Guy Standing is a Professorial Research Associate at SOAS, University of London, and
Hon.
Co-President and co-founder of the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN).
Guy has written widely in the areas of labour economics, labour market policy,
unemployment, labour market flexibility, structural adjustment policies and social
protection.
His best known book The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class (2011) describes the
need to move towards unconditional basic income and deliberative democracy. His book
The Corruption of Capitalism: Why Rentiers Thrive and Work Does Not Pay shows how
global capitalism has been rigged in favour of owners of property - physical, financial
and intellectual.
His latest (2022) book The Blue Commons is a clarion call for the cessation of damage
to the world's oceans.
Guy has a degree in economics from the University of Sussex, took a masters in labour
economics and industrial relations at the University of Illinois, then received his PhD in
economics at Cambridge in 1977.
From 1975 to 2006, Guy worked at the International Labour Organization, latterly as
director of the ILO's Socio-Economic Security Programme. The programme was
responsible for a major report on socio-economic security worldwide.
In 2006 he became Professor of Economic Security at the University of Bath, and in 2013 Professor of Development Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies.