#Utopia for realists review how to

These are appealing notions, presented here in a breezy, TED talk-like style.' Read this book.'- Sydney Finkelstein, director of the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College and author of Superbosses: How Exceptional Leaders Master the Flow of Talent ' engagingly examines basic income schemes. Very seldom does a book change the way you think about some of most intractable problems of society, and of life. A quick glance turned into hours of riveting reading. Philipp Blom, author of The Vertigo Years and A Wicked Company ' Utopia for Realists is fantastic.

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As politicians and economists are asking how to increase productivity, ensure full employment, and downsize government, Bregman asks: What actually makes life worth living and how can we get there? He combines deep research with wit, challenging us to think anew about how we want to live and who we want to be. Richard Wilkinson, author of The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger ''It's a wonderful, well-written book, easily the crispest and least dry explanation of the research and history behind basic income as an idea I've seen in print.'- Dylan Matthews, Vox ' An important book, a wonderfully readable breath of fresh air, a window thrown open to a better future.

If we can get enough people to read this book, the world will start to become a better place.' Turned right way out, we suddenly see fundamentally new ways forward. Bregman shows us we've been looking at the world inside out. Being unrealistic and unreasonable can in fact make the impossible inevitable, and it is the only way to build the ideal world. 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. 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.Įvery progressive milestone of civilization - from the end of slavery to the beginning of democracy - was once considered a utopian fantasy. Utopia for Realists is one of those rare books that takes you by surprise and challenges what you think can happen. It's just one of the many utopian ideas that Bregman proves is possible today. 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. Rutger Bregman's TED Talk about universal basic income seemed impossibly radical when he delivered it in 2014. Rutger Bregman, a Dutch historian, reminds us it needn't be this way - and in some places it isn't.

'A more politically radical Malcolm Gladwell.' - New York TimesĪfter working all day at jobs we often dislike, we buy things we don't need. Does it sound too good to be true? One of Europe's leading young thinkers shows how we can build an ideal world today.