In this video, Owen Jones, a British journalist, interviews Rutger Bregman, the author of Utopia for Realists: And How We Can Get There.

 

Bregman’s book makes the technological unemployment case for a basic income. Jones asks whether this case can stand, referring to John Maynard Keynes’ likely failed prophecy of a 15 hour work week by 2030 in his Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren. Bregman says that many current jobs are unneeded.

 

For more on ‘bullshit jobs’, see David Graeber’s 2013 article on ‘On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs.’ For social construction of both socially necessary jobs and socially unnecessary jobs, see Toru Yamamori’s keynote speech at 2016 BIEN congress on ‘What Can We Learn From a Grassroots Feminist UBI Movement? – Revisiting Keynes’s Prophecy.’

 

Reviewed by Russell Ingram