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

Guy Standing

Categorized in : Impose Incredible Benefits Poverty

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.

suffering mind attention people

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.

product research intellectual ideas

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.

more intellectual real change

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.

low living rich history

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

happen end 20th-century euthanasia

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

best great equality way

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.

medical children people world

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

politicians lose tolerance people

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.

say doing society life

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.

always situation education people

People in the precariat rely very heavily on money wages.

rely wages money people

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

tend you demand health

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.

due relationships expect uncertainty

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.

old place force real

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.

great globalisation rich real

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

capitalism welfare labour unique

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.

me growth care work

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?

loved stop looking growth

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

think economics growth work

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

down will back broken