January 12, 2022 • 13 mins
Historian and "Utopia for Realists" author Rutger Bregman makes the case for improving society by taxing the rich and providing a universal basic income. Originally aired March 2019.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
You're listening to Comedy Central. Welcome to the show. It's
great to be here. A few months ago, for many people,
your name did not exist in their minds at all
in any way, and now you are a superstar, especially
for many young people, because of your views in and
around tax and the super wealthy around the world. How
(00:23):
did you come to this from? From from what you do?
Because you're you're a historian. Yeah, in fact, you are
a Dutch historian. I'm a Dutch historian. That's how everyone
refers to the Dutch historian. I think, you know, I'm
really part of a much wider movement, you know, a
whole new generation that things that we need to move
on to two new ideas and basically that realized that
we need a massive transformation of our economy, sir. And
(00:45):
I was just in a place at the World Economic
Forum where usually no, not many people get to go there,
and it's just one of the few people there talking
common sense. We we actually have a clip um that
went viral if if we can play that right now,
almost no raise is the real issue of tax avoidance,
right and of the rich just not paying their fair share.
I mean it feels like I met a firefighters fighters conference,
(01:07):
and no one is allowed to speak about water. This
is not rocket science. I mean, we can talk for
a very long time about all these stupid philanthropy schemes.
We can divide bono once more, but come on, it's
we gotta be talking about Texas. Yeah, that's it, Texas, Texas, Texas.
All the rest is bullshit in my opinion. So this
was to give people context. This was you sitting with
(01:28):
the richest people in the world. Yeah, and you were
you were. You were actually supposed to be there to
talk about just like the other aspects of your book,
like universal basics from et cetera. And you surprised everyone
with that. They were not happy. They didn't really like that.
Now I was. I mean, I was supposed to go
there and promote my book talk about universal basic income,
(01:48):
which has become a really popular idea. But you know,
during the conference, I became more and more uncomfortable because
you can talk about all sorts of issues there, feminism, participation, equality,
t but then no one raises the T word, right,
you're not. People don't really talk about taxes and text appointed.
So I I just went to my hotel room and
prepared this short speech, and I got the question from
(02:11):
from the moderator and basically ignored his question in that
went ahead. Since that, since that little moment in Doubles,
have you noticed a few private jets following you now?
Have you? Because it seems like something that that would
push a lot of really really wealthy people off that
that idea of them paying more tax and then avoiding it.
(02:32):
Why do you think that's more important or should be
like one of the main conversations apart from transparency and
equality and philanthropy. Well, you know, I'm atorian, right, So um,
if I see someone like say President Trump talk about
we should make America great again, he wants to go
back to the fifties or something like that, I'm like, yeah, well,
maybe that that's a good idea because in the fifties
(02:55):
we have much higher tax rates for the rich. In fact,
a billionaire like Trump would pay like nine percent marginal
tax rate. Yes, the estate tax was over seventy for
people like Trump. So yeah, I mean, make America great again,
bring back those higher tax rates. That would be my slogan.
Do you there are there are many people who would
(03:19):
argue against you and say it's you. Yeah, I mean
you you say you want to raise taxes on on
the wealthy, but the wealthy already paying their fair share
of taxes. People are paying almost fifty of what they own.
Isn't that fair? How do you respond to them? You know,
this is whole boring debate in this country about you know,
capitalism versus socialism. Um. From my perspective, it sounds a
bit ridiculous, Like we're talking about ideas like medicare for all.
(03:40):
Seventy percent of all Americans is in favor of that,
higher taxes on their is in favor of that. So
it's utterly mainstream, and I know that sort of the
standard response here is always, oh, it sounds like communism,
that sounds like venezuela. But it's not communism. It's common sense.
It's it's what most people support. Let me let me
(04:02):
ask you this. One of one of the things I
know get that gets thrown at me all the time
as people go, oh, you you raise the taxes, and
everyone's going to leave because I mean, you know, if
you if you raise the taxes for the rich, and
then the rich you're gonna go live in countries where
they don't have to pay as much tax and you've
lost all of those incomes, and you've lost all of
those people in your country. Well, America is the most
powerful country in the world. You know, it can easily
crack down on tax paradisees like Holland, where I'm from,
(04:24):
right where one of the main tex paradises for American
corporate corporations. So you know, that's really a matter of
political will, I guess, just them being willing to say, hey,
we're going to tax you no matter where you go,
no matter what you do. It's interesting that you you
you fight for these ideas. When you come from Europe,
people would say to you, but but r you you
come from a country where things are great. You do
(04:45):
have all of these services, people are not struggling as
much as they are in other parts of the world.
Why is this so important to you? Then? Well, I
mean the American debate is incredibly influential back in Holland,
right So, uh, And we've got rising inequality in Europe
as well, and the welfare state that is under pressure.
But I mean, it's also true that if I look
at a debate right around Medicare for all, for example,
(05:08):
America is the only country in the rich world that
doesn't have it, and still it has the most expensive
health care system and life expectancy is going down. So yeah,
that seems pretty ridiculous. You have a bunch of ideas
that many people would consider ridiculous depending on their age,
and I find a lot of young people genuinely love
as genius. Um Utopia for Realists is the book that
(05:31):
you wrote, and it's come back into prominence again because
you you it's just like a fun read. You talk
about all of these ideas and how they could actually
be implemented, which is interesting, not just the ideas universal
basic income, open borders, fifteen hour work week. Really just
I mean, this is like a book. This is like
Freddy Krueger for a GOP person, this is this is
like nightmare stories, That's what this is. Indeed, they just
(05:53):
a picture of Rupert Murdock reading I actually did I
just see that? We have that picture Rupert Murdoch, Like,
how do you feel about that? There is there is
one of the people you're speaking about. I framed it. Obviously.
It's like when you talk about these issues like universal
basic income, for instance, seems like a crazy idea. You're
(06:15):
just want to pay people to not work, then why
would anyone work? Well, what not many people know actually
is that if you go back to the sixties, almost
everyone believed, all the experts believe that some form of
basic income was going to be implemented in the United States.
And it was actually Richard Nixon, of all people, who
had a bill for a modest basic income that got
through the House of Representatives twice and was only killed
(06:36):
in the Senate by Democrats, not because they didn't like
the idea of completely eradicated eradicating poverty, but because they
wanted to hire basic income. So it's a it's a
pretty bizarre history that I you know, describe in the book.
Another another bizarre thing is that actually there were major
trials with basic income in the US BacT. Then, you know,
thousands of families received a basic income just to test
(06:57):
what would happen. It turns out it was really effective,
you know, how care calls went down, crime went down,
kids did much better in school. But then there was
one problematic finding is that they also found that the
divorce rates went up, you know, quite a lot, because
a lot of women were like, okay, I'm going to
leave that that asshole and um. But then, but then
(07:20):
all the conservatives obviously said, okay, we don't want basic
inclan anymore. This is gonna make women much too independent. Right.
It was only ten years later that they found out
that they had made a statistical mistake, so in reality,
the divorce rate did not go up. It's a pretty
bizarre history of Well, let me let me ask you this, then,
as as a historian who is basing your arguments on
(07:40):
things that have actually happened, doesn't frustrate you when you
see politicians like Trump, um, I guess misstating their plans
based on a history that they don't seem to understand themselves. Because,
like you said, Trump says, we're going to do it
the way it was, but then when you propose the
way it was, he's like, no, I I don't like that.
Do you think that as people in general, we just
(08:01):
don't know enough about our histories. Well, what frustrates me
the most are these people, the so called moderates, the
centrist who say, oh, that's never gonna happen. You know
that is too radical. If you zoom out a little bit,
you see that so many times in history. Utpian fantasies
have become reality. Um So, I think that's important to
keep in mind. You know that the democracy was once
(08:22):
a crazy idea, right, the end of slavery was once
a total fantasy. It all happened, but it never starts
in the center. It always happened starts on the fringes
with people are first. This missed as radical, as crazy,
as as lunatics. Right, So I guess we've gotta be
a bit unreasonable. Sometimes you have to be unreasonable to
move the conversation forward. The fifteen hour work week is
(08:42):
probably my favorite part of your book. How how does
that even begin to work? Yeah, well, it goes back
to a very old idea actually of the the economist
John Maynard Keynes. He wrote this essay in ninety that,
you know, sort of make two predictions. The first prediction was,
we're gonna be a lot sharing the future, right if
we don't make stupid mistakes like starting other world war
(09:03):
or hysterity during times of crisis. What we did that?
But anyway, we'll be a lot richer. And then we'll
use that wealth to work a little bit less each year.
And then he just extrapolated a set we'll have a
fifteen hour work week in two thousand thirty. The fascinating thing,
again from the historical perspective, is that up until the seventies,
you know, we were on track to make it, you know,
(09:25):
the work week wash shrinking and shrinking and shrinking, and
the experts were predicting that the biggest challenge of the
future was going to be bored. It's only around nineteen
eighty that, you know, throughout the developed what we've been
starting to working more and more and we've been keeping
on inventing these jobs that don't really need to exist, right,
So people sitting in offices, sending sending emails all day
(09:46):
to people they don't really like, and writing reports so on,
no one's ever going to read, right, So that's what
they academic term his bullshit jobs. Yes, yeah, yeah, it's
just like basically you just sit there and then you're
just like, to whom it may concern, reply, I all
has put my last email, etcetera, etcetera. That's the half
of my day. But then the fascinating, the fascinating thing
(10:07):
is is that most of these these jobs, you know,
are people who have wonderful resumes, you know, with two
great universities and have wonderful job titles. But then still
at the end of the day this and they're like,
you know what, I could go on strike and no
one would notice. Um. So in the book, I've got
this story of two strikes that happened in in in
the sixties. The first strike was of garbage collectors. New
(10:29):
York lost it for six days. State of emergency had
to be declared. It turns out we can't do without
garbage collectors. So at that point, I wondered, has it
ever happened in history that the bankers might not strike?
So I started looking, you know, looked at the past
five thousand years basically since the invention of money, and
I found only one example, and this was in Ireland.
(10:53):
The bankers were angry that their wages were not keeping
up with inflation. So that you know what, you'll have it,
We're gonna go on strike and then you'll just how
important we are. And all the experts were like, oh,
this is going to be a disaster, is going to
be a heart attack for the economy. And then from
one day so the other day of the money supply
was not accessible anymore, and nothing much happened. Actually, sir,
(11:18):
the strike classes for six months in the end, and
after six months the bankers came back and said, all right,
all right, all right, we'll get back to work. And
I think this is another example where history just makes
you rethink, right, who are the real wealth creators? Like
this in this country? Is does wealth really you know,
is it really created at the top and then does
it trickle down or maybe it's the other way around.
(11:38):
And are the teachers and the garbage collectors in the
nurses are they the real wealth creators? Wow, that's powerful, man. Um.
Let me ask you this as a historian. If we
don't take these concepts seriously, if we don't think about
how we protect workers and not the jobs themselves, if
we don't think about how to get people paying the
(12:00):
Fisher of Texas, how we uh stop people avoiding text,
which is a huge issue. What do you then worry
would happen based on history? Well, what I worry about
the most is that about the moment when people just
don't have hope anymore for for a better future. Right. So,
my frustration a couple of years ago when I started
(12:21):
writing this book was that I saw so many people,
you know, young people or people call themselves progressives who
only knew what they were against, right against austerity, against racism,
against homophobia, against all these things. Yes I'm against them
as well, but you also have to know what you're
actually for. And that's why I'm so excited that you
see this whole movement now of indeed younger people who
(12:43):
come up with all these fascinating new ideas, sometimes old ideas,
sometimes new ideas like the Green New Deal. Um, that's
what excites me the most because we need hope. Wow,
thank you for being on the show. Man, really great
having you on. You talk for Realist as a really
fascinating read. It's available now Rocket Bragman, Everybody. The Daily
(13:04):
Show with Trevor no Ears. Additional subscribe to The Daily
Show on YouTube for exclusive content and stream full episodes
anytime on Paramount Plus. This has been a Comedy Central
podcast
You're listening to Comedy Central. Welcome to the show. It's
great to be here. A few months ago, for many people,
your name did not exist in their minds at all
in any way, and now you are a superstar, especially
for many young people, because of your views in and
around tax and the super wealthy around the world. How
(00:23):
did you come to this from? From from what you do?
Because you're you're a historian. Yeah, in fact, you are
a Dutch historian. I'm a Dutch historian. That's how everyone
refers to the Dutch historian. I think, you know, I'm
really part of a much wider movement, you know, a
whole new generation that things that we need to move
on to two new ideas and basically that realized that
we need a massive transformation of our economy, sir. And
(00:45):
I was just in a place at the World Economic
Forum where usually no, not many people get to go there,
and it's just one of the few people there talking
common sense. We we actually have a clip um that
went viral if if we can play that right now,
almost no raise is the real issue of tax avoidance,
right and of the rich just not paying their fair share.
I mean it feels like I met a firefighters fighters conference,
(01:07):
and no one is allowed to speak about water. This
is not rocket science. I mean, we can talk for
a very long time about all these stupid philanthropy schemes.
We can divide bono once more, but come on, it's
we gotta be talking about Texas. Yeah, that's it, Texas, Texas, Texas.
All the rest is bullshit in my opinion. So this
was to give people context. This was you sitting with
(01:28):
the richest people in the world. Yeah, and you were
you were. You were actually supposed to be there to
talk about just like the other aspects of your book,
like universal basics from et cetera. And you surprised everyone
with that. They were not happy. They didn't really like that.
Now I was. I mean, I was supposed to go
there and promote my book talk about universal basic income,
(01:48):
which has become a really popular idea. But you know,
during the conference, I became more and more uncomfortable because
you can talk about all sorts of issues there, feminism, participation, equality,
t but then no one raises the T word, right,
you're not. People don't really talk about taxes and text appointed.
So I I just went to my hotel room and
prepared this short speech, and I got the question from
(02:11):
from the moderator and basically ignored his question in that
went ahead. Since that, since that little moment in Doubles,
have you noticed a few private jets following you now?
Have you? Because it seems like something that that would
push a lot of really really wealthy people off that
that idea of them paying more tax and then avoiding it.
(02:32):
Why do you think that's more important or should be
like one of the main conversations apart from transparency and
equality and philanthropy. Well, you know, I'm atorian, right, So um,
if I see someone like say President Trump talk about
we should make America great again, he wants to go
back to the fifties or something like that, I'm like, yeah, well,
maybe that that's a good idea because in the fifties
(02:55):
we have much higher tax rates for the rich. In fact,
a billionaire like Trump would pay like nine percent marginal
tax rate. Yes, the estate tax was over seventy for
people like Trump. So yeah, I mean, make America great again,
bring back those higher tax rates. That would be my slogan.
Do you there are there are many people who would
(03:19):
argue against you and say it's you. Yeah, I mean
you you say you want to raise taxes on on
the wealthy, but the wealthy already paying their fair share
of taxes. People are paying almost fifty of what they own.
Isn't that fair? How do you respond to them? You know,
this is whole boring debate in this country about you know,
capitalism versus socialism. Um. From my perspective, it sounds a
bit ridiculous, Like we're talking about ideas like medicare for all.
(03:40):
Seventy percent of all Americans is in favor of that,
higher taxes on their is in favor of that. So
it's utterly mainstream, and I know that sort of the
standard response here is always, oh, it sounds like communism,
that sounds like venezuela. But it's not communism. It's common sense.
It's it's what most people support. Let me let me
(04:02):
ask you this. One of one of the things I
know get that gets thrown at me all the time
as people go, oh, you you raise the taxes, and
everyone's going to leave because I mean, you know, if
you if you raise the taxes for the rich, and
then the rich you're gonna go live in countries where
they don't have to pay as much tax and you've
lost all of those incomes, and you've lost all of
those people in your country. Well, America is the most
powerful country in the world. You know, it can easily
crack down on tax paradisees like Holland, where I'm from,
(04:24):
right where one of the main tex paradises for American
corporate corporations. So you know, that's really a matter of
political will, I guess, just them being willing to say, hey,
we're going to tax you no matter where you go,
no matter what you do. It's interesting that you you
you fight for these ideas. When you come from Europe,
people would say to you, but but r you you
come from a country where things are great. You do
(04:45):
have all of these services, people are not struggling as
much as they are in other parts of the world.
Why is this so important to you? Then? Well, I
mean the American debate is incredibly influential back in Holland,
right So, uh, And we've got rising inequality in Europe
as well, and the welfare state that is under pressure.
But I mean, it's also true that if I look
at a debate right around Medicare for all, for example,
(05:08):
America is the only country in the rich world that
doesn't have it, and still it has the most expensive
health care system and life expectancy is going down. So yeah,
that seems pretty ridiculous. You have a bunch of ideas
that many people would consider ridiculous depending on their age,
and I find a lot of young people genuinely love
as genius. Um Utopia for Realists is the book that
(05:31):
you wrote, and it's come back into prominence again because
you you it's just like a fun read. You talk
about all of these ideas and how they could actually
be implemented, which is interesting, not just the ideas universal
basic income, open borders, fifteen hour work week. Really just
I mean, this is like a book. This is like
Freddy Krueger for a GOP person, this is this is
like nightmare stories, That's what this is. Indeed, they just
(05:53):
a picture of Rupert Murdock reading I actually did I
just see that? We have that picture Rupert Murdoch, Like,
how do you feel about that? There is there is
one of the people you're speaking about. I framed it. Obviously.
It's like when you talk about these issues like universal
basic income, for instance, seems like a crazy idea. You're
(06:15):
just want to pay people to not work, then why
would anyone work? Well, what not many people know actually
is that if you go back to the sixties, almost
everyone believed, all the experts believe that some form of
basic income was going to be implemented in the United States.
And it was actually Richard Nixon, of all people, who
had a bill for a modest basic income that got
through the House of Representatives twice and was only killed
(06:36):
in the Senate by Democrats, not because they didn't like
the idea of completely eradicated eradicating poverty, but because they
wanted to hire basic income. So it's a it's a
pretty bizarre history that I you know, describe in the book.
Another another bizarre thing is that actually there were major
trials with basic income in the US BacT. Then, you know,
thousands of families received a basic income just to test
(06:57):
what would happen. It turns out it was really effective,
you know, how care calls went down, crime went down,
kids did much better in school. But then there was
one problematic finding is that they also found that the
divorce rates went up, you know, quite a lot, because
a lot of women were like, okay, I'm going to
leave that that asshole and um. But then, but then
(07:20):
all the conservatives obviously said, okay, we don't want basic
inclan anymore. This is gonna make women much too independent. Right.
It was only ten years later that they found out
that they had made a statistical mistake, so in reality,
the divorce rate did not go up. It's a pretty
bizarre history of Well, let me let me ask you this, then,
as as a historian who is basing your arguments on
(07:40):
things that have actually happened, doesn't frustrate you when you
see politicians like Trump, um, I guess misstating their plans
based on a history that they don't seem to understand themselves. Because,
like you said, Trump says, we're going to do it
the way it was, but then when you propose the
way it was, he's like, no, I I don't like that.
Do you think that as people in general, we just
(08:01):
don't know enough about our histories. Well, what frustrates me
the most are these people, the so called moderates, the
centrist who say, oh, that's never gonna happen. You know
that is too radical. If you zoom out a little bit,
you see that so many times in history. Utpian fantasies
have become reality. Um So, I think that's important to
keep in mind. You know that the democracy was once
(08:22):
a crazy idea, right, the end of slavery was once
a total fantasy. It all happened, but it never starts
in the center. It always happened starts on the fringes
with people are first. This missed as radical, as crazy,
as as lunatics. Right, So I guess we've gotta be
a bit unreasonable. Sometimes you have to be unreasonable to
move the conversation forward. The fifteen hour work week is
(08:42):
probably my favorite part of your book. How how does
that even begin to work? Yeah, well, it goes back
to a very old idea actually of the the economist
John Maynard Keynes. He wrote this essay in ninety that,
you know, sort of make two predictions. The first prediction was,
we're gonna be a lot sharing the future, right if
we don't make stupid mistakes like starting other world war
(09:03):
or hysterity during times of crisis. What we did that?
But anyway, we'll be a lot richer. And then we'll
use that wealth to work a little bit less each year.
And then he just extrapolated a set we'll have a
fifteen hour work week in two thousand thirty. The fascinating thing,
again from the historical perspective, is that up until the seventies,
you know, we were on track to make it, you know,
(09:25):
the work week wash shrinking and shrinking and shrinking, and
the experts were predicting that the biggest challenge of the
future was going to be bored. It's only around nineteen
eighty that, you know, throughout the developed what we've been
starting to working more and more and we've been keeping
on inventing these jobs that don't really need to exist, right,
So people sitting in offices, sending sending emails all day
(09:46):
to people they don't really like, and writing reports so on,
no one's ever going to read, right, So that's what
they academic term his bullshit jobs. Yes, yeah, yeah, it's
just like basically you just sit there and then you're
just like, to whom it may concern, reply, I all
has put my last email, etcetera, etcetera. That's the half
of my day. But then the fascinating, the fascinating thing
(10:07):
is is that most of these these jobs, you know,
are people who have wonderful resumes, you know, with two
great universities and have wonderful job titles. But then still
at the end of the day this and they're like,
you know what, I could go on strike and no
one would notice. Um. So in the book, I've got
this story of two strikes that happened in in in
the sixties. The first strike was of garbage collectors. New
(10:29):
York lost it for six days. State of emergency had
to be declared. It turns out we can't do without
garbage collectors. So at that point, I wondered, has it
ever happened in history that the bankers might not strike?
So I started looking, you know, looked at the past
five thousand years basically since the invention of money, and
I found only one example, and this was in Ireland.
(10:53):
The bankers were angry that their wages were not keeping
up with inflation. So that you know what, you'll have it,
We're gonna go on strike and then you'll just how
important we are. And all the experts were like, oh,
this is going to be a disaster, is going to
be a heart attack for the economy. And then from
one day so the other day of the money supply
was not accessible anymore, and nothing much happened. Actually, sir,
(11:18):
the strike classes for six months in the end, and
after six months the bankers came back and said, all right,
all right, all right, we'll get back to work. And
I think this is another example where history just makes
you rethink, right, who are the real wealth creators? Like
this in this country? Is does wealth really you know,
is it really created at the top and then does
it trickle down or maybe it's the other way around.
(11:38):
And are the teachers and the garbage collectors in the
nurses are they the real wealth creators? Wow, that's powerful, man. Um.
Let me ask you this as a historian. If we
don't take these concepts seriously, if we don't think about
how we protect workers and not the jobs themselves, if
we don't think about how to get people paying the
(12:00):
Fisher of Texas, how we uh stop people avoiding text,
which is a huge issue. What do you then worry
would happen based on history? Well, what I worry about
the most is that about the moment when people just
don't have hope anymore for for a better future. Right. So,
my frustration a couple of years ago when I started
(12:21):
writing this book was that I saw so many people,
you know, young people or people call themselves progressives who
only knew what they were against, right against austerity, against racism,
against homophobia, against all these things. Yes I'm against them
as well, but you also have to know what you're
actually for. And that's why I'm so excited that you
see this whole movement now of indeed younger people who
(12:43):
come up with all these fascinating new ideas, sometimes old ideas,
sometimes new ideas like the Green New Deal. Um, that's
what excites me the most because we need hope. Wow,
thank you for being on the show. Man, really great
having you on. You talk for Realist as a really
fascinating read. It's available now Rocket Bragman, Everybody. The Daily
(13:04):
Show with Trevor no Ears. Additional subscribe to The Daily
Show on YouTube for exclusive content and stream full episodes
anytime on Paramount Plus. This has been a Comedy Central
podcast
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The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Therapy Gecko
An unlicensed lizard psychologist travels the universe talking to strangers about absolutely nothing. TO CALL THE GECKO: follow me on https://www.twitch.tv/lyleforever to get a notification for when I am taking calls. I am usually live Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays but lately a lot of other times too. I am a gecko.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.