Universal Basic Income and the Economy Effect

This paper examines some of the ways in which proposals for "universal basic income" may have potential for conceptual innovation with respect to the object to which we refer as "the economy." Employing the work of Gibson-Graham and Mitchell, the paper suggests that we might think about practices related to the economy as acts of signification through which we produce and maintain the appearance of a difference between those aspects of human existence that are treated as part of the economy and those that are not. The paper then suggests that proposals for universal basic income have the potential to lead to conceptual innovation with respect to the ways in which we construct this line of distinction between the economy and the extra-economic. (C) 2020 by The Transformative Studies Institute. All rights reserved.