates the ‘exit option’ argument for basic income. The article concludes that asserting a right to an ad vitam basic income is an ethically justified and politically astute step towards a necessary decentring of (capitalist) work in basic income scholarship and advocacy.
Klein, Elise, Cook, Kay, Maury, Susan, and Bowey, Kelly. 2022. An exploratory study examining the changes to Australia’s social security system during COVID-19 lockdown measures. Australian Journal of Social Issues, 57(1): 51-69.
During the 2020 COVID-19 wave, the Australian Government made an additional $550 Coronavirus Supplement available for people receiving social security payments, and temporarily suspended mutual obligation requirements. By doing so, the government effectively gave people who had been long stigmatised and subject to punitive conditionality to compel them into the labour market, financial security and their time back. Drawing on survey responses from people who received the $550 Supplement and had their mutual obligation activities suspended or reduced, this research examines how people used their time during this period and whether it differed from pre-pandemic government policy. We find that the increase in payments through the Supplement and the suspension of mutual obligations impacted positively on people's lives including the (1) the ability of respondents to meet basic needs and improve their long-term financial security, (2) improvements to physical and emotional well-being, (3) increased labour market engagement and (4) engagement in other forms of unpaid productive work.
Spies-Butcher, Ben. 2020. Advancing universalism in neoliberal times? Basic income, workfare and the politics of conditionality. Critical Sociology, 46(4-5): 589-603.
Workfare is an exemplar of neoliberal welfare reform generating precarity. In response, critics have sought to advance a politics of universalism, through either a return to social democracy or the embrace of a universal basic income. Yet, these responses invoke different understandings of universalism. This paper explores the politics of universalism in the context of neoliberal reform to benefit systems. Using Australia as a case study, it applies a variegated understanding of neoliberalism to identify two distinct reform trajectories for family payments and unemployment benefits. While appearing to follow a common template of liberalization, in practice each trajectory fostered distinct social outcomes and political dynamics. I argue the more inclusive restructuring of family benefits reflected the influence of social movement pressure intersecting with an increasingly pro-competition and technocratic state, producing new, hybrid, patterns of universal social provision similar to forms of basic income. However, in reflecting on these political dynamics I highlight how the mobilization of universalism is contingent on existing welfare institutions, suggesting dangers in applying these lessons more broadly.
Fouksman, Elizabeth, Klein, Elise. 2019. Radical transformation or technological intervention? Two paths for universal basic income. World Development, 122: 492-500.
Universal basic income – the idea of guaranteeing a minimum level of income for all – has a long history of been framed as a radical proposal, a way to address issues ranging from wealth distribution and economic justice through to degrowth and gender equality. Yet an increasing number of proponents, especially in international development and public policy circles, see basic income as an efficient technological solution to poverty and economic insecurity. Critical development studies scholars have overwhelmingly problematized such ‘rendering technical’ of complex social, economic and political issues. In this paper, we use a critical development lens to point to two areas of particular danger to the transformative potential of basic income: coloniality and class relations. We do so through two case studies: a proposed basic income for Indigenous Australians and the support of UBI by high-net-worth individuals in California’s Silicon Valley. Using these two cases, we argue that despite best intentions, without critical engagement and nuance around questions of power, the radical potential of basic income may be jeopardized, with basic income becoming another technological quick-fix of development and policy interventions.
Adkins, Lisa and Ylöstalo, Hanna. 2020. Experimenting with Wellbeing: Basic Income, Immaterial Labour and Changing Forms of Productivity. Critical Sociology, 47(3): 373-387.
This article is concerned with the recent (2017–2018) basic income experiment in Finland. This experiment attracted global attention, not least because of its break from the conditionalities and sanctions associated with social security payments in workfare states. This article stresses, however, that it is critical to understand how the Finnish basic income experiment was part of a broader programme of government-led reform in Finland. As well as establishing the experiment as a preferred mode of policymaking, this programme contained a range of strategies aimed at restructuring labour supply. The article shows how the basic income experiment should be understood as a behavioural intervention designed to enhance the wellbeing of unemployed populations at a time when wellbeing is emerging as a value-producing capacity.
Klein, Elise, Mays, Jennifer, and Dunlop, Tim (Eds.) 2019. Implementing a basic income in Australia: pathways forward. Springer Nature.
This book brings together scholars from the fields of politics, philosophy, sociology, anthropology and economics, to explore pathways towards implementing a Basic Income in Australia. It is the first book of its kind to outline avenues for implementation of a basic income specifically for Australia and responds to a gap in the existing basic income literature and published titles to provide a distinct standpoint in the exploration of basic income within the Australian contemporary policy landscape. The first section of the book outlines some of the continuing substantive and philosophical issues regarding BI implementation. In the second section of the book, authors offer practical strategies and models for progressing BI in Australia.