The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class

"The Precariat came out in 2011 and was quite a prescient account of the way in which labor market conditions were changing, and the increasing role of precarious, insecure labor in our economy. During the coalition government (2010-2015), there was an increased concern about zero-hour contracts and forms of employment that were not just demeaning, but dangerous and incapable of enabling people to satisfy their basic needs. What the book does is identify a series of economic conditions that call for basic income. Guy Standing has probably done more in this country than anyone to advance the case for basic income. His account of the labor market really was transformative. Here we have people who are often well-qualified—whose parents had clearly advanced their interest across the course of their lives—increasingly doing work that was low paid, insecure, and incapable of leading to property, family, and forms of success that their parents would have assumed would fall naturally from being graduates or working in various different professions. This was all largely unpredictable. People did not expect there would be such a large-scale diminution in the interests of a generation in material terms, but it’s become clear that baby boomers are an outlying generation in terms of wealth. They’ve had more wealth than their parents, and they’ve got more wealth than their kids. Younger people, essentially anyone under 50, really are dealing with different material conditions. It’s very difficult for older people to understand the way in which the labor market works now. What Standing does is to articulate those particular conditions to a much wider audience. What’s shocking is the way in which understandings of labor and work have been inverted. Throughout human history, there’s been a broad diversity of activities that have been recognized as valuable in societies. Caring roles, for example, have always been seen as extremely important because they’re integral to producing a healthy next generation to take forward the species and society, and, incidentally, look after older people as part of ensuring that society can function. Increasingly, what’s come to pass is that unless those activities are paid, they’re regarded as worthless. There’s this sense in which someone can legitimately care for somebody, but only if they’re employed as a carer. If someone is looking after their kids or their parents, which has been regarded as essential since the development of our species, it is now seen as worthless. That’s extremely damaging to society."