Guy Standing (economist)

Last updated

Guy Standing
Guy Standing (sitting) in 2012.jpg
Standing at the BIEN Congress in 2012
Born (1948-02-09) 9 February 1948 (age 76)
NationalityBritish
Academic career
Institution
Field
Alma mater
ContributionsTheory of the precariat
AwardsFellowship of the Academy of Social Sciences (2009)

Guy Standing FAcSS (born 9 February 1948) is a British labour economist. He is a professor of development studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, [1] and a co-founder of the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN). [2] Standing has written widely in the areas of labour economics, labour market policy, unemployment, labour market flexibility, structural adjustment policies and social protection. He created the term precariat to describe an emerging class of workers who are harmed by low wages and poor job security as a consequence of globalisation. Since the 2011 publication of his book The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class, his work has focused on the precariat, unconditional basic income, deliberative democracy, and the commons. [3]

Contents

Life and career

Standing was born on 9 February 1948. [4] He gained his bachelor's degree in economics from the University of Sussex in 1971. After taking a masters in labour economics and industrial relations at the University of Illinois, he received his doctorate in economics from the University of Cambridge in 1977. [5]

From 1975 to 2006, Standing worked at the International Labour Organization, latterly as director of the ILO's Socio-Economic Security Programme. [5] The programme was responsible for a major report on socio-economic security worldwide [6] and for creation of the Decent Work Index. [7]

From April 2006 to February 2009, he held a position of Professor of Labour Economics, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. [5] In 2006, he became professor of economic security at the University of Bath, leaving in 2013 to become professor of development studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. [5] Since October 2015 he has worked in Professorial Research Associate, SOAS, University of London, UK. [5] He was also working on "pilot basic income schemes in India" and on topics connected to his two recent books, The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class (2011) and A Precariat Charter: From Denizens to Citizens (2014). [8]

In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, Standing argued in 2021 that the pandemic's consequences showed that a universal basic income was inevitable. Standing has also endorsed a carbon tax as a means to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. [9]

He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. [10]

The Precariat

Standing in 2014 Guy Standing (12957386475).jpg
Standing in 2014

Standing's best-known book is The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class, published in 2011. [11] In it, he blames globalisation for having plunged more and more people into the precariat, which he analyses as a new emerging social class. [12] According to Standing, the precariat is not only suffering from job insecurity but also identity insecurity and lack of time control, not least due to workfare social policies.

Standing describes the precariat as an agglomerate of several different social groups, notably immigrants, young educated people, and those who have fallen out of the old-style industrial working class. [13]

Standing calls on politicians to make ambitious social reforms towards ensuring financial security as a right. He argues for an unconditional basic income as an important step to a new approach, [14] stating that it would create economic growth. [15] If politicians fail to take the necessary decisions, he predicts a wave of anger and violence, [16] and the rise of far-right parties. [17]

Personal life

In August 2015, Standing endorsed Jeremy Corbyn's campaign in the Labour Party leadership election. [18]

Bibliography

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Amartya Sen</span> Indian economist and philosopher

Amartya Kumar Sen is an Indian economist and philosopher. Sen has taught and worked in the United Kingdom and the United States since 1972. In 1998, Sen received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his contributions to welfare economics. He has also made major scholarly contributions to social choice theory, economic and social justice, economic theories of famines, decision theory, development economics, public health, and the measures of well-being of countries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Citizen's dividend</span> Georgist proposed policy

Citizen's dividend is a proposed policy based upon the Georgist principle that the natural world is the common property of all people. It is proposed that all citizens receive regular payments (dividends) from revenue raised by leasing or taxing the monopoly of valuable land and other natural resources.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Hicks</span> British economist (1904–1989)

Sir John Richard Hicks was a British economist. He is considered one of the most important and influential economists of the twentieth century. The most familiar of his many contributions in the field of economics were his statement of consumer demand theory in microeconomics, and the IS–LM model (1937), which summarised a Keynesian view of macroeconomics. His book Value and Capital (1939) significantly extended general-equilibrium and value theory. The compensated demand function is named the Hicksian demand function in memory of him.

Sir Arthur Lyon Bowley, FBA was an English statistician and economist who worked on economic statistics and pioneered the use of sampling techniques in social surveys.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Richard Layard, Baron Layard</span> British economist (born 1934)

Peter Richard Grenville Layard, Baron Layard FBA is a British labour economist, co-director of the Community Wellbeing programme at the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics, and co-editor of the World Happiness Report. Layard is an economist who wants public policy to be targeted at the wellbeing of the people. To this end he has written 6 books and some 40 articles.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tony Atkinson</span> British economist (1944–2017)

Sir Anthony Barnes Atkinson was a British economist, Centennial Professor at the London School of Economics, and senior research fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford.

Hugh Nigel Kennedy is a British medievalist and academic. He specialises in the history of the early Islamic Middle East, Muslim Iberia and the Crusades. From 1997 to 2007, he was Professor of Middle Eastern History at the University of St Andrews. Since 2007, he has been Professor of Arabic at SOAS, University of London.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ha-Joon Chang</span> South Korean economist (born 1963)

Ha-Joon Chang is a South Korean economist and academic. Chang specialises in institutional economics and development, and lectured in economics at the University of Cambridge from 1990–2021 before becoming professor of economics at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in 2022. Chang is the author of several bestselling books on economics and development policy, most notably Kicking Away the Ladder: Development Strategy in Historical Perspective (2002). In 2013, Prospect magazine ranked Chang as one of the top 20 World Thinkers.

Ben Fine is Professor of Economics at the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies.

Precarity is a precarious existence, lacking in predictability, job security, material or psychological welfare. The social class defined by this condition has been termed the precariat.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thomas Piketty</span> French economist

Thomas Piketty is a French economist who is a professor of economics at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, associate chair at the Paris School of Economics and Centennial Professor of Economics in the International Inequalities Institute at the London School of Economics.

Alfredo Saad-Filho is a Brazilian Marxian economist.

<i>Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?</i> 1967 book by Martin Luther King Jr.

Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? is a 1967 book by African-American minister, Nobel Peace Prize laureate, and social justice campaigner Martin Luther King Jr. Advocating for human rights and a sense of hope, it was King's fourth and last book before his 1968 assassination.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Technological unemployment</span> Unemployment caused by technological change

Technological unemployment is the loss of jobs caused by technological change. It is a key type of structural unemployment. Technological change typically includes the introduction of labour-saving "mechanical-muscle" machines or more efficient "mechanical-mind" processes (automation), and humans' role in these processes are minimized. Just as horses were gradually made obsolete as transport by the automobile and as labourer by the tractor, humans' jobs have also been affected throughout modern history. Historical examples include artisan weavers reduced to poverty after the introduction of mechanized looms. During World War II, Alan Turing's bombe machine compressed and decoded thousands of man-years worth of encrypted data in a matter of hours. A contemporary example of technological unemployment is the displacement of retail cashiers by self-service tills and cashierless stores.

Renana Jhabvala is an Indian social worker based in Ahmedabad, India, who has been active for decades in organising women into organisations and trade unions in India, and has been extensively involved in policy issues relating to poor women and the informal economy. She is best known for her long association with the Self-Employed Women's Association (SEWA), India, and for her writings on issues of women in the informal economy.

In sociology and economics, the precariat is a neologism for a social class formed by people suffering from precarity, which means existing without predictability or security, affecting material or psychological welfare. The term is a portmanteau merging precarious with proletariat.

Robert Eisner was an American author and William R. Kenan professor of economics at Northwestern University. He was recognized throughout the United States for his expertise and knowledge of macroeconomics and the economics of business cycles. He was a regular contributor to the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, and The Los Angeles Times, primarily covering national economic policy and reform.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ailsa McKay</span> 20th and 21st-century Scottish economist

Ailsa McKay was a Scottish economist, government policy adviser, a leading feminist economist and Professor of Economics at Glasgow Caledonian University.

The Great British Class Survey (GBCS) was a survey of social class in the United Kingdom conducted in 2011. The survey was developed in collaboration with academics from the University of Manchester, the London School of Economics and Political Science, and the University of York. The research has been published in the journal Sociology. The findings are also described in a book, Social Class in the 21st Century, by Mike Savage, Niall Cunningham, Fiona Devine, Sam Friedman, Daniel Laurison, Lisa Mckenzie, Andrew Miles, Helene Snee and Paul Wakeling. The results released were based on a survey of 325,000 adults, 160,000 residents of Britain most of whom lived in England and described themselves as "white." Class as a multi-dimensional construct was defined and measured according to the amount and kind of economic, cultural, and social capital reported. Economic capital was defined as income and assets; cultural capital as amount and type of cultural interests and activities, and social capital as the quantity and social status of their friends, family and personal and business contacts. This theoretical framework was developed by Pierre Bourdieu who first published his theory of social distinction in 1979.

Universal basic income is a subject of much interest in the United Kingdom. There is a long history of discussion yet it has not been implemented to date. Interest in and support for universal basic income has increased substantially amongst the public and politicians in recent years.

References

  1. "Professor Guy Standing, Department of Development Studies". School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. Retrieved 5 July 2014.
  2. "About BIEN". Archived from the original on 25 October 2012.
  3. Standing, Guy (27 January 2012). "The precariat: why it needs deliberative democracy". OpenDemocracy. Retrieved 4 July 2014.
  4. "Standing, Guy". Library of Congress. Retrieved 4 July 2014. found: His Population mobility and productive relations, 1984: CIP t.p. (Guy Standing) data sheet (b. 2/9/48)
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 Standing, Guy. "Career". Guy Standing. Retrieved 18 June 2022.
  6. "SES Publications - Socio-economic security". www.ilo.org.
  7. Standing, Guy; Bonnet, Florence; Figueiredo, José B. (June 2003). "A family of decent work indexes". International Labour Review. 142 (2): 213–238. doi:10.1111/j.1564-913X.2003.tb00259.x.
  8. "Professor Guy Standing | Staff | SOAS University of London". www.soas.ac.uk. SOAS University of London Department of Development Studies. Retrieved 19 June 2022.
  9. Kang, Hyun-kyung (13 August 2021). "[INTERVIEW] UK economist calls for redirecting capitalism to make it more inclusive". koreatimes. Retrieved 16 November 2021.
  10. "Fellows". Academy of Social Sciences. Archived from the original on 28 May 2014. Retrieved 18 June 2022.
  11. Standing, Guy (2011). The precariat. City: Bloomsbury Academic. ISBN   978-1-84966-455-4.
  12. Standing, Guy (19 August 2012). "Britain's labour figures hide the real hours we work every day". The Guardian | Comment is free. Retrieved 4 July 2014.
  13. Smoczyński, Wawrzyniec (15 September 2011). "Youthful members of the full-time precariat". Vox Europ | Polityka | Economy | Social Issues | Economic Crisis. Retrieved 4 July 2014.
  14. Why the precariat requires a basic income (Prof. Guy Standing) (ENG) on YouTube Conference in Ljubljana. BKTVkanal (3 November 2012). Retrieved 4 July 2014.
  15. Standing, Guy (18 December 2014). "Basic income paid to the poor can transform lives". The Guardian. Retrieved 3 August 2016.
  16. Standing, Guy (1 June 2011). "Who will be a voice for the emerging precariat?". The Guardian | Comment is free. Retrieved 4 July 2014.
  17. Presenter: Elenanor Hall (9 February 2012). "The World Today: The dangers of the rising global protest movement (interview with Guy Standing)". ABC News. Sydney.
  18. "The Labour party stands at a crossroads". The Guardian . 14 August 2015. Retrieved 15 July 2017.