There is no arguing that basic income, welfare, disability benefit etc. are socialist. That is not deriding them, it is an accurate description. It's strange that this is a bad term in the US, not so here in the EU.
It's not even slightly socialist. People talk as if all government action is socialist, but socialism includes controlling the means of production not just taxes. In the end the problems with socialism are organizational in nature, and large corporations face the same issues of misaligned incentives.
Edit: A minimum wage is socialist a minimum income is not.
Since he mentions he is European, I think that he is thinking about Social Democracy rather than Socialism (which has a very clear economic meaning which, like you said, assumes state/social control of the means of production).
Friedman and Hayek were not socialists. One of the points is to get rid of the massive government overhead of distributing welfare. This particular aspect is anti-socialist.
Edit: A minimum wage is socialist a minimum income is not.
PS: Now you could call it collectivist.