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" Chronically insecure people easily lose their altruism, tolerance, and respect for non-conformity. If they have no alternative on offer, they can be led to attribute their plight to strangers in their midst. "

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" Politicians should reflect on the well-documented fact that fearful, insecure people lose their sense of tolerance and altruism. "

Guy Standing

Lose

People

Politicians

" Across Europe, not just in the U.K., the old Beveridge and Bismarckian variants of the welfare state have been dismantled. In their place has been erected a mish-mash of means-tested, behaviour-tested social assistance, with a growing tendency to force young unemployed into workfare schemes, which are helping to depress real wages. "

" In financial affairs and dealings with the state, those in the precariat are disadvantaged since they are usually less well-informed and have to do much more to satisfy demands made on them if they want to gain meagre state benefits. "

" People in the precariat rely very heavily on money wages. "

" People want to work, but they don't want to necessarily want to do labour. "

" A rich and diverse commons lowers the cost of living for those who use it. And throughout history, it has been those on low incomes who gain most from the commons. "

" I don't see basic income as a panacea, but we must have a new income distribution system. The old one has broken down irretrievably. "

" What we need is a slow time movement to gain control over time and an overhaul of work statistics to give a better perspective on all the work being done and how much of it is undesirable, unnecessary, and demeaning. "

" A primary justification for a basic income is social justice. "

" Capital is taxed much less than labour; subsidies going to capital, the rich, and middle-income earners greatly exceed the benefits going to the precariat and underclass. "

" The precariat is today's mass class, which is both dangerous, in rejecting old political party agendas, and transformative, in wanting to become strong enough to be able to abolish itself, to abolish the conditions of insecurity and inequality that define it. "

" Think how modern economics presents work. Only labour that contributes to growth counts. "

" What we can say with confidence is that the technological revolution is worsening inequality, due mostly to mechanisms that limit free markets. It is also bringing about disruptive change that is intensifying insecurity and may indeed lead to large-scale labor displacement. "

" A person looking after a frail former lover is not working and not contributing to economic growth. But if he or she stopped, the state would probably have to take over, thereby adding to growth. So, to increase growth, we should stop looking after our loved ones. Could anybody explain to a passing Martian how this makes sense? "

" If schooling becomes little more than preparation for the job market and consumption, it cannot produce socially responsible and altruistic citizens. "

Guy Standing

Preparation

Responsible

" Successive governments in the U.K. have worked to create a more flexible labour market, which also meant labour insecurity. They allowed wages to drop and non-wage benefits to shrivel, creating worse inequality than statistics reveal. "

Guy Standing

Inequality

Statistics

" The precariat is the first class in history to be losing acquired rights - cultural, civil, social, economic, and political. "

" Sanctions and workfare make it easier for employers to impose insecure practices on desperate people. "

" A multi-tier social protection system must be based on a modest basic income so as to enable the precariat to build lives involving a balance of different types of work, not just labour in jobs. "

" Most existing national capital funds have been built up from royalties from oil and other minerals. They need not be limited that way. Most are anything but democratic. That could be changed. "

" If I care for an elderly relative without payment, it is not work, is not counted in national income, and, as it is not labour, is not counted as work. Should my neighbour pay me to do precisely the same tasks, it would contribute to economic growth. "

" The precariat faces chronic uncertainty about what to do, about what incomes to expect, about state benefits that might be their due, about their relationships, their homes, and about the occupations they can realistically expect. "

" Public social services, infrastructural policies, and so on are vital. But a basic income should be part of a package of reforms. "

" People, in general, want to improve their lives and the lives of their children and other loved ones. "

" Globalisation, technological change, and the move to flexible labour markets has channelled more and more income to rentiers - those owning financial, physical, or so-called intellectual property - while real wages stagnate. "

" In the old 20th-century income distribution system, the shares of income going to capital, mainly in profits, and labor, in wages and non-wage benefits, were roughly stable. But that system is no more. "

Guy Standing

Wages

Old

" Millions of people in many so-called democratic countries have lost the right to vote, or never obtain it. And millions clearly feel that the political mainstream is not articulating a vocabulary or policies oriented to their needs and aspirations. "

" The precariat can be divided into three further groups - atavists, who look back to a lost past; nostalgics, who look forlornly for a present, a home; and progressives, who look for a lost future. "

" The Latin root of 'precariousness' is 'to obtain by prayer.' The precariat must ask for favours, for charity, to show obsequiousness, to plead with figures of authority. It is degrading and stigmatizing. "

" Think of how much time is spent looking and applying for jobs. Some of those who have read my book on the precariat have told me they have applied for thousands of jobs. This is scarcely leisure; it is work. "

Guy Standing

Think

Time