An old joke has a physicist, a chemist, and an economist stranded on a desert island with a can of beans but no tool to open it. While the scientists try to actually forge a tool, the economist proposes they “assume” a can opener. For Alex Gourevitch and Lucas Stanczyk, this is more or less what’s happening in the basic income debate: in economistic fashion proponents assume the existence of a social movement that is already powerful enough to make this massive social policy proposal a reality.¹

Gourevitch and Stanczyk pour some much-needed cold water on the “utopian-cum-realist” discussion of basic income. Although I ultimately disagree with central parts of their essay, their contribution to the debate is very much welcome. Refreshingly, it avoids the common trap of the laundry list approach to critique: “Not only do I deplore eating meat on moral grounds, but also steak just tastes bad — plus it’s bad for your health!” Gourevitch and Stanczyk do not bully all the arguments into line; they have one central critique and argue for it persuasively.

The authors emphasize just how expensive a generous version of the policy really would be, and they stress that it requires a powerful coalition to cull the resources to fund it and take us from here to there. Thus, proponents such as myself have it backwards: it is not that basic income would empower people to demand more, but rather, any generous basic income demands resources that presume in advance the existence of a movement to extract them. Proponents assume a can opener. We assume our conclusions. Instead, for Gourevitch and Stanczyk, job one ought to be expanding the social power of poor and working people. And this happens not through social policy, but more or less in the usual way: traditional labor organizing.