Our New Dutch Crush: Rutger Bregman’s Roadmap to Utopia
We have a new crush, he’s Dutch, and he’s not messing around
Usually, when we talk about utopia we’re being either facetious or sarcastic. Either way, the underlying sentiment is that it’s impossible — too good to be true. But when Dutch historian and author Rutger Bregman talks about utopia, he is being completely serious. You’ve probably heard of Rutger Bregman as the “folk hero of Davos”, the guy who spoke truth to power at the recent gathering of the world’s political, business, and philanthropic elite. We had the pleasure of talking with him recently on our podcast, Pitchfork Economics, about all his ‘crazy’ ideas.
Bregman’s recent book Utopia for Realists: And How We Can Get There makes a thoughtful and compelling argument for a 15 hour work-week, universal basic income (UBI), eradicating poverty and homelessness, and other societal changes that probably seem insane to us here in the United States.
But are they?
In all honesty, we’ve been UBI-skeptical here at Civic Ventures, but not for fear it would crash the economy or any of the other bullshit neoliberal reasons you might see on Twitter. Our primary concern has been that a universal basic income would end up being exploited by our corporate overlords as a subsidy, allowing them to further gouge workers’ wages, benefits, and labor protections. If a UBI were to distract from the more pressing issues of creating true economic prosperity—like raising wages for everyone, ensuring fair labor standards, and beginning to shift the trillions of dollars in stolen wealth back to American workers—it would be doing more harm than good. We’ve been concerned that it would end up essentially being an expansion on the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), which, while it helps people get by, does nothing to address the structural economic problems that cause poverty and income inequality.
But what if UBI wasn’t a poverty-level subsidy that allowed corporations to continue to deny workers fair wages and labor standards? What if UBI actually provided enough money to cover food, shelter, clothing, and at least some education, totally unconditionally? I know, I know, it sounds crazy. But our current systems and ideas are not working, so we need to be open to big ideas and seemingly crazy alternatives, because the truth is that what’s insane is what we have now.
But, won’t it be (too) expensive?
I mean, how can the government possibly afford to write every single person a check like that every month?! Well, I’m here to remind you that we can afford what we prioritize. If ensuring that 40 million Americans don’t live in poverty is more important to us than, say, giving tax breaks to billionaires, then we figure out how to pay for it (hint: don’t give billionaires the tax break and then use the money to pay people). And, as Bregman points out, it’s actually much cheaper to solve problems like poverty, crime and homelessness directly than to continually fund support services and sustain the economic losses to society that these problems cause. So, no, it’s not too expensive.
There is an underlying cultural shift that this structural overhaul requires, which is truly redefining who the value creators are in society, and paying them accordingly. Society literally breaks down if garbage collectors stop collecting garbage or if teachers stop coming to school to teach our children. But it turns out, if bankers don’t show up to work…well, nothing really happens. It’s so easy for us to get stuck in a vacuum of the way things are and to lose our imagination (and maybe our grip on reality). When a society that allows three families to own more wealth than half of the entire country starts to seem normal and even worth defending, maybe it’s time to open our minds to some “insane” possibilities.
Listen to our full conversation with Rutger Bregman on Pitchfork Economics here:
