Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Utopias for Realists
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 4/26/1988
WEBSITE: https://www.rutgerbregman.com/
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY: Dutch
https://www.ted.com/speakers/rutger_bregman
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: no2012125763
Personal name heading:
Bregman, Rutger, 1988-
Associated country:
Netherlands
Birth date: 1988
Found in: Met de kennis van toen, 2012: t.p. (Rutger Bregman)
OCLC database viewed 19 Sept. 2012 (heading: Bregman,
Rutger, 1988- )
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PERSONAL
Born 1988, in Westenschouwen, Netherlands.
EDUCATION:Attended Utrecht University and the University of California Los Angeles; holds an M.A. degree.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer, journalist, and historian. De Volkskrant (a dutch national newspaper), journalist, 2012-13; Correspondent, journalist, 2013—.
AWARDS:Belgian Liberales Prize for best nonfiction book, 2013, for The History of Progress; European Press Prize (two-time nominee), for journalism at the Correspondent.
WRITINGS
Contributor to newspapers, including the Washington Post and the London Guardian. Authors work has been translated into twenty-four languages.
SIDELIGHTS
Rutger Bregman is a Dutch writer, journalist, and historian. His works include four volumes of history, philosophy, and economics, most available only in the original Dutch language, noted a writer on the Rutger Bregman Website. He is a journalist worked for the Correspondent, which he described to Bookseller writer Caroline Sanderson as a “place between academia and traditional journalism where I can write about whatever I want, but in an accessible way for a larger audience.” He has also been a reporter for the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant. Bregman attended Utrecht University and the University of California Los Angeles and holds an M.A. in history.
Bregman is a believer in finding new ways to solve the problems that surround us while at the same time applying existing concepts that have shown great promise for alleviating many of our most pressing woes, even if they are controversial. In Utopia for Realists: How We Can Build the Ideal World, he provides an in-depth consideration of Utopian thinking and how it can be applied in a practical way to ensure an end to major social and economic problems. “In response to soaring inequality, stubbornly high levels of poverty and very long working hours, Bregman puts forward bold proposals for creating a better society,” commented a reviewer in the London Independent.
Among Bregman’s recommendations are a basic universal income that provides a guaranteed monthly amount of money to everyone, regardless of condition or economic status. He suggests cutting the work week to fifteen hours. He thinks GDP should be replaced as a measurement of a country’s economic health and prosperity. He supports measures that will rein in the excesses of the financial industry and the rich, such as transaction taxes and curtailment of overseas tax haves. He also believes that open borders will create an environment in which economic prosperity can reach larger sections of the world’s population through migration.
The idea of universal income, for example, “is about eradicating poverty. It’s about real positive freedom, about being given the means to actually get up and do something that you love, that matters, without being worried about paying rent,” Bregman said to interviewer Claudia Cahalane on the website Positive News.
“Bregman is also good on our thinking about poverty, which has barely advanced beyond the poorhouse and debtors’ prison,” commented Simon Caulkin, writing in Management Today. “The poor are endlessly resourceful in the daily struggle to survive, and research shows that bad choices in more strategic matters are mostly the result of poverty rather than fecklessness. Poverty, like torture, addles the wits, which makes it similarly unproductive, clamping people in dependence and demeaning both them and the people who inflict it,” Caulkin further stated.
For Bregman, journalists also have a responsibility for helping to relieve some of the world’s biggest problems. “We need journalists to tell new stories about our world. In the Netherlands there were more people volunteering to help refugees than there were refugees. My sister called me to say she was on a waiting list to help. But the media isn’t interested in this,” he told Cahalane.
“If you’re looking for the blueprint for a better tomorrow, you’ll find it in Rutger Bregman’s Utopia for Realists,” remarked Natalie Shoemaker, writing on the website Big Think. Bregman “engages readers in a mix of stories and evidence-based studies, showing us this utopia is within our grasp,” Shoemaker also commented. The London Independent reviewer called Bregman’s book a “brilliantly written page-turner. It goes into serious depth, without ever feeling dense, as it weaves its way through the challenges we face and onto proposals for doing things differently.” A Kirkus Reviews contributor called the book a “provocative pleasure to contemplate.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Bookseller, December 9, 2016, Caroline Sanderson, “Rutger Bregman: The Young Historian from Holland Has a Swathe of Contentious Proposals in His Slender Manifesto for Creating a Better Society,” review of Utopia for Realists, p. 40.
Independent (London), March 22, 2017, Caroline Lucas, “Utopia for Realists by Rutger Bregman Review: A Brilliantly Written and Unorthodox Page-Turner,” review of Utopia for Realists; March 26, 2017, “Dreaming Seriously,” review of Utopia for Realists.
Kirkus Reviews Jan. 15, 2017, review of Utopia for Realists.
Management Today, March 1, 2017, Simon Caulkin, “Books: Thinking outside the Box.” review of Utopia for Realists, p. 21.
ONLINE
Big Think, http://www.bigthink.com/ (October 31, 2017), Natalie Shoemaker, review of Utopia for Realists.
Positive News, http://www.positive.news/ (July 12, 2016), Claudia Cahalane, “Rutger Bregman: It’s Time to Think Utopian,” interview with Rutger Bregman.
Public Broadcasting Service Website, http://www.pbs.org/ (October 31, 2017), biography of Rutger Bregman.
Rutger Bregman Website, https://www.rutgerbregman.com (October 31, 2017).
Rutger Bregman (1988) is a historian and author. He has published four books on history, philosophy, and economics.
His History of Progress was awarded the Belgian Liberales prize for best nonfiction book of 2013. The Dutch edition of Utopia for Realists became a national bestseller and sparked a basic income movement that soon made international headlines. The book will be translated in 24 languages.
Bregman has twice been nominated for the prestigious European Press Prize for his journalism work at The Correspondent. His work has been featured in The Washington Post, The Guardian and on the BBC.
Rutger Bregman (1988) is a historian and author. He has published four books on history, philosophy, and economics.
His History of Progress was awarded the Belgian Liberales prize for best nonfiction book of 2013. His work has been featured in The Washington Post, The Guardian and on the BBC.
Rutger Bregman: It’s time to think utopian
Claudia Cahalane
By Claudia Cahalane
12 July, 2016
Rutger Bregman is reimagining utopia. The 28-year-old Dutch historian and author says we have all the ideas we need, including the 15-hour work week, open borders and a universal basic income
What’s your vision of utopia for realists?
When we think of progress these days we only really think of technology. We don’t really think of the social ways we could change things. We lack radical vision. The bigger idea of my book, Utopia for Realists, is that we need to relearn how to think utopian. I propose ideas for real progress such as the universal basic income, the 15-hour working week and open borders. They’re old ideas, but I try to breathe new life into them.
What inspires and motivates you?
Ideas throughout history. The 15-hour work week is an old concept that goes back to economist John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946). As a historian I was looking at the fact that in the 50s, 60s and 70s, the left and the right believed that the working week would continue to shrink with things like automation, and we would all be left working out the big question of how to live a good life. But in today’s labour market we struggle with work-related burnout and depression. I also wondered why we still have poverty in rich countries.
What would a society with a 15-hour working week look like?
For some of us the line is blurred between work and what we love, so our lives wouldn’t change much. But for many, there is a clear distinction between what’s work and the rest of life. A poll last year in the UK asked people whether they found their jobs meaningful – 37 per cent said no. I think we need to work less in certain jobs in order to do more of what matters and what is meaningful and important to society, such as caring and volunteering.
What is the role of the universal income in your utopia?
It’s about eradicating poverty. It’s about real positive freedom, about being given the means to actually get up and do something that you love, that matters, without being worried about paying rent.
_75Q0593
Could a universal basic income work?
It’s due to be trialled in 20 cities in the Netherlands from January 2017, as well as in Finland and Canada.
In the 1970s, a fascinating universal basic income experiment started in Dauphin, Canada. It raised 1,000 families above the poverty level. An army of researchers descended on the town to monitor the effects. But a few years later, a conservative government pulled the plug before any analysis.
More than 25 years later, Canadian economist Evelyn Forget accessed the archives and discovered it had been a huge success: kids performed better at school, demand for healthcare dropped, and people were able to spend more time on things that mattered.
It also didn’t reduce the motivation to work. In fact, mental health improved and shame decreased.
US president Richard Nixon even came close to introducing it in the 70s, but was dissuaded.
How would open borders help?
By far the most effective tool we have for fighting poverty is migration. When 60 per cent of income is dependent on where you’re born, borders are the biggest source of injustice in the world. Research from the World Bank shows that if richer countries allowed in three per cent more migrants, this would do more than three times as much as all development aid combined.
The world is wide open for everything but people; globally, a huge amount of human talent and potential is being wasted. Seven different studies have shown that, depending on the level of movement in the global labour market, the estimated growth in ‘gross worldwide product’ would be in the range of 67 per cent to 172 per cent. Effectively, open borders would make the whole world twice as rich and pull more people out of poverty.
How can people be convinced of this?
The problem is we base our worldview nowadays on the media. Most people in western countries are pretty happy individually, but when asked about their country they say it’s all going downhill. The news is almost always pessimistic. It’s about the exceptions, not about the banality of the good, not the many tiny acts of kindness that happen every day.
Do we need more positive news?
We need journalists to tell new stories about our world. In the Netherlands there were more people volunteering to help refugees than there were refugees. My sister called me to say she was on a waiting list to help. But the media isn’t interested in this.
The journalism platform I work for, The Correspondent, tries to look much more at structural trends instead of the exceptions. I think it all starts with thinking differently, talking differently: journalists have a huge responsibility.
Books: Thinking outside the box
Simon Caulkin
(Mar. 1, 2017): p21.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Haymarket Media Group
http://www.haymarket.com/home.aspx
Rutger Bregman's ideas for a better society are a breath of fresh air, but don't expect the book to provide an economic blueprint, says Simon Caulkin.
Utopia for Realists: And How We Can Get There
Rutger Bregman
Bloomsbury, pounds 16.99
This book, by young Dutch historian Rutger Bregman, is a riot of forgotten stories (in 1970 US President Richard Nixon came within a hair's breadth of implementing a universal basic income); counterintuitive propositions ('The big reason people are poor is that they don't have enough money, and it shouldn't come as any surprise that giving them money is a great way to reduce that problem'); and unlikely facts (someone on the poverty line in the US - or UK - is in the top 14% of the world's income bracket and thus part of the global elite).
This, plus a liberal sprinkling of spirited quotes and a first-rate translation from the Dutch, makes Bregman's book, which had a big impact in the Netherlands when it came out last year, an enjoyable and provocative read. But be warned: if you expect a linear, detailed economic case for 'a universal basic income, open borders, and a 15-hour workweek', as you might from reviews, and the title, of a previous edition of the book in English, you'll be disappointed.
Bregman's purpose is different. As he sees it, borrowing from Francis Fukuyama, the West has reached an 'end of history' moment - a bleak land of plenty where we are so obsessed with growth, hotness and consumerism that we don't even know how well off we are. The real crisis of our times and his generation ('pampered', not jilted, as others have complained), is 'not that we don't have it good, or even that we might be worse off later on. No, the real crisis is that we can't come up with anything better.'
So treat his ideas - a new measure to replace GDP and an end to the obsession with paid work, as well as the big three mentioned above - as purposeful thought experiments. His chief aim is to let some fresh air and ambition into the crimped, reductive thinking that (for example) sees the EU just as a narrow nexus of material and trading relationships; or humans as the rational utility maximisers of Chicago economics. Time and again, yesterday's out-of-the-question (an end to slavery or child labour, universal suffrage) becomes the next day's normal: the key is to be thinking it when the consensus breaks apart 'Only a crisis ... produces real change,' said Milton Friedman. 'When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around.'
In this attempt to enlarge the range of the politically thinkable, Bregman mostly succeeds. Take the chapter on open borders. In the era of Brexit and the Mexican wall, the notion of frictionless migration is, of course, beyond impossible. Yet once he has taken you through the history of borders (lines on paper), passports (recent), human development (inseparable from migration), and the busy global movement of everything else (capital, goods, information), his characterisation of the current situation as a kind of apartheid seems both justified and intolerable. Twenty-five years after the - universally applauded - fall of the Berlin wall, barriers are sprouting everywhere like barbed-wire nettles. Yet free migrations and open borders are the greatest economic lubricant known to man. What if ...?
Bregman is also good on our thinking about poverty, which has barely advanced beyond the poorhouse and debtors' prison. The poor are endlessly resourceful in the daily struggle to survive, and research shows that bad choices in more strategic matters are mostly the result of poverty rather than fecklessness. Poverty, like torture, addles the wits, which makes it similarly unproductive, clamping people in dependence and demeaning both them and the people who inflict it.
He demonstrates how welfare states, which are managed to minimise cost rather than for positive purpose, become their opposite - regimes of surveillance and punishment rather than a safety net. Studies show that investing directly in poor people offers double or triple the returns of spending on palliatives like police, social work and the courts.
Not all his big ideas are quite so compelling, however, and in some places the structure of the book shows signs of last-minute tinkering - for a foreign audience? Slightly unsettlingly, Bregman admits that he himself might not be immune to the cognitive dissonance - relying on 'alternative facts' rather than changing one's deepest convictions when faced by disconfirming evidence - that is one of the biggest obstacles to real change. Nonetheless, as angry populism invades the ideas vacuum left by the exhaustion of today's mainstream political currents, there's no denying the topicality of Bregman's wake-up call. If his book doesn't cause you to challenge at least one of your assumptions about what is and isn't politically thinkable, you may have reached a personal post-historical phase yourself.
Simon Caulkin is a management writer and an ex-editor of MT
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Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Caulkin, Simon. "Books: Thinking outside the box." Management Today, 1 Mar. 2017, p. 21. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA483555755&it=r&asid=c7f490c460521a0a645a74e14ad85573. Accessed 9 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A483555755
Bregman, Rutger: UTOPIA FOR REALISTS
(Jan. 15, 2017):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Bregman, Rutger UTOPIA FOR REALISTS Little, Brown (Adult Nonfiction) $27.00 3, 14 ISBN: 978-0-316-47189-3
A spirited and practical manifesto for improving the odds of making a heaven on Earth.Dutch journalist and economist Bregman opens with an ennobling proposition. "In the past," he writes, simply, "everything was worse." Then, a couple of hundred years ago, something happened: technological innovations allowed wealth and social welfare to spread, such that "a homeless person receiving public assistance today has more to spend than the average Dutch person in 1950, and four times more than people in Holland's Golden Age." Utopia, or nearly so--at least from the point of view of someone born as recently as in the times of Georgian England. So what happened? Well, there's predatory capitalism, the rise of a social order that encourages us not to care about others, and, perhaps worst of all, the advent of a supermechanized age in which "advancing technologies are laying waste to ever more jobs." What to do? Counsels Bregman in a spry, engaging argument, if we can't smash the machines--and that would be a start--then we can certainly try to stay a step ahead of them, for education will play an important role in the near-future economy "as long as machines can't go to college." Meanwhile, in the interest of political stability, if nothing else, the advanced nations might take a more proactive approach in sharing the wealth, not just within their own borders, but everywhere. Then there's perhaps the most utopian ideal of all, the idea that when we choose to work, we ought to be working at something that we find important and with intrinsic value--that, and, well, monkey-wrenching the system, and all with an eye to living more satisfying and healthy lives, the pronounced goal of a whole library of self-help books. Raise the minimum wage? No. Give everyone a basic income, smash the machines, and work a couple of days per week--that's the ticket. A provocative pleasure to contemplate.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Bregman, Rutger: UTOPIA FOR REALISTS." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Jan. 2017. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA477242500&it=r&asid=980f7d9abb9edad8c822d1a5db256327. Accessed 9 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A477242500
Rutger Bregman: the young historian from Holland has a swathe of contentious proposals in his slender manifesto for creating a better society
Caroline Sanderson
.5738 (Dec. 9, 2016): p40.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 The Bookseller Media Group (Bookseller Media Ltd.)
http://www.thebookseller.com
Had 28-year-old Dutch historian Rutger Bregman pursued his original personal utopia, he would have completed a PhD on some obscure aspect of the history of the Netherlands, and he would be well on his way to a career in academia. And we would probably never have heard of him. A desire to grapple with "the big questions in life", however, led Bregman to give up his youthful dream of becoming a history professor and turn to journalism instead, first for national Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant, and for the past three years at nascent journalism platform The Correspondent ("a place between academia and traditional journalism where I can write about whatever I want, but in an accessible way for a larger audience", Bregman tells me).
Now he has also written Utopia for Realists: And How We Can Get There (Bloomsbury, March), a must-read "big ideas" book with the potential to rival Thomas Piketty's Capital and the works of Yuval Noah Harari in its impact. In an admirably concise 170 pages, it considers how we can bring fresh perspectives--new utopias, no less--to the way in which we run our societies.
Speaking impeccable English down the line from the Netherlands, Bregman tells me more about the genesis of his book. "I came of age in an era of apolitical technocracy, where we weren't allowed to dream big anymore. A time when, as Francis Fukuyama famously said, we were at the end of history and all that was left for our politicians to do was to give us a little bit more purchasing power, nudge down income tax by a few per cent, and wait for the new iPhone. I always had the sense that we were missing something"
That missing something, Bregman argues, is utopian thinking. "Every milestone of civilisation--the end of slavery, equal rights--started as a utopian fantasy, something originally regarded as completely impossible, even dangerous. I realised that the problem of our time wasn't that we didn't have it good ... there's a lot of evidence that we're richer, wealthier, healthier than ever before. It was that we no longer have any radical ideas about how we can improve our societies" This need for a new set of radical ideas particularly struck Bregman in the wake of the financial crisis of 2008. "It's clear that many people are yearning for ideas that go beyond the traditional left-right divide. It's become more urgent still after Brexit and Trump"
At the heart of Utopia for Realists is Bregman's proposal that we should give everyone a guaranteed basic income as a way of tackling the glaring Inequalities in Western societies. He quotes numerous experiments, including one with homeless men in the City of London which showed the astonishingly positive results of giving people the wherewithal to cover their basic needs. With roots going back to the late 18th century, the idea of a universal basic income is actually nothing new, and has had some surprising historical supporters, including President Nixon, who came very close to introducing it. "It's absolutely not party political. Indeed there are many right-wing arguments in favour of it because it gives people the freedom to make something of their lives. Because poverty is hugely expensive, it's also a good investment policy because you get high returns in the form of more tax income, lower healthcare costs, and so on."
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
The concept of a universal basic income also represents a paradigm shift in our concept of what "work" actually is, argues Bregman. "If you look at our economies, you see teachers, garbage workers, care workers, all working very hard and making our world a much better place but earning comparatively little. And then we also have a huge number of consultants and lawyers and bankers, doing what the American anthropologist David Graeber calls 'bullshit jobs'. If you ask these workers themselves, they'll say, 'actually my work isn't that useful' A recent YouGov poll found that 37% of the working population in the UK think they have a bullshit job. It's bizarre that our economy promotes bullshit jobs over useful, meaningful work.
"We need to redefine what work actually is. It's a fallacy that a higher salary is automatically a reflection of societal value." Bregman laments the fact that that "bullshit jobs" are also leading to a dearth of true innovation in society. "There's this great quote from someone who worked at Facebook, who said 'the greatest minds of my generation are thinking about how to get people to click on ads'"
So far, so thought-provoking. But where are we going to find the leaders who will give these ideas a chance? The UK hardly feels like a political landscape fertile for utopian thinking right now. "When we think about change, we look first to politics at the national level, so we look to Westminster, we look to Washington. But I think that's the wrong way to look at it. Change often starts at the local level. Take the idea of a basic universal income in the Netherlands. In 2013, no one knew what I was talking about. But gradually, people--young, old, from the right, from the left--started saying, 'Can't we start something in our municipality?' Next year, more than 20 cities in the Netherlands are going to start a basic income experiment. And now there are politicians and journalists at national level saying, 'Oh, we need to find out about this.' These things happen gradually, it's a direction of thought."
One of the strengths of Utopia for Realists is that it provides a bracing primer on economics for people who, like me, think it's a subject above their heads. "Economics is basically about the meaning of life," says Bregman. "If you go back to the first economists of the political era, all the great thinkers--like John Stuart Mill and Adam Smith--were also philosophers who asked the big moral questions. What is growth? What is progress? What makes our lives truly worthwhile?"
Among the other radical ideas in Utopia for Realists are a 15-hour working week; the ditching of GDP as a reliable measure of a country's true prosperity; a transactions tax to rein in the financial industry; measures against overseas tax havens to help developing countries; and most controversial of all, post-Brexit, post-Trump--open borders: "Opening up our borders ... even just a crack ... is by far the most powerful weapon we have in the global fight against poverty." I defy you to digest the statistic that a mere 62 people are richer than the poorest half of the whole world's population and remain unmoved by the need for utopian thinking.
If you're still feeling cynical, you're displaying a 21st century mindset, says Bregman. "A negative image of human nature is particular to our age. We think that most people can't be trusted, that they want to rig the system. The media plays a huge role in this prevailing view. One of the most revolutionary things you can say right now is that most people are pretty nice. And you know what? It turns out to be empirically true as well. Most people pay their taxes on time, most people are quite altruistic. Time and time again, if you assume the good in people, then that's what you get."
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Imprint Bloomsbury
Publication 09.03.17
Formats 16.99 [pounds sterling] HB/ 14.99 [pounds sterling] EB
ISBNs 9781408890264/857
Rights sold uK (bloomsbury), US (Little, brown), Germany (Rowohlt), Spain (Salamandra), Italy (Feltrinelli), France (Le Seuil), Catalan (grup62), Sweden (Natur och Kultur), Portugal (bertrand), Poland (Czarna Owca), Korea (gimm- Young), greece (Psichogios), Turkey (Domingo), Japan pungeishunju)
Editor Alexis Kirschbaum, bloomsbury
Agent rebecca Carter, Janklow & nesbit
QUICK CV
1988
Born in westenschouwen, Netherlands
2007-2012
MA in History; studied at Utrecht University and the University of California, Los Angeles
2012
Publishes first book, Met de kennis van toen (With the Knowledge of Then), followed by De geschiedenis van de vooruitgang(The History of Progress)
2012-2013
works for Dutch national newspaper De Volkskrant
2013-present
works for Dutch journalism platform The Correspondent
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Sanderson, Caroline. "Rutger Bregman: the young historian from Holland has a swathe of contentious proposals in his slender manifesto for creating a better society." The Bookseller, 9 Dec. 2016, p. 40+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA473458642&it=r&asid=2abb943d8cdb116fd5e0019c15f509a9. Accessed 9 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A473458642
DREAMING SERIOUSLY
(Mar. 26, 2017): News: p82.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Independent Digital News and Media Limited
http://www.independent.co.uk/
Utopia for Realists: And How We Can Get There by Rutger Bregman
****
Rutger Bregman's new book isn't traditional bestseller material. Packed full of case studies, graphs and complex ideas -- you might expect it to appeal to a small niche of people who are actively involved in politics, but instead it's created quite a storm here in Britain.
In case you haven't heard Bregman on the radio, seen him on TV or read one of the many reviews of Utopia for Realists here's the thrust of his argument: humans have moved forwards a lot in the last two centuries but we're now stalling. In response to soaring inequality, stubbornly high levels of poverty and very long working hours, Bregman puts forward bold proposals for creating a better society.
There's clearly no single explanation for Utopia for Realists finding its way onto the bestseller list, but there are certainly some obvious factors at play. For starters, it's a brilliantly written page-turner. It goes into serious depth, without ever feeling dense, as it weaves its way through the challenges we face and onto proposals for doing things differently.
Many others have written about the basic income -- the proposal to give every citizen a non-means tested payment from the state -- but very few have done so in such a compelling way as Bregman. He cites and explains numerous examples where providing people with state provision has set them free. From a homeless project in right-wing Utah, which gave people free apartments, to the Speenhamland System of 18th century England; his use of real life illustrations of the potential for a basic income is deeply persuasive.
But it isn't just his writing style or use of case studies which has made Bregman's book take off as it has -- it's also tapped into something big happening in politics: the rise of right-wing populism and the consistent failure of the left to paint a picture of the kind of world we want to live in. Three stories really struck me last week as I read Utopia for Realists. The first was that child poverty in Britain is now at four million -- back to 2010 levels -- and the second was the continued rise in zero hours jobs. We have an economy that functions in some traditional sense (it's growing a little) but leaves young people at the bottom of a ladder with rungs so far apart that they stand little chance of climbing. And we have a jobs market that's changing beyond recognition. As Bregman points out so well the left simply haven't been offering a vision of how we'd do things differently -- instead finding ourselves trapped in a period of what he calls "underdog socialism", where we accept the premise of the mainstream debate and fail to put forward serious alternatives. There are, of course, reasons for underdog socialism to have thrived. When the Government is attempting to hack away at the welfare state and deregulate the entire economy it's hard not to be in defensive mode. But Bregman is right to call progressives out -- and he echoes Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams in his calls for us to move away from what they call "folk politics" and demand what some might call the impossible.
This is where the third story comes in: the recent election in Bregman's home country of the Netherlands. The big story there, unwritten by much of the media, was a huge surge in support for a green/left offering a bold vision of a different kind of country. They were looking to the future -- and providing a serious counterweight to the politics of hate championed by Gert Wilders.
Of course demanding the seemingly impossible is made a lot easier with hard evidence and what's lacking from Bregman's analysis is a rigorous economic account of how we might pay for a basic income and a shorter working week. He's right to point out that poverty costs the economy billions, and that overworked employees are inefficient -- but a detailed appendix on how a country might change its tax system to pay for such policies would have been useful.
Thankfully work on the costs of different basic income schemes is being done elsewhere. The University of Bath's paper on the subject sheds useful light on the price of paying everyone a basic income-- and thinktanks like Compass and the RSA are pushing ahead with research in the area too. The best way to model such a scheme would, of course, be for the Government to conduct its own pilot -- something I've been pressing them to do -- but such a move seems way off for now.
There's no doubt that Bregman is a savvy operator. In his latest tour promoting his book he used right-wing language to sell his basic income proposals: "It's just a floor in the income distribution. Everyone will have the means to take risks. That's what capitalism is all about." He might be right to think that a right-wing frame for basic income will help sell it, but we must also be very wary that some on the right would like to use the idea to undermine the welfare state -- and that his language could, therefore, be risky. Only by setting the payments at a high enough level, and guaranteeing additional help for those who need it, can we ensure that it's not hijacked. A successful basic income should be, by its nature, taking us away from consumerist capitalism -- not propping it up.
Bregman's book adds to a growing list of compelling accounts in favour of radically restructuring our economy. From Paul Mason's Postcapitalism, to Naomi Klein's This Changes Everything there is a wealth of literature out there making the case for bolder, bigger left-wing politics. It's now time to put this practice into reality. As Bregman points out, the Left failed to make gains in 2008 despite a global crisis of capitalism and, as he says, it will take both the courage to be utopian, and a good sense of timing too, to ensure that at the next opportunity we don't "hear the clock strike midnight and find ourselves just sitting around, empty-handed, waiting for an extraterrestrial salvation that will never come".
'Utopia for Realists' by Rutger Bregman (Bloomsbury, [pounds sterling]15.29). Caroline Lucas is co-leader of the Green Party
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"DREAMING SERIOUSLY." Independent [London, England], 26 Mar. 2017, p. 82. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA487076524&it=r&asid=74c5b1b3ae88f8a48f92b900d40890a1. Accessed 9 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A487076524
Rutger Bregman's 'Utopia for Realists' Shows Us Why We Deserve Universal Basic Income
Over a year ago
by Natalie Shoemaker
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If you're looking for the blueprint for a better tomorrow, you'll find it in Rutger Bregman's Utopia for Realists. Its premise is simple: we should adopt a universal basic income plan for all citizens, work less, and open up our borders. Crazy, right?
Why Everyone Should Get Free Money
The concept of free money for everyone, no strings attached, isn't new. Researchers have been testing this idea for decades. But no country has come closer to actually implementing a basic income program than the United States did under President Richard Nixon. His bill, which would have allowed every citizen the right to a basic yearly income passed the House twice, but was stalled in the Senate by the Democrats, because they felt the payment was too low.
I was wholly unaware of this history and of the many studies that have been conducted to prove a basic income does not turn its recipients into lazy do-nothings. “For three years now I’ve been reading everything on basic income I could get my hands on,” Bregman said in an interview with Gawker. “Not once have I come across a basic income experiment that led to mass laziness.”
The most popular study on the effects of basic income took place in Manitoba between 1974 and 1979 where everyone received a “Mincome” (minimum income) of $9,000 a year (by today's standards) from the government, no strings attached. Evelyn Forget, an economist and professor at the University of Manitoba, who looked over the data from the study says there was a 9 percent reduction in working hours among two main groups of citizens. But the reasons why give insight into how basic income can dramatically change the course of someone's life.
Married women were using their additional income to extend their maternity leaves and spend more time with their infants, and teenage boys were using that income to stay in school.
“When we interviewed people, we discovered that prior to the experiment, a lot of people from low-income families, a lot of boys in particular, were under a fair amount of family pressure to become self-supporting when they turned 16 and leave school. When Mincome came along, those families decided that they could afford to keep their sons in high school just a little bit longer,” Forget told PRI in an interview.
What this study and others like it have found is free money empowers people with the ability of choice, the choice to make a different life for yourself. “Poverty is fundamentally about a lock of cash. It's not about stupidity,” economist Joseph Hanlon said. “You can't pull yourself up by your bootstraps if you have no boots.”
Watch Rutger Bregman explain what happened when 13 homeless men on the streets of London were given £3,000 cash, no strings attached. What they spent it on my surprise you.
People aren't stupid, poverty makes people stupid. In psychology it's known as the “scarcity mentality” and when people don't have enough, it causes them to behave differently. When someone is in a constant state of worry about where their next meal is coming from, mental bandwidth becomes compromised, causing people to make unwise decisions.
Rutger Bregman engages readers in a mix of stories and evidence-based studies, showing us this utopia is within our grasp. Its a lesson in psychology, history, and economics, which all point to why basic income would eliminate poverty and save us money. After all, isn't it the goal to live better than our parents and grandparents did? To make sure the next generation can live better than us? Basic income may indeed the answer. But first we have to willing to accept it. This book has made me a believer.
The 15-hour Work Week
Rutger Bregman's second big crazy idea is the 15-hour work week, a concept most of us would be able to get behind. He brings up the concept of “bullshit jobs,” occupations that really have no value. Anthropologist David Graeber describes them as jobs that, if they were to disappear, would throw the country in chaos.
I work one of these “bullshit jobs,” a social media analyst provides no real need in the world—I'm not developing a cure for cancer—but it helps pay the bills, so in my spare time I can volunteer or write more investigative in-depth stories. But if we reduce the work week, we could share in the necessary jobs (e.g. teachers, nurses, engineers, and garbage collectors) and even increase efficiency. He also proposes a tax reform which incentives more meaningful work, encouraging our best and brightest to go into teaching rather than a career on Wall Street.
Open Borders
His third big idea may be considered more radical than basic income to many in America: open borders. This issue is more a question of morality, though, it does come with the incentive of economic growth.
Consider this: The biggest determining factor in a persons health, wealth, and life expectancy is where they're born. America's poorest citizens are still quite rich when compared to the world's poorest. The problem with this idea is acceptance. There are several faulty arguments used against the adoption of open borders: “They'll take our jobs,” “Cheap immigrants will force our wages down,” “They're too lazy to work,” and “They'll never go back.” Bregman address each argument, citing experts and giving data that shows us none of these is the case.
Open our borders is a far-away dream. However, Rutger Bregman makes it seem like some of these utopian policies are well-within our grasp.
If your looking for what kind of future we should be striving for, you'll find it in Rutger Bregman's Utopia for Realists. It was a national bestseller when it was first released in Dutch in the Netherlands, and helped start a conversation which led to municipalities experimenting with basic income. Here's hoping this book will help America reignite an old conversation Nixon started back in the 70s. Utopia for Realists: The Case for a Universal Basic Income, Open Borders, and a 15-Hour Workweek is available now.
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Utopia for Realists by Rutger Bregman review: A brilliantly written and unorthodox page-turner
Bergman's new bestselling book, which proposes new ideas for creating a better society, has tapped into a void in politics, in which nobody is painting a picture of the kind of world we want to live in
Caroline Lucas
@CarolineLucas
Wednesday 22 March 2017 12:45 GMT
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The Independent Culture
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Rutger Bregman’s new book isn’t traditional bestseller material. Packed full of case studies, graphs and complex ideas – you might expect it to appeal to a small niche of people who are actively involved in politics, but instead it’s created quite a storm here in Britain.
In case you haven’t heard Bregman on the radio, seen him on TV or read one of the many reviews of Utopia for Realists here’s the thrust of his argument: humans have moved forwards a lot in the last two centuries but we’re now stalling. In response to soaring inequality, stubbornly high levels of poverty and very long working hours, Bregman puts forward bold proposals for creating a better society.
There’s clearly no single explanation for Utopia for Realists finding its way onto the bestseller list, but there are certainly some obvious factors at play. For starters, it’s a brilliantly written page-turner. It goes into serious depth, without ever feeling dense, as it weaves its way through the challenges we face and onto proposals for doing things differently.
Many others have written about the basic income – the proposal to give every citizen a non-means tested payment from the state – but very few have done so in such a compelling way as Bregman. He cites and explains numerous examples where providing people with state provision has set them free. From a homeless project in right-wing Utah, which gave people free apartments, to the Speenhamland System of 18th century England; his use of real life illustrations of the potential for a basic income is deeply persuasive.
But it isn’t just his writing style or use of case studies which has made Bregman’s book take off as it has – it’s also tapped into something big happening in politics: the rise of right-wing populism and the consistent failure of the left to paint a picture of the kind of world we want to live in. Three stories really struck me last week as I read Utopia for Realists. The first was that child poverty in Britain is now at four million – back to 2010 levels – and the second was the continued rise in zero hours jobs. We have an economy that functions in some traditional sense (it’s growing a little) but leaves young people at the bottom of a ladder with rungs so far apart that they stand little chance of climbing. And we have a jobs market that’s changing beyond recognition. As Bregman points out so well the left simply haven’t been offering a vision of how we’d do things differently – instead finding ourselves trapped in a period of what he calls “underdog socialism”, where we accept the premise of the mainstream debate and fail to put forward serious alternatives. There are, of course, reasons for underdog socialism to have thrived. When the Government is attempting to hack away at the welfare state and deregulate the entire economy it’s hard not to be in defensive mode. But Bregman is right to call progressives out – and he echoes Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams in his calls for us to move away from what they call “folk politics” and demand what some might call the impossible.
This is where the third story comes in: the recent election in Bregman’s home country of the Netherlands. The big story there, unwritten by much of the media, was a huge surge in support for a green/left offering a bold vision of a different kind of country. They were looking to the future – and providing a serious counterweight to the politics of hate championed by Gert Wilders.
Of course demanding the seemingly impossible is made a lot easier with hard evidence and what’s lacking from Bregman’s analysis is a rigorous economic account of how we might pay for a basic income and a shorter working week. He’s right to point out that poverty costs the economy billions, and that overworked employees are inefficient – but a detailed appendix on how a country might change its tax system to pay for such policies would have been useful.
Thankfully work on the costs of different basic income schemes is being done elsewhere. The University of Bath’s paper on the subject sheds useful light on the price of paying everyone a basic income– and thinktanks like Compass and the RSA are pushing ahead with research in the area too. The best way to model such a scheme would, of course, be for the Government to conduct its own pilot – something I’ve been pressing them to do – but such a move seems way off for now.
There’s no doubt that Bregman is a savvy operator. In his latest tour promoting his book he used right-wing language to sell his basic income proposals: “It’s just a floor in the income distribution. Everyone will have the means to take risks. That’s what capitalism is all about.” He might be right to think that a right-wing frame for basic income will help sell it, but we must also be very wary that some on the right would like to use the idea to undermine the welfare state – and that his language could, therefore, be risky. Only by setting the payments at a high enough level, and guaranteeing additional help for those who need it, can we ensure that it’s not hijacked. A successful basic income should be, by its nature, taking us away from consumerist capitalism – not propping it up.
Bregman’s book adds to a growing list of compelling accounts in favour of radically restructuring our economy. From Paul Mason’s Postcapitalism, to Naomi Klein’s This Changes Everything there is a wealth of literature out there making the case for bolder, bigger left-wing politics. It’s now time to put this practice into reality. As Bregman points out, the Left failed to make gains in 2008 despite a global crisis of capitalism and, as he says, it will take both the courage to be utopian, and a good sense of timing too, to ensure that at the next opportunity we don’t “hear the clock strike midnight and find ourselves just sitting around, empty-handed, waiting for an extraterrestrial salvation that will never come”.