Joel Richard
asked:
Has any economists read this book? I'd like to hear your thoughts because from the title this things seems like garbage.
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Utopia for Realists: The Case for a Universal Basic Income, Open Borders, and a 15-hour Workweek,
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Hans Bech
I am an economist and find the book valuable and well-written. It raises valid questions and provides well-documented answers. I find the title intriguing.
Thomas
The science in this book makes good sense, but it remains quite abstract. So working out some of the theories he lays down in practice would take some translation and it wouldn't happen overnight.
It's all in the title, though. He lays out a number of 'utopian' ideals, things we could strive towards as society if we wanted to. These are ideals that may seem far-fetched now, but just as people used to think the idea of women's suffrage, the abolition of slavery, and the welfare state were far-fetched before they happened.
It's all in the title, though. He lays out a number of 'utopian' ideals, things we could strive towards as society if we wanted to. These are ideals that may seem far-fetched now, but just as people used to think the idea of women's suffrage, the abolition of slavery, and the welfare state were far-fetched before they happened.
Alicia
No the book isn't garbage and it's very well argumented. What Thomas said a lot of it is theories but supported by well researched arguments. A chunk of the book is about economy and a lot of economists are quoted. I'm not an economist but that isn't the book's main subject. The main subject is society and the way particular things could be changed, part of that is to do with economy.
Ambuj
While Rutger touches upon these topics broadly, Economics Nobel Laureates Abhijit Bannerjee and Esther Duflo explore these topics and their financial viability in much greater detail in their recent book 'Good Economics for Hard Times' (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5...)
Terry Pearce
I find it informative that the highly critical responses you got to this question are essentially contentless and amount to 'it's rubbish' without reasons. If there were something to debunk you might expect to see reasoned arguments about why his carefully backed ideas are contradicted by specific evidence.
Frank Lee
Kamyar malzoom and Bert Cattoor are correct! There's no Science or solid research to back up the theories in the book.
The so-called evidence quoted by Rutger Bregman is either anecdotal, selective (cherry-picked) or based on spurious statistics for the most part. Some examples:
1) Bregman claims the most successful period for capitalism occurred in the years after the second world war, when the top rate of tax in the US was above 90%. There's a major problem with this argument: while taxes did increase following the Great Depression and WW2, the Total Federal Revenue from taxes (as % of GDP) did not change much. It has stayed between 16-20%, with an average of 17.3% for the past 70 years (when the top tax-rate has seen levels such around 80%, 90%, 70%, 50%, 40%, etc)
Chart:
https://taxprof.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8...
2) Bregman also claims he's disproving the "fallacy" that cheap immigrant labor forces wages down. This a very complex topic (with hundreds of studies reaching contradicting results depending on methodology, sample-sizes, the time-windows examined, the geographical regions analyzed, etc). In statistics, a good (though not perfect) practice (in such cases) is to look for peer-reviewed meta-studies that aggregate hundreds of studies. Bregman only cherry picks 2 old studies: one covering a very short time-span in EU in the 1990s and another for US. The US study is based on the work of Douglas S. Massey (Princeton University/2007 "Understanding America’s Immigration Crisis" - which covers US immigration since 1970s, with more focus on 1980s and 1990s) but it's conclusions don't quite support Bregman's claims that immigration has virtually no effect on wages.
US Wages have been going up, 1948-1972, and virtually stopped growing between 1973-2013 (even experiencing a negative trend from late 1970s to the 2nd half of the 1990s).
Chart:
https://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/me...
According to Massey's paper:
"Among documented migrants,, the post-IRCA decline was much more serious. As with illegal migrants, those with documents experienced declining wages before the implementation of IRCA, albeit with more fluctuation. Over the entire six-year period from 1980 to 1986, the wages of legal immigrants fell from $12.00 to $11.00 per hour, a drop of 16.7 cents per year. After 1986, however, the rate of decline accelerated quite markedly to 38 cents per year, going from $11.00 per hour to $7.57 by 1995, a 31% erosion in just nine years.
After 1995, the decline in migrant wages bottomed out, and they began to rise once again for those with and without documents, reflecting the tight labor markets produced by the sustained economic boom of the 1990s, but they never recovered the ground lost earlier, and the reduced gap between documented and undocumented migrants persisted. The wages of those legally entitled to work in the United States had been permanently reduced." During the same time, the wages of most Americans workers have been mostly flat (when adjusted with inflation) for decades as well.
3) Even the UBI/Guaranteed-income experiments Rutger kept mentioning, some of which were still ongoing at the time the book was written/published, have failed miserably in recent times;
e.g.:
- the Guaranteed Income Experiment in Ontario/Canada (which Ontario's Government has pulled the plug on, in July-2018)
- Finland's two-year Basic Income trial which was stopped prematurely, in early 2019, after the Government had realized that the program has failed to combat unemployment (and made people report better well-being but at the cost of soaring unemployment in the general population).
etc
The so-called evidence quoted by Rutger Bregman is either anecdotal, selective (cherry-picked) or based on spurious statistics for the most part. Some examples:
1) Bregman claims the most successful period for capitalism occurred in the years after the second world war, when the top rate of tax in the US was above 90%. There's a major problem with this argument: while taxes did increase following the Great Depression and WW2, the Total Federal Revenue from taxes (as % of GDP) did not change much. It has stayed between 16-20%, with an average of 17.3% for the past 70 years (when the top tax-rate has seen levels such around 80%, 90%, 70%, 50%, 40%, etc)
Chart:
https://taxprof.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8...
2) Bregman also claims he's disproving the "fallacy" that cheap immigrant labor forces wages down. This a very complex topic (with hundreds of studies reaching contradicting results depending on methodology, sample-sizes, the time-windows examined, the geographical regions analyzed, etc). In statistics, a good (though not perfect) practice (in such cases) is to look for peer-reviewed meta-studies that aggregate hundreds of studies. Bregman only cherry picks 2 old studies: one covering a very short time-span in EU in the 1990s and another for US. The US study is based on the work of Douglas S. Massey (Princeton University/2007 "Understanding America’s Immigration Crisis" - which covers US immigration since 1970s, with more focus on 1980s and 1990s) but it's conclusions don't quite support Bregman's claims that immigration has virtually no effect on wages.
US Wages have been going up, 1948-1972, and virtually stopped growing between 1973-2013 (even experiencing a negative trend from late 1970s to the 2nd half of the 1990s).
Chart:
https://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/me...
According to Massey's paper:
"Among documented migrants,, the post-IRCA decline was much more serious. As with illegal migrants, those with documents experienced declining wages before the implementation of IRCA, albeit with more fluctuation. Over the entire six-year period from 1980 to 1986, the wages of legal immigrants fell from $12.00 to $11.00 per hour, a drop of 16.7 cents per year. After 1986, however, the rate of decline accelerated quite markedly to 38 cents per year, going from $11.00 per hour to $7.57 by 1995, a 31% erosion in just nine years.
After 1995, the decline in migrant wages bottomed out, and they began to rise once again for those with and without documents, reflecting the tight labor markets produced by the sustained economic boom of the 1990s, but they never recovered the ground lost earlier, and the reduced gap between documented and undocumented migrants persisted. The wages of those legally entitled to work in the United States had been permanently reduced." During the same time, the wages of most Americans workers have been mostly flat (when adjusted with inflation) for decades as well.
3) Even the UBI/Guaranteed-income experiments Rutger kept mentioning, some of which were still ongoing at the time the book was written/published, have failed miserably in recent times;
e.g.:
- the Guaranteed Income Experiment in Ontario/Canada (which Ontario's Government has pulled the plug on, in July-2018)
- Finland's two-year Basic Income trial which was stopped prematurely, in early 2019, after the Government had realized that the program has failed to combat unemployment (and made people report better well-being but at the cost of soaring unemployment in the general population).
etc
Bert Cattoor
Yes, and indeed there's a good deal of garbage in it (especially the economics). There are, however, interesting bits of information in it about history.
Incidentally, last week Rutger Bregman has published a column in which he tells that he finally spoke to an actual economist who made him understand it doesn't make sense. The guy deserves some credit for being open to reason and rethink his point based on arguments. He's certainly a good storyteller but that's it.
So yes, the bottom line is it's utopia and NOT for realists. The numbers don't add up. Somehow, money does not grow on trees.
Incidentally, last week Rutger Bregman has published a column in which he tells that he finally spoke to an actual economist who made him understand it doesn't make sense. The guy deserves some credit for being open to reason and rethink his point based on arguments. He's certainly a good storyteller but that's it.
So yes, the bottom line is it's utopia and NOT for realists. The numbers don't add up. Somehow, money does not grow on trees.
Nick Seymour
Hmm, what's that old adage about judging a book by it's cover..? It's not a long book- read it before you criticize!
Andrea
I'm an economist and this book is just silly. We should get rid of all banks since Irish pubs can suffice! Please.
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