Battling Eight Giants: Basic Income Now

Description

Today in one the richest countries in the world, 60% of households in poverty have people in jobs, inequality is the highest it has been for 100 years, climate change threatens our extinction and automation means millions are forced into a life of precarity. The solution? Basic Income. Here, Guy Standing, the leading expert on the concept, explains how to solve the new eight evils of modern life, and all for almost zero net cost. There is a better future, one that makes certain all citizens can share in the wealth of the modern economy. Far from being a new idea, Standing shows how the roots of basic income go back to the Charter of the Forest, one of two foundational documents of the state - the other, sealed on the same day, being the Magna Carta. All citizens have a right to the wealth created by capitalism, and all - left or right, rich or poor - can benefit from a dynamic and ecologically grounded economy created by the guarantee of subsistence to all.

Guy Standing is Professorial Research Associate at SOAS University of London, a Fellow of the British Academy of Social Sciences, and co-founder and now honorary co-president of the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN), an international NGO that promotes basic income. He was previously Professor of Development Studies in SOAS, Professor of Economic Security at the University of Bath (UK), Professor of Labour Economics at Monash University (Australia), and Director of the International Labour Organisation's Socio-Economic Security Programme. He has also been a consultant for many governments and international bodies, including the United Nations and its agencies, the European Commission, the OECD, and the World Bank. His latest book is Basic Income: And How We Can Make It Happen (2017). Other recent books are The Corruption of Capitalism: Why Rentiers Thrive and Work Does Not Pay (2016); with others, Basic Income: A Transformative Policy for India (2015); A Precariat Charter: From Denizens to Citizens (2014); and The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class (2011), which has been translated into 23 languages.

No doubt that Basic Income is worthy of real consideration...here Guy Standing takes it to a real proposal...an important contribution to the debate around inequality, austerity, poverty and how we establish a fair and just economic system. * John McDonnell, Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, 2015-2020 * The greatest successes come from having the freedom to fail...Now it's our time to define a new social contract for our generation. We should explore ideas like universal basic income to give everyone a cushion to try new things. * Mark Zuckerberg, Founder and CEO of Facebook *