Rentier Capitalism and the Precariat: Arguments for Basic Income
Channel: Aarhus Universitet
Date: 25/05/2018

The keynote speech of Professor Guy Standing during the 2018 MatchPoints seminar at Aarhus University.

Guy Standing is a Professorial Research Associate and former Professor of Development Studies at SOAS University of London.

Professor Standing is a founder member and honorary co-president of the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN), an international non-governmental organisation that promotes basic income, whose members include economists, philosophers and other social scientists from over 50 countries. He has a doctorate in economics from the University of Cambridge and a master’s degree in industrial relations from the University of Illinois. He has written and edited books on labour economics, labour market policy, unemployment, labour market flexibility, structural adjustment policies, and social protection policy.

Professor Standing was coordinating editor and main writer of the ILO’s Economic Security for a Better World, a global report issued in 2004. He is on the editorial advisory boards of several academic journals, including Development and Change and the European Journal of Industrial Relations. He has conducted household and enterprise surveys on labour and economic security issues in over 25 countries, and has advised many governments on the design and implementation of labour force surveys.

Professor Standing was economic adviser in the Prime Minister’s Department in Malaysia in the 1980s, and has worked as a social and labour policy adviser with various other governments around the world.

As of 2017 Guy Standing's work is centred on three key themes:

- basic income, including as a member of the International Advisory Committee for a basic income pilot being carried out by Y-Combinator in Oakland, California.

- the plunder of the commons, including events to celebrate the 800th anniversary in November 2017 of the Charter of the Forest, the first set of laws to grant a right of subsistence on the commons.

- rentier capitalism and the precariat, following up themes from his recent books.