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.

Guy Standing

More Quotes by Guy Standing
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More Quotes From Guy Standing

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.

Guy Standing
sufferingmindattentionpeople

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.

Guy Standing
productresearchintellectualideas

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.

Guy Standing
moreintellectualrealchange

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.

Guy Standing
lowlivingrichhistory

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

Guy Standing
happenend20th-centuryeuthanasia

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

Guy Standing
bestgreatequalityway

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.

Guy Standing
medicalchildrenpeopleworld

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

Guy Standing
politicianslosetolerancepeople

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.

Guy Standing
saydoingsocietylife

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.

Guy Standing
alwayssituationeducationpeople

People in the precariat rely very heavily on money wages.

Guy Standing
relywagesmoneypeople

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

Guy Standing
tendyoudemandhealth

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.

Guy Standing
duerelationshipsexpectuncertainty

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.

Guy Standing
oldplaceforcereal

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.

Guy Standing
greatglobalisationrichreal

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

Guy Standing
capitalismwelfarelabourunique

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?

Guy Standing
lovedstoplookinggrowth

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

Guy Standing
thinkeconomicsgrowthwork

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

Guy Standing
downwillbackbroken

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

Guy Standing
labourwantworkpeople