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" 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. "

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" 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. "

Guy Standing

Community

Identity

Support

" In the interests of competitiveness in a globalizing world economy, governments of all complexions introduced labour-market reforms that promoted flexibility but accentuated the precariat's insecurities. "

" 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. "

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

" 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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Corporations and financiers have used their growing influence to induce governments and international organizations to construct a global framework of institutions and regulations that enable elites to maximize their rental income. "

" Means-tested benefits have one incredible feature in that they impose huge poverty traps. "

" The claim that if people had a basic income they would become lazy is prejudiced and has been refuted many times in many places. "

" Since all political parties blame the others for the economic mess, it is unfair to attribute unemployment to individual behaviour. "

" 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. "

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

" 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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

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

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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "