Unconditional Basic Income in the Mirror of the New Socio-Economic and Epidemiological Reality

Abstract

The article is devoted to the issue of unconditional basic income as an institute in the field of social protection and a component of a new social contract in the coordinates of new socio-economic and epidemiological reality. The relevance of the study is due to the need to increase the level of social quality under conditions of exacerbation of risks and threats produced by new (digital) economy’s drivers and the coronavirus crisis’s scaling. New dangers and restrictions on social and labor development emerge under the influence of challenges posed by the “big bang-1” and the “big bang-2”, which stipulates the search for new “pillars” of distribution relations and social policy. The aim of the article is scientific argumentation of the institute of social and labor reality of the XXI century, unconditional basic income, in the context of building a new system of social protection on a post-industrial basis in accordance with principles of coherence, accessibility, transparency and fairness in order to ensure a socially acceptable standard and quality of life. Among the article’s elements of novelty is the author’s concept of unconditional basic income as one of the leading components of the new social contract; coverage of socio-economic essence and substantiation of scientific and applied meaning of unconditional basic income under conditions of new (digital) economy and network society development. The research goal is achieved through the use of systematic and interdisciplinary approaches; general scientific and special methods of scientific research: historical and logical, methods of analysis and synthesis, theoretical generalization, abstract-logical, induction and deduction, comparative analysis, system, synthesis, decomposition. The quintessence of the article is a scientific and applied substantiation of unconditional dimensions of basic income as an institute with a positive role in the field of distributive relations: the protection of income in the absence of employment guarantees on the one hand, and as a social project that should become the basis of a new paradigm of social protection in development of a “society without work” on the other. The basic principles of unconditional basic income introduction are revealed; the reasons that determine the necessity and expediency of unconditional basic income introduction are highlighted; new opportunities and potential risks in case of introduction of unconditional basic income are outlined; generalization of world practices of unconditional basic income’s elements introduction and the author’s vision of preconditions for a large-scale pilot project on unconditional basic income in Ukraine are provided.