Utopia for Realists : And How We Can Get There

User avatar
quantropy
Posts: 131
Joined: Sat Jan 28, 2017 10:38 am

Re: Utopia for Realists : And How We Can Get There

Postby quantropy » Tue Jun 12, 2018 8:12 am

First Impressions
Welcome to the land of plenty. I found it encouraging that the book starts by showing how rich we are today, rather than trying to claim we live in a world of scarcity. Today's abundance would be seen as a Utopian dream in most past ages. So why do so many people feel that they are still struggling to get by? I'm hoping that the rest of the book will answer this and say what can be done about it.

Tags:

User avatar
quantropy
Posts: 131
Joined: Sat Jan 28, 2017 10:38 am

Re: Utopia for Realists : And How We Can Get There

Postby quantropy » Thu Jul 05, 2018 4:00 pm

As I said previously, I read this book looking for arguments in favour of a universal basic income. Unfortunately I was disappointed. Let me make this clear: it wasn't that I disagreed with the arguments for UBI, it was that I found it hard to find any.
Bregman starts by looking at some schemes where people, such as the homeless, are given money unconditionally. But these were small scale schemes, and so arguments that the money was offset by savings in administration and security costs obviously wouldn't scale up to a universal scheme. That would be something very different.

The book then goes on to discuss various means-tested schemes, both ones which happened and those that never saw the light of day. But again these aren't UBI schemes. Of particular interest is the treatment of the Speenhamland system, which subsidised wokers wages in early 19th Century England. It suffered from the problem that employers would just cut workers wages, pushing the bill up and up. Now here a supporter of UBI would jump in and point out that that is a problem of a means-tested system, and a UBI system wouldn't suffer from it. But Bregman who is pretending that it was essentially a UBI scheme does no such thing.

The book then seems to drift away from promoting a UBI. There's a chapter on the inadequacy of GDP as a metric. There are several chapters questioning why our working week hasn't shrunk drastically - maybe more related to UBI, but I didn't feel that the book gave any definite answer to this questioning. Then there's a chapter about what a good idea it would be if all countries opened up their borders. He deals with several arguments against this proposal, but not the one which I would put forward, which is that it would lead to migration to areas which are already the most crowded, putting excessive pressure on finite resources.

Then we get to the last chapter. Here I was hoping for a 'how we can get there' conclusion, saying that a UBI scheme wouldn't be as disruptive as we might fear. But instead I found that Bregman was trying to highlight how radical his ideas were.

Maybe I shouldn'tbe too critical, as The People's Economics likewise discusses a range of ideas without trying to give definite answers. But I did feel that "Mr. Basic Income" should have presented more convincing arguments in favour of a UBI, and that now I will have to look elsewhere for such arguments.

MeganCeank
Posts: 1
Joined: Thu Mar 19, 2020 9:54 am

very happy I finally registered

Postby MeganCeank » Thu Mar 19, 2020 9:57 am

Definitely, what a great site and educative posts, I surely will bookmark your site.Have an awsome day!
Look at my site; - https://oncredit.vn


Return to “Economics”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 3 guests