Zitat des Tages von Guy Standing:
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.
Many in the precariat know they have to spend considerable time just waiting for opportunities to arise.
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.
Retraining for the precariat is stressful and demoralising; often, they learn new tricks only to find them obsolescent or unwanted.
Collective action remains the best way of renewing the march towards the great trinity of liberty, equality, and solidarity.
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.
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.
If you're healthier, you tend to have a lower demand for health services.
The claim that if people had a basic income they would become lazy is prejudiced and has been refuted many times in many places.
A primary justification for a basic income is social justice.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
Many low-income people in the U.S.A. charged with a crime opt to plead guilty to a lesser offence because they cannot afford to go to trial.
The primary value of a basic income would be its emancipatory effect.
The precariat is the first class in history to be losing acquired rights - cultural, civil, social, economic, and political.
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.
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.
People want to work, but they don't want to necessarily want to do labour.
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.
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.
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.
Workfare will merely accentuate the growth of the low-paying, insecure labour market.
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.
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 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.
Politicians should reflect on the well-documented fact that fearful, insecure people lose their sense of tolerance and altruism.
Although the precariat does not consist simply of victims, since many in it challenge their parents' labouring ethic, its growth has been accelerated by the neoliberalism of globalisation, which put faith in labour market flexibility, the commodification of everything, and the restructuring of social protection.
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.
The income distribution system constructed in the 20th century has broken down, and it will not come back.
