From Crackpot Idea to Mainstream Debate

Over the past decade, the proposal for a Universal and Unconditional Basic Income (UBI) has become a serious alternative in policy-making circles. UBI promises replace the complex welfare bureaucracy with a single benefit – abandoning targets (such as the unemployed) and activation instruments (such as job-search requirements). This disarmingly simple idea has inspired policy experiments in many countries, the Netherlands among them. I show how UBI became a credible policy alternative in the Netherlands, with the capacity to fundamentally alter the course of the welfare state, but also at the risk of losing the underlying revolutionary ideals.