Prof Guy Standing: Precariat And Peasant: Reframing Social Protection For The 21st Century, SOAS

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This Inaugural Lecture by Professor Guy Standing entitled "Precariat And Peasant: Reframing Social Protection For The 21st Century" was given on 19 June 2013 at SOAS University of London.
Globalisation has produced a global class structure in which the precariat in countries as dissimilar as Britain and China is being expanded by austerity. Reforms intensify insecurities and inequalities. Anger is rising. A new vision is needed that reflects the precariat's aspirations and needs, makes universal basic security a priority and defines work as occupation rather than "jobs". A progressive and more ecological social protection system could then be constructed around principles of compassion, contributions and solidarity.
Guy Standing is Professor of Development Studies at SOAS, University of London, and a founder and co-President of the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN), an NGO promoting basic income as a right. He has held chairs at the Universities of Bath and Monash (Australia) and was previously Director of the Socio-Economic Security Programme of the International Labour Organisation. He is currently working on pilot basic income schemes in India and a follow-up to his latest book, The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class.

[@groenaalst8302]

He describes my situation so accurately and with so much empathie and understanding, I'm moved. I've got tears in my eyes. Still a long way to go, before this knowlegde becomes comon knowledge.

[@33Crazydude]

Excellent speech coming from Guy Standing

[@orthelius]

this is the most important speech of this century

[@UweKulick]

sound!

[@JanosAbel]

I concur with you, Robin, although I would call it one of the speeches in a most important genre in social discourse Gar Alperovitz, for example, is on about the same thing. The genre is also addressing this important issue in therms of Social Evolution. That is not an abstract notion but one that concerns an area of *arrested development* in society and economics; a failure, so far, in adapting to the changes wrought by the Industrial/scientific revolutions to in the human world.

[@JanosAbel]

What do you mean? Could you not hear the video, or is it not a sound system Standing is advocating?

[@UweKulick]

I had to switch to maximum Volume ....

[@gertsy2000]

We need to ensure people's rights by taking control of them and jolly well having them do what we say. Yep. $1.4 trillion in social services. An economist that doesn't know where tax revenue comes from nor basic math? All people are equal......

[@1namrog]

Professor Standing's solution is potentially viable for developing, underdeveloped nations, but it wouldn't even help to mitigate the issues in Western developed post-industrial nations; that is precarious labor and a labor surplus. 'Guaranteed income for all' appeals to immediate humanitarian motives, and it appeals to potential beneficiaries, but it doesn't address the underlying problems! The data from Indian pilots by nature can't be projected elsewhere. Switzerland may be a Western pilot...