Iceland will hold early elections in October following the resignation of former Prime Minister Gunnlaugsson. One aggregation of polls has the upstart Pirate Party in the lead by four percentage points, and the party may be in prime position to form Iceland’s next government. They have an eclectic suite of policies in their party platform, some of them interesting and not all of them desirable. In a narrow sense, their elevation could lead to the development of a basic income experiment due to the shortcomings they perceive in Iceland’s current welfare system. Another pilot program for a basic income could help find more answers to the many questions that still surround the idea.
Last year the party’s MPs introduced a proposal calling for the government to form a working group to investigate the feasibility of shifting to a basic income that would “replace, or at least simplify” their current system. As with most discussions about the desirability of such a shift, the details are incredibly important, and to a large extent these proposals cannot be evaluated until more elements of the plan are decided.