Universal basic income: What difference might it make?

Growing global and national inequality, increased labour insecurity under industrial citizenship, and a shrinking labour market have resulted in an emerging 'precariat'population. Such insecurity, driven by inequalities and intensified by technological developments in robotics and automation, in the capitalist system and neoliberal social policies perpetuates stark division between the wealthy and the poor. Given these transformations, this article explores some examples of current Australian policy and professional practice responses from the human services sector to economic hardship. The critical analysis draws attention to the inadequacies prevalent in the existing Australian welfare system that are reinforced by hegemonic discourses. These same discourses in turn function as a barrier to explorations of alternative regimes of income management such as a Universal Basic Income (UBI). In this article, we also consider the way UBI might respond to some of the problems identified with our current system, and be more beneficial to the precariat