Utopia for Realists: And How We Can Get There

by Rutger Bregman

Up to a per capita GDP of roughly $5,000 a year, life expectancy increases more or less automatically.18 But once there’s enough food on the table, a roof that doesn’t leak, and clean running water to drink, economic growth is no longer a guarantor of welfare. From that point on, equality is a much more accurate predictor. Take the diagram below. The y-axis shows an index of social problems; on the x-axis are the countries’ per capita GDP. It turns out that there’s no correlation whatsoever between these two variables. What’s more, the world’s richest superpower (the U.S.) rates alongside a country with less than half the per capita GDP (Portugal) for the highest incidence of social problems. “Economic growth has done as much as it can to improve material conditions in the developed countries,” concludes the British researcher Richard Wilkinson. “As you get more and more of anything, each addition … contributes less and less to your well-being.”19 However, the graph changes dramatically if we replace income on the x-axis with income inequality. Suddenly, the picture crystallizes, with the U.S. and Portugal close together in the top right-hand corner.