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" The IP system is an artificial construct that excessively rewards owners of intellectual property, granting them monopolies over inventions and ideas that, in many cases, are the product of generations of thinkers and/or publicly funded research. "

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" 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

" 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. "

" Collective action remains the best way of renewing the march towards the great trinity of liberty, equality, and solidarity. "

" 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. "

" 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 consists of a growing proportion of our total society. It is being habituated to accept a life of unstable labour and unstable living. Often they're unable to say what their occupation is, because what they're doing now might be quite different from what they were doing three months ago. "

" 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 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. "

" 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. "

" We need a new model of social protection. Let us accept that jobs are not the magic solution - and that in a globalised market, job guarantees are a false promise. Let us accept flexible labour, too. But in return, let us have a society in which everybody has a right to basic security and a more equal access to other insurance-based schemes. "

" 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

" Globalisation began what should be called the Great Convergence, creating a globalising labour market in which wages in emerging market economies slowly converge with wages in rich economies, generating a steady drop in real wages across Europe. "

" 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. "

" We are in an era of chronic insecurity and growing inequalities. In that context, we need to have new mechanisms for income distribution which give people a sense of security. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

" In 1936, John Maynard Keynes predicted the 'euthanasia of the rentier' before the end of the 20th century. It did not happen. "

" A democratically governed national fracking fund should be set up, perhaps similar to what Norway and Alaska have. Areas of drilling should be rented to companies through public tender, with or without subsidies, and a rising share of profits beyond a negotiated upper limit should be deposited in the national capital fund. "

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

" 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. "

" The World Bank and others have been converted to conditional cash transfers (CCT). These provide poor people with cash on condition they send their children to school and for medical treatment. "

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

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

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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