1 Final Draft. Forthcoming in Social Theory and Practice. The Limits of Liberty-Based Arguments for a Universal Basic Income Fabian Wendt Abstract: The article argues that liberty-based arguments alone are not enough to justify a universal basic income, whether as a replacement of current welfare programs, or as an addition to them. Appeals to negative liberty, real freedom, republican liberty, and autonomy cannot show that a universal basic income is superior to (all kinds of) conditional benefits. To do so, proponents of a universal basic income will have to invoke values beyond liberty. Keywords: Universal Basic Income, Basic Income Guarantee, Freedom, Liberty, Autonomy. It is not only a matter of political rhetoric that 2020 Democratic candidate for presidency Andrew Yang called his proposal for a universal basic income (UBI) the “freedom dividend.” Prominent philosophical defenses of UBI in academia have often suggested a close connection between UBI and liberty as well. In this paper, I will argue that liberty-based arguments alone are not enough to justify a UBI. Liberty-based arguments may successfully show that we need some kind of safety- net in society (this will not be the article’s focus), 1 but to decide whether this safety-net should include a UBI – or even completely consist in a UBI – one needs more than liberty-based arguments. A UBI is, first of all, a regular (most likely monthly) payment by the state. The crucial feature that distinguishes a UBI from other state-run welfare benefits is that this payment is unconditional in several respects (see Van Parijs and Vanderborght 2017): It comes in cash, not in-kind (i.e., it is not conditional on what recipients use it for), it is obligation-free (e.g., not conditional on prove of willingness to work), it is not conditional on whether or how much one contributed to its funding, it is not subject to an income or means test, and it is not conditional on one’s family situation (e.g., on whether one is married or not). Strictly speaking, though, a UBI will realistically not possibly be unconditional in every respect: It will be conditional on residency or citizenship, and it may be conditional on age. Other than that, it is a payment with no strings attached and no questions asked. As far as possible, I will try to not get into the questions of how high a UBI should be, how it should be funded, and whether it is to replace all current welfare programs or rather be added into a bundle of welfare programs. 1 Proponents of UBI prefer the metaphor of a “floor to stand on” rather than a “safety-net,” because the former metaphor brings out the unconditionality of a UBI. But since I am concerned with comparisons between UBI and alternatives, I take the floor a UBI would provide as one specific type of safety-net.