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" 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. "

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" Using political power, the elite can induce local authorities to facilitate enclosure and privatisation of land, water, and other hitherto public amenities. And they can pressurise public administrations to cut taxes, reducing financial resources for maintaining the remaining commons. "

Guy Standing

Land

Water

Power

" Magna Carta only came into being in 1217, when the wording had been changed and parts of the original were extended in the Charter of the Forests. This complementary charter covered liberties granted to the common man, including rights to the commons, grazing, fishing, water, and firewood, and was perhaps the first ecological charter in history. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" If the scale of gas is anything like the claims made by its advocates, it has major implications for the economy and British society. Besides its worrying environmental aspects, it could have adverse effects on income distribution. "

Guy Standing

Economy

Society

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

" Since the crash of 2008 and during the neoliberal retrenchment known as austerity, many commentators have muttered that the left is dead, watching social democrats in their timidity lose elections and respond by becoming ever more timid and neoliberal. They deserve their defeats. "

" The primary value of a basic income would be its emancipatory effect. "

" The precariatised mind is one without anchors, flitting from subject to subject, in the extreme suffering from attention deficit disorder. But it is also nomadic in its dealings with other people. "

" Retraining for the precariat is stressful and demoralising; often, they learn new tricks only to find them obsolescent or unwanted. "

" Politicians seem desperate to appeal to their respective versions of the so called 'middle class,' unable to empathise with the precariat and eager to dream up fresh and tougher sanctions against society's wounded. "

" Every progressive movement has been built on the anger, needs, and aspirations of the emerging major class. "

" The Magna Carta was the first class-based charter, enforced on the monarchy by the rising class. "

" If you're healthier, you tend to have a lower demand for health services. "

" The precariat has been losing cultural rights in that those in it feel they cannot and do not belong to any community that gives them secure identity or a sense of solidarity and reciprocity, of mutual support. "

" Every time a government minister or spokesman lauds Magna Carta, let us boo or hiss. Shame them. And let us celebrate what it really means to our history: the ability of an emerging class to make demands against the state for new liberties and rights. "

" If you had a basic income, it would mean that everybody would have a base on top of which their earned income would be taxed at the standard rate of tax. That would increase the incentive to take low-wage jobs. "

" 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. "

" What distinguishes a commons is that it is not private property, does not have a price, and is oriented towards 'use value' rather than 'exchange value.' It does not exist to generate profits. "

" The evidence shows if you give people security, they become better people. They develop their talents. They become better citizens. "

" Twentieth-century welfare state capitalism was historically unique in that national income was split between wages and profits, labour and capital. "

" Chronic insecurity will not be overcome by minimum wage laws, tax credits, means-tested benefits, or workfare. "

" Many in the precariat know they have to spend considerable time just waiting for opportunities to arise. "

" 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. "

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

" People in the precariat find themselves in the situation where the level of their education and qualifications is almost always higher than the sort of labour that they're going to be able to obtain. "

" The income distribution system constructed in the 20th century has broken down, and it will not come back. "