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Rutger Bregman Profile picture
@rcbregman
Sep 7, 2020 • 5 tweets • 3 min read • Read on X
NEWS! I'm so honoured to be guest editor of this week's The Big Issue, UK's wonderful street newspaper. Theme: CYNICISM IS OUT, HOPE IS IN. On the cover: exclusive illustration by the great @charliemackesy! /1 Image
We've got brilliant pieces by @helenlewis and @NesrineMalik on activism and social change. I've interviewed filmmaker Richard Curtis (Love Actually, About Time, etc) about his films, activism and how he's being radicalised by his kids. (Teaser: bigissue.com/latest/richard…) /2
Here's a short version of my own essay about the jaw-dropping generational shift we're seeing right now. If you were young in the 1990s, it was avant-garde to be cynical and nihilistic. Nowadays, activism is the new realism.
bigissue.com/latest/rutger-… /3
Of course we have a piece on the power of universal basic income, or in this case: giving cash to homeless people. An interview with Claire Williams, who's doing an extraordinary experiment in Vancouver with giving money to rough sleepers. /4
Long story short: buy as many copies as you can for everyone you know. Buy from one of the 2,000+ street vendors for just £3, or subscribe, or buy it (if you're not in the UK) in the Big Issue App - you don't want to miss this :)
bigissue.com/magazines/rutg… /5 [the end]

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More from @rcbregman

Rutger Bregman Profile picture
May 21
A new analysis of that “One Big Beautiful Bill”: we knew this would happen, but seeing the numbers like out like this...

The con is just so blatant, so obvious, it almost feels like parody. Image
In 2026, the richest 1% would receive $138 billion in tax cuts.

That’s more than the entire bottom 60% of Americans combined — who would receive just $92 billion.

itep.org/house-tax-plan…
What does that look like per person?

The average tax cut for the top 1%: $79,000.

The average for the bottom fifth: pocket change.
Read 6 tweets
Rutger Bregman Profile picture
May 18
A U.S. government plan is being enacted right now to surveil, silence, and deport people who speak out for Palestinian rights.

It’s called Project Esther — and it makes “cancel culture” look like child’s play.

Free speech defenders, where are you? 🧵 Image
Project Esther is the Heritage Foundation’s plan to destroy the pro-Palestinian movement in the U.S.

The same group behind Project 2025 — the authoritarian wishlist for Trump’s second term — is now taking a victory lap.

Because the crackdown has already begun.
They call it a “strategy to fight antisemitism.”

But in reality, it equates any criticism of Israel with terrorism.

The goal? To deport, defund, sue, fire, expel, and cancel anyone who challenges Israeli policies — especially on campus.
Read 11 tweets
Rutger Bregman Profile picture
May 15
Incredibly powerful investigation in Dutch newspaper NRC: Seven of the world’s leading genocide scholars — including renowned Holocaust experts — describe Israel’s actions in Gaza as genocidal.

And according to them, nearly all of their peers agree. Image
These are not activists. They include Holocaust scholars and the heads of major genocide research centers. Scholars from Israel, the U.S., the U.K., Australia and the Netherlands.

And they are not divided. Without exception, they describe Israel’s actions as “genocidal.”
Raz Segal (Israeli scholar): “Can I name someone whose work I respect who doesn’t consider it genocide? No."

Uğur Ümit Üngör (University of Amsterdam & NIOD): "I don’t know them.”
Read 17 tweets
Rutger Bregman Profile picture
Apr 21
We need wealth redistribution. And we also need talent redistribution.

In fact, the two are intimately connected.

Research by three top economists: higher taxes (for the rich) would get more people to do work that’s actually useful. Image
Since the 1970s, more and more Ivy League graduates have been going into finance, consultancy and corporate law, instead of... preventing the next pandemic, saving democracy, abolishing factory farming etc. etc. Image
The economists found that Reagan­-era tax cuts sparked a mass career switch among the country’s brightest minds, from teachers and engineers to bankers and accountants.

benlockwood.com/papers/Lockwoo…Image
Read 10 tweets
Rutger Bregman Profile picture
Apr 20
I’m coming to Harvard University on April 29 with an unfiltered message 😄

Every year, thousands of teenagers write passionate application essays about the global problems they aspire to solve—hunger, poverty, pandemics, you name it.

But a few years later... Image
... nearly half work for corporations like McKinsey, Goldman Sachs, or Kirkland & Ellis.

My friend @s_vanteutem, Oxford-graduate, calls it the ‘Bermuda Triangle of Talent’: consultancy, finance, and corporate law – a black hole that devours many promising young minds. Image
This isn’t just a waste of time. It’s a waste of potential on a historic scale.

It’s like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, but instead of plastic polluting the ocean, it’s human potential clogging up in cubicles.
Read 13 tweets
Rutger Bregman Profile picture
Apr 19
No, you're not fine just the way you are.

The first excerpt from my new book MORAL AMBITION is published today in The Guardian!

Of all the things we waste in this throwaway world, the greatest is wasted talent. I wrote Moral Ambition for the millions of talented people stuck in not-very-impactful jobs.

For the dreamers who’ve settled. For the idealists who gave up. For those who want to make their one life count.

You’ve only got about 2,000 workweeks in your career. How you spend that time is one of the most important moral decisions of your life. You can spend those hours making people click ads, writing reports nobody reads, or managing people who don’t need managing.

Or… you can do something that really matters.

That’s the core idea of Moral Ambition: using your talent to take on the biggest challenges of our time—climate change, corruption, inequality, future pandemics. To make the world a wildly better place.Image
Image
Most of us fall into one of three categories:

1) Not that ambitious, not that idealistic

2) Ambitious, but not idealistic

3) Idealistic, but not ambitious

What we need is a fourth kind of person. Image
Let’s talk about Category I first. About 8% of employees believe their own job is socially meaningless. Another 17% aren’t sure it adds value.

The late David Graeber had a highly technical term for this: bullshit jobs. We're talking about millions of jobs, mostly in the private sector.Image
Read 8 tweets

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