The David Pakman Show — a progressive news and politics talk show based in the United States — has broadcast several segments on basic income, such as an announcement of Finland’s plans to test the policy and an interview with BIEN’s Jason Burke Murphy. Pakman himself is attracted to the idea of a basic income.

David Pakman’s latest video on the topic, published on September 1, is a critique of the latest plans for a Finnish basic income experiment, which Pakman says is “set up to fail” and a “bogus way” to test basic income:

YouTube player

In his criticism, Pakman focuses on the fact that Finland plans only to test the effect of the basic income on individuals who are already receiving unemployment benefits, rather than considering a representative sample of the population. He also identifies a tension between the main objective of the Finnish experiment — that is, to test whether a basic income can promote participation in traditional jobs — and the major theoretical justification of basic income as a way to adapt to changes in the nature of jobs and work.

Pakman is not alone in raising criticisms and concerns with the design and scope of Finland’s basic income experiment. See, for example, Toru Yamamori’s interviews with several experts on the experiments and members of the Finnish Green Party. Other critical responses — such as those of Leonid Bershidsky and Basic Income News editor-in-chief André Coelho have focused on the fact that the experiment is to test only a “partial” basic income.


Reviewed by Dawn Howard

Cover image CC BY-SA 2.0 Lauri Heikkinen