Mark Abenstein

“The correlation between ethnic background and crime, it turns out, is precisely zero. None, nothing, nada. Youth crime, the report stated, has its origins in the neighborhood where kids grow up. In poor communities, kids from Dutch backgrounds are every bit as likely to engage in criminal activity as those from ethnic minorities.”
― Rutger Bregman, Utopia for Realists: How We Can Build the Ideal World

“You can't pull yourself up by your bootstraps if you have no boots.”
― Rutger Bregman, Utopia for Realists: How We Can Build the Ideal World

“Even utopias need a tax clause. For example, we could start with a transactions tax to rein in the financial industry. Back in 1970, American stocks were still held for an average of five years; forty years later, it’s a mere five days.21 If we imposed a transactions tax – where you would have to pay a fee each time you buy or sell a stock – those high-frequency traders who contribute almost nothing of social value would no longer profit from split-second buying and selling of financial assets. In”
― Rutger Bregman, Utopia for Realists: And How We Can Get There