Rutger Bregman, "Utopia for Realists"

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Rutger Bregman, “Utopia for Realists: How We Can Buildthe Ideal World " (Dutch 원서 2014, 영역본 2017)

 

 

네델란드 사학자 Rutger Bregman의 이 책은 전에 읽은 그의 "Humankind: A Hopeful History" 보다 나중에 나왔다. 이 두 책을 통해서 저자는 보다 이상적인 사회가 가능하다고 역설하고 있다. 이 두 책이 다 아주 널리 읽히면 좋겠다.

 

This revolutionary guide focuses on three core concepts -- a universal basic income, a fifteen-hour workweek, and open borders across the globe -- and explores each of them through lively anecdotes, studies, and success stories. -- 책 뒤표지에서.

 

 

아래는 책 본문에서:

 

And the ad industry encourages us to spend money we don't have on junk we don't need in order to impress people we can't stand. (p. 17)

 

A universal basic income.... [F]ree money for everyone. Not as a favor, but as a right.... A monthly allowance, enough to live on.... No inspectors looking over your shoulder to see if you've spent it wisely, nobody questioning if it's really deserved... Basic income: it's an idea whose time has come. (p. 33)

 

The inventor of GDP cautioned against including in its calculation expenditure for the military, advertising, and the financial sector, but his advice fell on deaf ears. After World War II, Kuznets grew increasingly concerned about the monster he created. "Distinction must be kept in mind between quantity and quality of growth," he wrote in 1962, "between costs and returns ... Goals for more growth should specify more growth of what and for what." (p. 123)

 

If we imposed a transactions tax -- where you would have to pay a fee each time you buy or sell a stock -- those high-frequency traders who contribute almost nothing of social value would no longer profit from the split-second buying and selling of financial assets. (p. 168)

 

For every dollar a bank earns, an estimated equivalent of 60 cents is destroyed elsewhere in the economic chain. Conversely, for every dollar a researcher earns, a value of at least $5 -- and often much more -- is pumped back into the economy.... Higher taxes [for top earners] would get more people to do work that's useful. (p.169)

 

Robots. They have become one of the strongest arguments in favor of a shorter workweek and a universal basic income. (p. 177)

 

Back in 1957, the economist Nicholas Kaldor outlined his six famous "facts" of economic prosperity. The first was: “The shares of national income that go toward labor and capital are constant over long periods of time.” The constant being that two-thirds of a country's income goes into the paychecks of laborers.... But it's not.... [T]oday only 58% of the industrialized nation's wealth goes to paying people's salaries. (p. 182)

 

Scholars at Oxford University estimate that no less than 47% of all American jobs and 54% of all those in Europe are at a high risk of being usurped by machines. And not in a hundred years or so, but in the next twenty. (p. 186)

 

Now, as we step out into a new century, the robots have suddenly picked up the pace. It began around the year 2000, with what two MIT economists called "the great decoupling." ... "Productivity is at record levels, innovation has never been faster, and yet at the same time, we have a falling median income and we have fewer jobs." Today, new jobs are concentrated mostly at the bottom of the pyramid -- at supermarkets, fast-food chains, and nursing homes. (p. 187)

 

Barring a resurgence of strong, inclusive growth (rather unlikely), high taxation on capital (equally improbable), or World War III (let's hope not), inequality could develop to frightening proportions once again. All the standard options -- more schooling, regulation, austerity -- will be a drop in the bucket. In the end, the only solution is a worldwide, progressive tax on wealth, says Professor Piketty.... All throughout history, the march toward equality has always been steeped in politics. If a law of common progress fails to manifest itself of its own accord, there is nothing to stop us from enacting it ourselves. (p. 200)

 

In hindsight, Friedman's arrival marked the dawn of an era in which economists would become the leading thinkers of the Western world. We are still in that era today. (p. 248)

 

When I first began writing about basic income, most people had never heard of it. But now, just three years later, the idea is everywhere. Finland and Canada have both announced large experiments.... And in my own country, the Netherlands, no fewer than twenty municipalities are putting basic income into action. (p. 262)

 

 

[덧붙임]

 

The Magic Number: 32 Hours a Week

 

By  Binyamin Appelbaum

Sept. 27, 2023, New York Times