Material type: TextLanguage: EnglishOriginal language: DutchPublisher: New York : Little Brown and Company, 2017Edition: First North American editionDescription: 319 pages : illustrations ; 25 cmContent type:
The Return of Utopia -- Why We Should Give Free Money to Everyone -- The End of Poverty -- The Bizarre Tale of President Nixon and His Basic Income Bill -- New Figures for a New Era -- A Fifteen-Hour Workweek -- Why It Doesn't Pay to Be a Banker -- Race Against the Machine -- Beyond the Gates of the Land of Plenty -- How Ideas Change the World.
Summary: "A noted Dutch journalist and economist proposes an outline for a new worldwide Utopia, with central tenets including a shortened work week, a guaranteed basic income for all, wealth redistribution, and open borders everywhere,"--NoveList.
Universal basic income. A 15-hour workweek. Open borders. Does it sound too good to be true? One of Europe's leading young thinkers shows how we can build an ideal world today.
"A more politically radical Malcolm Gladwell." -- New York Times
After working all day at jobs we often dislike, we buy things we don't need. Rutger Bregman, a Dutch historian, reminds us it needn't be this way -- and in some places it isn't. Rutger Bregman's TED Talk about universal basic income seemed impossibly radical when he delivered it in 2014. A quarter of a million views later, the subject of that video is being seriously considered by leading economists and government leaders the world over. It's just one of the many utopian ideas that Bregman proves is possible today.
Utopia for Realists is one of those rare books that takes you by surprise and challenges what you think can happen. From a Canadian city that once completely eradicated poverty, to Richard Nixon's near implementation of a basic income for millions of Americans, Bregman takes us on a journey through history, and beyond the traditional left-right divides, as he champions ideas whose time have come.
Every progressive milestone of civilization -- from the end of slavery to the beginning of democracy -- was once considered a utopian fantasy. Bregman's book, both challenging and bracing, demonstrates that new utopian ideas, like the elimination of poverty and the creation of the fifteen-hour workweek, can become a reality in our lifetime. Being unrealistic and unreasonable can in fact make the impossible inevitable, and it is the only way to build the ideal world.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
The Return of Utopia -- Why We Should Give Free Money to Everyone -- The End of Poverty -- The Bizarre Tale of President Nixon and His Basic Income Bill -- New Figures for a New Era -- A Fifteen-Hour Workweek -- Why It Doesn't Pay to Be a Banker -- Race Against the Machine -- Beyond the Gates of the Land of Plenty -- How Ideas Change the World.
"A noted Dutch journalist and economist proposes an outline for a new worldwide Utopia, with central tenets including a shortened work week, a guaranteed basic income for all, wealth redistribution, and open borders everywhere,"--NoveList.
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 soat 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 machinesand that would be a startthen 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 valuethat, 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 weekthat's the ticket. A provocative pleasure to contemplate. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Author notes provided by Syndetics
Rutger Bregman is a journalist at The Correspondent , and one of Europe's most prominent young thinkers. He has published four books on history, philosophy, and economics. His last book, Utopia for Realists , was a New York Times paperback bestseller, and his History of Progress was awarded the Belgian Liberales prize for best nonfiction book of 2013. Bregman has twice been nominated for the European Press Prize.