This week in Bwog’s Book Club, Managing Editor Zack Abrams recommends a thought-provoking work of economic policy by Rutger Bregman, who’s enjoyed a bit of viral fame lately. Bwog’s Book Club is intended to spread the literary love around campus and encourage you to pick up a book, as opposed to your iPhone, in your spare time.

Rating: 9/10 (if you like this sort of thing)

Would I recommend: Yes, though if you’re interested in a more exciting or literary read this is a book about economic policy, so there’s a limit to how exciting it can be.

Summary: Dutch Historian Rutger Bregman presents three radical ideas: open borders, a 15-hour work week, and a universal basic income, that can harness the vast, yet unequally distributed wealth of the world for the good of all. And no, none of the ideas involve violent revolution.

Review: Recently, you may have heard Rutger Bregman’s name. He made news for berating a group of billionaires at the wealthy Davos conference for not discussing higher tax rates (“It feels like I’m at a firefighters conference and no one’s allowed to speak about water”).  A video of Tucker Carlson completely losing it at Bregman during a deleted segment for the show also made headlines (Rutger calls Tucker “a millionaire funded by billionaires,” Tucker tells Rutger “Why don’t you go fuck yourself, you tiny brain”).

Bregman is not just a provocateur; or, rather, he is, but his provocative ideas have implications beyond getting retweets for NowThis videos. In Utopia for Realists, Bregman calls on historical examples, current economic literature, and moral arguments to argue for three radical ideas: a universal basic income, open borders, and a 15-hour work week, three ideas which Rutger believes could change the world. Sometimes the arguments are straightforward: poverty is a lack of cash, not a matter of character, and giving people money is generally a good way to eliminate poverty. Sometimes they force you to reevaluate given truths: why are we entitled to the benefits of this country, given we did not choose to be born here? What right do we have to deny those benefits to others, who were born elsewhere through no fault of their own?

As the Democratic 2020 primary heats up, many of the questions Bregman discusses in the book will be given a national platform. What are the best ways to alleviate poverty? Do we have a moral duty to provide for every citizen or only those who labor on behalf of our economy? What should the Democratic response to Trump’s despicable, yet effective, border wall rhetoric? Bregman presents one angle: billionaires are not immoral, as long as they pay their taxes. Universal programs, like a basic income, are more politically resilient than targeted programs. In the future, we will have to make the decision to cut back on economic growth in favor of more leisure, for the good of the populace.

Bregman isn’t a socialist; he regularly touts the success of markets in lifting the global poor out of serfdom and into prosperity over the last few centuries. However, as he says “It is capitalism that opened the gates to the Land of Plenty, but capitalism alone cannot sustain it.” This book is a powerful argument against revolutionary politics and reactionary politics alike. We have here a vision of a better world; why is it not the one we’re living in?

If you have a piece of literature, be it novel, essay, or anything non-fiction, that you want to share with the student population, please feel free to email us: tips@bwog.com. We can’t wait to hear from you!