Statements
Ignite: Big thinker reveals plans for a utopian society
Dutch historian Rutger Bregman has a proposal to create a world that is free of poverty and where people work much shorter working hours.
RUTGER BREGMAN, AUTHOR, ‘UTOPIA FOR REALISTS’: What we have right now is, around the Western world, millions of people living in poverty.
What happens if you get people above the poverty line: you get an explosion of ambition, intelligence, energy.
RUTGER BREGMAN: Well, a basic income should be enough to pay for your basic needs: food, shelter, education.
Some people call basic income “Venture capital for the people.” For the first time in history everyone would have the opportunity to do something new, to decide for themselves what to make of their lives.
Martin Luther King was in favour as well and a lot of other people on the left as well.
You know, all the young people would actually start doing what they want to do with their lives and they wouldn’t study a subject they don’t care about, simply because they have to earn a living or something like that.