Utopia for Realists by Rutger Bregman: Imagining a Better World

We have lost our vision, Rutger Bregman writes, mired in old paradigms and blind to the possibilities we should be imagining. We could be realizing the world predicted by 20th c thinkers.

Subtitled "How We Can Build The Ideal World," Utopia for Realists is an international best seller, first published in the Netherlands where it ignited a debate and inspired a movement.

Bregman begins by reminding us of how recently life was a "vale of tears," "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short," as philosophers wrote in the 16th c. With the explosion of new technology and prosperity over the last two hundred years, humanity has achieved a standard of living that Medieval folk would consider Utopia; indoor heat and cooling, flush toilets and clean water alone would make them marvel. So would obesity from an overabundance of easily obtained food, the magical ability to protect ourselves from smallpox and polio, and paved roads we travel at 70 mph--without fear of highwaymen robberies.

Have we reached Utopia? Or is there something we can do to make life even better? How can we solve the problems that remain: fearfulness, unemployment, quality of life, poverty.

The welfare state 'from a bygone era' doesn't work today. Globalization and the cost of higher education have impacted the stability of the Middle Class. Upward mobility for the poor no longer happens.

Bregman wants to "fling open the windows of our minds" to discover "a new lodestar." He presents studies and experiments about how we treat the homeless and the poor and challenges our traditional mindset that people are to be blamed for their own poverty--they just have to work hard and save. We have created welfare programs for those in need, which are costly and do not solve the basic problem. What happened to the expectation of the 15-hour workweek? Why are we spending more time working, impacting our health and our families?

Bregman wants us to dream new dreams and embrace ideas that can change the world for the better. Thinking outside the box has made a difference: abolition, universal voting rights, and same-sex marriage, he reminds, were all once considered impossible. All it takes is "a single opposing voice.

The basis of Bregman's new Utopia is a guaranteed basic income. He presents studies that demonstrate the success of such programs. In 1967 universal basic income was supported by 80% of Americans and President Nixon submitted a bill to eradicate poverty.

Other changes he offers include shorter work hours, proven to increase productivity, reconsidering the importance of the Gross Domestic Product as our economic standard of success, improving quality of life, open borders, taxing capital instead of labor, and adjusting salary to a job's societal value. At a time when productivity is a record levels, there are fewer jobs and lower salaries. "We have to devise a system to ensure that everybody benefits," he writes.

There is an old saying: Insanity is doing the same thing over and expecting different results. Instead of holding more tightly to the old ways we need to envision innovation. Perhaps books like this will spur discussions and reevaluations.

One can only hope.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Bregman's TED talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIL_Y9g7Tg0

Utopia for Realists
Rutger Bregman
Little, Brown & Co.
$27 hardcover
ISBN:9780316471893

The Locals by Jonathan Dee

I am an introvert. I can be outgoing and talkative and friendly, but I know I am an introvert because being around a lot of people leaves me ready for a nap and a recharge, while an extrovert would be pumped.

I was in the middle of reading The Locals when I felt that drained feeling. The point of view kept jumping from person to person and there were too many voices and people for me to handle. I took a nap.

It was several days before I pushed myself to pick the book back up. I finished it in another day's reading.

The novel starts out strong with an abrasive con man. His victim is Mark, from a small town in the Berkshires, who lost his money in an investment scam. Mark is an 'easy mark', and loses his credit card to this grifter. The story follows Mark back home, introducing a whole village of characters, each struggling to make it.

A New York City hedge-fund manager moves his family into their summer cottage; 9-11 and 'inside information' has convinced him that the city is no longer safe. Philip Hadi likes his new town and assumes political and financial control, paying budgetary items out of pocket to keep taxes low and home values high.

When the town decides they can't allow Hadi to arbitrarily make laws, he feels unappreciated and up and leaves--taking his money with him. The town has to deal with the hard reality that they cannot cover the budget without raising taxes significantly. They realize that under Hadi they had been living in "a fool's paradise," and must reevaluate what is necessary. The new reality includes closing the library, creating new fees, and requiring citations quotas from police.

Character's thoughts reflect aspects of 21st-century thinking:

"Corruption was a fact of life, on the governmental level especially, and if you didn't find your own little way to make it work for you, then you'd be a victim of it."

"The nation was at war; the invisible nature of that war made it both harder and more important to be vigilant."

"He thought everybody on TV was full of shit--the pundits, the alarmists, the conspiracy theorists--but their very full-of-shittiness was like a confirmation of what he felt inside: that things right now were off their anchor, that the decline of people's belief in something showed up in their apparent willingness to believe anything."

"The best part [of the Internet] was feeling that you were anonymous out there but had an identity at the same time." "...and this internet was like some giant bathroom wall where you could just scrawl whatever hate you liked."

"Some people really come to life when they have an enemy."

"Rich people, he thought. The world shaped itself around their impulses."

I was perplexed and puzzled why I did not have any immediate thoughts about the book. The ending involves a teenager who flaunts the rules and finds empowerment in resistance. Perhaps I am just too dense for subtlety? Or am I confused by too many voices, too many opinions, that I am not sure of what the author is saying?

A Goodreads friend loved this novel, which inspired me to request it from NetGalley. (She is an extrovert.) I agree with her that there are no likable characters. Each is flawed and self-centered, discouraged and angry about missing that brass ring ticket to success and happiness. Well, that could describe quite a few people today.

Perhaps my problem with the book is I don't like who we have become and I don't like the options offered to us. At the end of The Locals, Allerton, the new selectman, realizes that "any sort of collective action was automatically suspect...because if it worked, then we wouldn't be in the mess we were now in."

Once upon a time, we believed in progress and the eternal upward arc into a better world, which now we condemn as the fallacy of fairy tale thinking. And I want to hold to that fairy tale of a possible Utopia, the Star Trek world, the Utopia for Realists. Dee's novel reflects what we have become, but I want to be inspired to consider what we may become.

So I return to the small and strange act of resistance at the end, a teenager who just wants to sleep in a historical home, and is told she may not. It took another night's sleep for me to wake up and think, yeah, that's it--the girl's seemingly small act of resistance is a metaphor, about reclaiming for all what is reserved for those who can pay for it.

I finally saw the light.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

The Locals
by Jonathan Dee
Random House
Publication: August 8, 2017
Hardcover $28.00
ISBN:9780812993226

Give People Money: Everything You Wanted To Know About Universal Basic Income

'UBI' is not a social disease but refers to a concept that has been around for a very long time--the idea that by giving everyone a basic income--enough to live on--society can end poverty and economic injustice. Would you believe that President Nixon supported the idea in the 1960s? Or that Thomas Paine wrote about it? Across the world communities and countries have been trying a Universal Basic Income on a small scale.

41 million Americans are living in poverty. What if they received $1,000 a month, no strings attached, to do with as they need. The Federal government could shut down a whole slew of social programs such as food stamps.

Annie Lowrey became obsessed with the idea of UBI and asked was it "a magic bullet, or a policy hammer in search of a nail?" Her book considers what UBI is and the cultural prejudices that surround it, how its implementations have succeeded and failed, the impact it would have on poverty, and how a UBI would cut through all social and racial classes.

I loved how she began the book at the Cobo Center North American International Auto Show in Detroit. The birthplace of the auto industry was abandoned very early when auto companies moved their plants outside of the city. But the showcase of the cool new vehicles takes place there. Lowrey talks about the technological changes being shown, the 'cars of the future' that drive themselves.
Imagine taxis without drivers.

Next thing we know, semi-trucks will be self-driving. Drones will deliver small packages. The Obama administration set the numbers between 2.2 and 3.1 million jobs lost to self-driving vehicles.

This is nothing new. Technology has been depriving humans of jobs since the industrial revolution.

Yes, robots will take over the world. We humans can spend our time painting and climbing K2 and volunteering and making quilts...Only if the huge profits (made when business and industry replaces all the workers) is shared. We are already seeing a few people holding all the money. It's not going to get better. And the programs we have now are meant to be gap measures, for short-term needs. When unemployment becomes permanent--what then?

Sure there are some jobs that are unfilled. Fruit and vegetable pickers, for instance. Michigan is in sore need of them. Take asparagus picking in West Michigan. All you need to do is lay on a board attached to a tractor, hovering over the field, picking asparagus all day in the hot sun. Here in Metro Detroit, our town needs summer help with yard waste pickup. They can't get people to apply for the jobs. Of course, neither pay a living wage.

Unions were strong when my dad was supporting us kids. He made a good living with overtime pay working at Chrysler. Today union membership has dropped from one in three to one in twenty. Woman's salaries still lag behind men's. Companies no longer offer pensions or health care. They hire more contract workers and part-time workers. The companies get tax breaks and subsidies while their employees get tax-funded food stamps and assistance. It's a win-win for business and a lose-lose for citizens. One study found that $130 million dollars a year are spent on WORKING families whose wages can't cover their basic need.

What we have is a crisis situation that won't be getting better.

We can't just GIVE PEOPLE MONEY! I hear you thinking it. Why not? It's the AMERICAN way, you reply. People pull themselves up by their own bootstraps,
they work hard and rise, God helps those who help themselves. And a lot of other old chestnuts come out of the closet. And besides, you think, 'those people' will just use the money for cigarettes or drugs or alcohol or a fancy car or a fur coat or to take a cruise. Because we can't trust 'those people' to have the values we approve of.

Balderdash.

When my husband pastored in the inner city it was a big concern that handing over cash meant people going directly to the corner bar, or later the corner crack house. So the church had local grocers and gas stations in partnership to give commodities instead.

Sure, there are a few bad apples. But giving things you think people need is not very useful either. Lowrey talks about a village overrun with Tom's shoes. But give people cash and they can get what they really need. Most people will buy another cow, make sure the kids are eating right, make sure the kids can afford to go to school instead of going to work to help support the family.

Lowrey went to Kenya to see a UBI project called GiveDirectly and to India to see how the country's Public Distribution System was working. "Done right, cash works" she writes. Ontario, Canada has tried a pilot program and so has Stockton, CA.

I was appalled to learn that America's "safety net" design flaws trap people in poverty--and have a racist bias. European countries whose safety nets eliminate poverty are those whose population consists of native-born citizens. The 'us vs. them' factor does not come into play.

Like Finland. My exchange student daughter lost her job in the recession and she married a man who also lost his job. They came to America to study at their denomination's school and visited us. I wondered how they could afford an apartment and food and such. In America, they would have long lost unemployment and health care and housing and would not have been able to marry. Finland has national health care, too. It did in 1969 when I had a Finnish exchange student sister. Two years later I was married and we had no health insurance for three years.

Discrimination abounds in the safety net. Especially on the state level. The 1935 Social Security act excluded farm and domestic workers--who were mostly African American. The Federal Housing Administration funds fewer houses in black neighborhoods. The GI bill helped more white than black men since fewer schools accepted black students. The Clinton administration made benefits contingent on work, which affected single mothers. The Supreme Court allowed states to opt out of the Obama Medicaid expansion to over nondisabled, childless adults. 

A UBI for everyone would be color and gender blind, disabled and able treated the same. Stay at home mothers would be compensated, and what work is more important than raising families and providing a stable home life? America is the only country with no support to new mothers and we don't have enough quality daycare especially in rural areas. A UBI would help new mothers stay home. I had to take leave of absence from a job to care for my dying father. I lost income. A UBI would have made that more comfortable.

How would a UBI be distributed? Could it be targeted by fiscal hawks? How would we pay for it? There are questions to be answered.

I felt Lowrey's book was a good balance to Utopia for Realists by Rutger Bregman, which I read last year. I especially appreciated the section that showed the challenges in rural India for distribution of cash. She raised issues and questions I had not even imagined.

Read an excerpt of the book at
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/551618/give-people-money-by-annie-lowrey/9781524758769/

I received a free book from First to Read in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Give People Money
by Annie Lowrey
Crown Publishing
Publication July 10, 2018

My 2017 Year End Review of Reading

Oh dear. I read 160 books last year and I had been determined to read FEWER books.  But here I am, having read 176 books! I read so many amazing books this year.

Most of the books I read were e-galleys and ARCs (Advanced Reading Copies) courtesy of NetGalley, Edelweiss, Blogging for Books, First to Read, IndieBrag, and Bookish First. These books were ones I requested.

Some were giveaway wins from the publisher on social media or on Goodreads or LibraryThing, and some were giveaways from fellow bloggers. I entered the contest for these books.

Other books were sent me directly from the publisher. These books are often ones I had not even known about. Sometimes I am approached through email and I accept to read it, and sometimes a publisher ships me an ARC directly.

The rest were book club choices and even--yes!--personal choices from my TBR lists, books I borrowed from the local library or purchased.

My 2017 goals included a focus on reading new authors and emerging voices and multicultural books on human rights issues, including racism, immigration, economic class, and LGBT issues.

My life long interest in biographies of women and writers, Polar and Space exploration, and the earth sciences make appearances in my choices, as does my more recent interest in politics and my long term interest in American and British history. I also like to read Michigan and Detroit related books, and Philadelphia settings since we lived there, too.

Sometimes I need to read something completely different and I turn to Science Fiction, mysteries, and Woman's Fiction. And of course, my true love of Literary Fiction and the classics is always evident in my reading.

My favorite books are italicized, which was a hard decision to make since there are so many I truly enjoyed. My decision is 100% personal and not reflective of the quality, importance, or my enjoyment of the other books.

Books which were published this year that I read in 2016 as e-galleys and ARCs are included on my list with an asterisk [*]. My book club selections are marked with an + and books from my personal TBR are marked #.

Stories of Young People Growing Up
The Barrowfields* by Phillip Lewis
The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne
Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
Everything I Never Told You# by Celeste Ng
Daphne by Will Boast [coming out in 2018]
The Futures* by Anna Pitnoiak
The Animators* by Kayla Rae Whitaker
Self-Portrait with Boy by Rachel Lyon [coming out in 2018]
The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin [coming out in 2018]
Another Brooklyn# by Jaqueline Woodson
The Sun is Also a Star by Nicola Yoon
And Then She Was Born by Cristiano Gentilli

Literary Fiction
We Shall Not All Sleep by Estep Nagy
Future Home of the Living God by Louise Edrich
Some Rise by Sin by Philip Caputo
Abide with Me# by Elizabeth Strout
Idaho* by Emily Ruskovich
Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk* by Kathleen Rooney
Spaceman of Bohemia* by Jaroslav Kalfar

Books to Restore Your Faith in Humanity
The Story of Arthur Truluv by Elizabeth Berg
Anything is Possible by Elizabeth Strout
Allie and Bea by Catherine Ryan Hyde
To the Stars Through Difficulties by Romalyn Tilghman
The Reminders* by Val Emmich

Classics
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn+ by Betty Smith
Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell
The Remains of the Day+ by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Age of Innocence+ by Edith Wharton

Hot-Button Social Topics
This Is How It Begins by Joan Dempsey
I Can't Breathe by Matt Taibbi
Reading with Patrick by Michelle Kuo
Just Mercy by Brian Stevenson
Quiet Until the Thaw by Alexandra Fuller
Who's Jim Hines?# by Jean Alicia Elster
Convicted: A Crooked Cop, an Innocent Man, and an Unlikely Journey of Forgiveness and Friendship by Jameel Zookie McGee
Wild Mountain by Nancy Kilgore

Immigration and Refugees
The End We Start From by Megan Hunter
Exit West# by Moshin Hamid
The Faraway Brothers by Lauren Markham
The Leavers# by Lisa Ko
Lucky Boy by Shanthi Sekaran
The Boat People [Coming out in 2018] by Sharon Bala
In the Midst of Winter by Isabelle Allende

Resistance Reading
Radical Hope: Letters of Love and Dissent in Dangerous Times by Carolina De Robertis
Utopia for Realists: The Case for a Universal Basic Income, Open Borders, and a 15-hour Workweek
by Rutger Bregman
What We Do Now: Standing Up For Your Values in Trump's America by Dennis Johnson
The Locals by Jonathan Dee

How We Got To Here
Behemoth: A History of the Factory and The Making of the Modern World by Joshua B. Freeman [coming out in 2018]
Superfandom: How Our Obsessions are Changing What We Buy and Who We Are by Zoe Fraade-Blanar

Short Stories
To Lay to Rest Our Ghosts+ by Cailtin Hamilton Summie
The Dinner Party by Joshua Ferris
State of Fear [Coming out in 2018] by Neel Mukherjee
Things we Lost in the Fire by Mariana Enriquez
The Refugees* by Viet Thanh Nguyen
Upstream# by Mary Oliver

Essays
Winter by Karl Ove Knausgaard

Serious Books That Also Made Me Laugh
The Windfall by Diksha Basu
Tell Me How This Ends Well by David Samuel Levinson
(The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne can fall into this category, too)

Feminist Novel/Fantasy About Romancing a Frogman
Mrs. Caliban by Rachel Ingalls

Women Who Fought Back
Gather the Daughters by Jennie Melamed
The Last Ballad by Wiley Cash
The Other Einstein+ by Marie Benedict
My Live, My Love, My Legacy by Coretta Scott King
Madame President: The Extraordinary Journey of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf by Helene Cooper
The Princess Diarist by Carrie Fisher
His Eye is on the Sparrow# by Ethel Waters
The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank+
The Velveteen Daughter by Laurel Huber Davis
Gilded Suffragists: The New York Socialites Who Fought for Women's Right to Vote by Joanna
Neuman
Hidden Figures+ by Margot Lee Shetterly
Victoria and Abdul by Schrani Basu

Flawed Masterpiece
The Resurrection of Joan Ashby by Cherise Wolas

Historical Fiction with a Mystery
The Prague Sonata by Bradford Morrow
The Winter Station [Coming out in 2018] by Jody Shields

Fantasy & Magic
The Rules of Magic by Alice Hoffman
Practical Magic# by Alice Hoffman
The Bear and the Nightingale# and The Girl in the Tower by Katherine Arden
Grief Cottage by Gail Goodwin

Re-Tellings
Hook's Tale: Being the Account of an Unjustly Villainized Pirate Written by Himself, by John
Pielmeier
Mr Rochester by Sarah Shoemaker
New Boy by Tracey Chevalier
Nick and Jake by Jonathan Richards
Pepys in Love: Elizabeth's Story by Patrick Delaforce
House of Names by Colm Tobin

Science Fiction
Something Wicked This Way Comes# by Ray Bradbury
Dandelion Wine+ by Ray Bradbury
Central Station by Lavie Tidhar
The Salt Line by Holly Goddard Jones
The Space Between the Stars by Anne Corlett

Biographies and Memoirs
Mozart's Starling by Lynda Lynn Haupt
A $500 House in Detroit: Rebuilding an Abandoned Home and an American City by Drew Philp
Dimestore: A Writer's Life# by Lee Smith
Promise Me, Dad by Joe Biden
Theft by Finding by David Sedaris
Leading Tones by Leonard Slatkin
The Last Bar in NYC by Brian Michaels
It Takes a School by Jonathan Starr
Mao's Last Dancer+ by Li Cunxin
The Book of Joe by Jeff Wilser
The Fearless Benjamin Lay by Marcus Rediker
The Great Nadar by Adam Begley
Renegade: Martin Luther, the Graphic Biography by Andrea Grosso Ciponte

Non-Fiction
Storybook Style: America's Whimsical Homes of the Twenties by Arrol  Gellner

Books About Exploration
Endurance by Scott Kelly
Ask an Astronaut by Tim Peake
Apollo 8 by Jeffrey Kluger
Ice Ghosts: The Epic Hunt for the Lost Franklin Expedition by Paul Watson

Our Earth
The Life and Death of the Great Lakes by Dan Egan
The Great Quake by Henry Fountain
Quakeland by Kathryn Miles
Golden Bats and Pink Pigeons by Gerald Durrell

Politics and American History
The Gatekeepers by Chris Whipple
Building the Great Society by Joshua Zeitz
The Accidental President by A. J. Baime
Detroit 1967 by Joel Stone
The Tunnels: Escapes Under the Berlin Wall-and the Historic Films the JFK White House Tried to Kill* by Greg Mitchell
High Noon: The Hollywood Blacklist and the Making of an American Classic* by Glenn Frankel

Exposés
White Wash by Cary Gillam
American Wolf by Nate Blakeslee

Historical Fiction
River of Ink# by Paul M. M. Cooper
Grace by Paul Lynch
The Good People by Hannah Kent
The World of Tomorrow by Brenden Matthews
The Underworld by Kevin Canty
Golden Hill by Frances Spufford
The Lost Letter# by Mimi Matthews
The Viscount and the Vicar's Daughter by Mimi Matthews [publishing in 2018]
The Hidden Thread by Liz Trenow
Be Still the Water by Karen Emilson

Books about Books

The Uncommon Reader+ by Alan Bennett
Morningstar by Ann Hood
Fahrenheit 451 by Annie Spence

Books About Writers
Manderley Forever by Tatiania de Rosnay
In the Great Green Room: The Brilliant and Bold Life of Margaret Wise Brown# by Amy Gary
As I Knew Him, My Dad Rod Serling# by Ann Serling
Everything I Need to Know I Learned in the Twilight Zone: A Fifth Dimension Guide to Life#
by Mark Dawidziak
Dickens and Christmas by Lucinda Hawksley
Dickens: Compassion and Contradiction by Karen Kenyon
Charlotte in Love: The Courtship and Marriage of Charlotte Brontë by Brian Wilks
The World Broke in Two: Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, D. H. Lawrence, E. M. Forster and the Year that Changed Literature by Bill Goldstein
Over The Hill and Far Away: A Life of Beatrix Potter by Matthew Dennison
A Secret Sisterhood: The Literary Friendships of Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot, and Virginia Woolf  by Emily Midorikawa
Jane Austen at Home by Lucy Worsley
The Making of Jane Austen by Devoney Looser

War Novels
Devastation Road Jason Hewitt
Brave Deeds# by David Abrams
Spoils by Brian Van Reet

Woman's Fiction
Only Child by Rhiannon Navin
A Hundred Small Lessons by Ashley Hay
The Last Neanderthal by Claire Cameron
The Welcome Home Diner by Peggy Lampman
Hello, Sunshine by Laura Dave
800 Grapes by Laura Dave
A Spool of Blue Thread+ by Anne Tyler
The Heirs by Susan Rieger
The End of Men by Karen Rinaldi
Bridget Jones's Baby by Helen Fielding
The Rosie Project+ by Graeme Simsion
Little Paris Bookstore+ by Nina George

Mysteries, Suspense, and Thrillers
Exposed by Lisa Scottoline
The Queen of the Flowers by Kerry Greenwood
Behind Her Eyes by Sarah Pinsborough
The Cuban Affair by Nelson DeMille
Death of a Busybody by George Bellairs
Dr Sam Johnson, Detector by Lillian de la Torres
Perish From the Earth: A Lincoln and Speed Mystery by Jonathan Putnam
The Breakdown by B. A. Paris

Most of these books received 3 to 5 stars because if I really don't like a book I excuse myself and bow out.

Some of the popular books, including some book club selections, were my least favorites. I did not finish A Man Called Ove or The Little Paris Book Store for book club, I just sped-read to the end. While my book club members were mostly bored or confused by Wharton, I enjoyed Age of Innocence. I learned that most readers want a plot-driven book with characters of pluck and personality. I really try to consider that in my reviews, while also offering my reaction.

I learned several things looking over this list, and I hope to use my insights as I plan and select books for 2018 reading. I miss having more time to write my reviews, but then I worry I might miss reading another amazing book if I cut back. I also now have a huge TBR pile because I am mostly reading upcoming books. We will see if I can cut back in 2018...or read even more books!

To read reviews of any of these books use the Search side bar on the right and type in the book title or author.

Thank you for reading The Literate Quilter this year!
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