To each according to need

Professor Guy Standing's 2011 book The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class goes a long way to explaining the situation in which Australians and the rest of the world are finding themselves.

In Chapter 2, Standing asserts that since 1975 neo-liberal economic disciples have sought to establish a "global market economy based on competitiveness and individualism." In Australia, we mistakenly called such neo-liberal ideas "economic rationalism" when they were hardly appealing economics nor particularly rational for the majority of people. Standing notes that in much of the developed world we thought economic growth would make us richer but in order to achieve this outcome we would have to lower taxes and downsize unions and other collectives in order to stop them impeding the neo-liberal agenda. This meant there was less revenue to maintain universal social services and social solidarity was eroded.

Neo-liberals railed against what they alternatively termed "cradle to the grave welfare" or the "nanny state", berated the unemployed for failing to find work claiming that they, those with disabilities and single parents were an unnecessary drain on society. In what Standing calls one of the "great 'con tricks' of economic history" these same neo-liberals promoted tax credits, tax reliefs and tax holidays for the wealthy and the super wealthy. Standing notes, as a case in point, the inequitable tax rightoffs on superannuation available to the well-to-do but out of the reach of average workers.

For a few years the majority in the West enjoyed increased wealth or at least access to easier credit and the opportunity to buy cheaper household goods from the sweatshops of Asia. Those who were not carried along on the rising tide that was supposed to lift all boats had few if any friends in high places – they were expendable. In Eric Bogle's words:

We held our wallets to our chest
and said that "I'm all right Jack
and to hell with all the rest.

Then came the global recession, with it the sub-prime housing crisis in the United States and not dissimilar housing affordability issues in much of Europe. Suddenly the Greek, Irish, Portuguese, Spanish and Italian governments appear as if they may go the way of Iceland. There is a crisis in world banking. There is massive unemployment throughout the OECD that once might have been lessened by counter cyclical spending. The unemployed who might have in the past relied upon universal social insurance to tide them over find the coffers are bare.

The future

Guy Standing looks in his last two chapters at alternative scenarios. If governments continue to allow further erosion of social support systems he envisages wages in the developed world converging towards those paid in China and India. He predicts that the precariat will continue to move away from social democratic parties and shift support to neo-fascist anti-immigrant parties. One has only to look at the way those who arrive by boat seeking asylum are treated here and in Italy to see how real such possibilities are.

In his final chapter, Standing examines a much happier option. He argues that people shouldn't be forced to undertake employment noting William Morris' 1885 comment that "It has become an article of the creed of modern morality that all labour is good in itself – a convenient belief to those who live on the labour of others". He then makes the point that:

It is not idleness which damages society. Really idle people may damage themselves, if they dissipate their lives. But it costs society much more to police and punish the tiny minority than would be gained by forcing them to do some low-productivity job.

Later in the chapter Standing writes "If jobs are so wonderful, people should be drawn to them, not driven into them."

He lays out the case for the creation of a universal Basic Income arguing that for most rich countries introducing a Basic Income would be relatively simple. It would involve consolidating existing income maintenance schemes and "replacing others that are riddled with complexity and arbitrary and discretionary conditionality." Such a Basic Income would be paid to every individual legal resident without conditions.

Such a Basic Income would provide the foundation on which to phase out all other subsidies to labor and capital. It would abolish workfare and all other conditionalities imposed on those seeking social assistance. This universal income support would help citizens recover lost social solidarity and help give voice and agency to the precariat.

On the way we might rescue the educational system – turning it away from a training regime designed to make students into commodified alienated individualistic competitors for the global market place – guiding it towards again becoming an institution devoted to scholarship and the promotion of republican freedom.