Guy Standing

Guy Standing does the kind of unglamorous work that quietly reshapes how we think about society. A British labour economist teaching development studies at SOAS, he co-founded the Basic Income Earth Network back in 1986, long before universal basic income became fashionable dinner-party talk. He also popularized the idea of the precariat, naming a precarious working class that mainstream economics preferred to ignore. What I respect is his persistence: he kept arguing for a guaranteed minimum income even when it was dismissed as utopian. An economist who grounds theory in real conditions is worth listening to, and Standing strikes me as someone who refuses to give up on the future.

Name (English)

Guy Standing

Name (Japanese)

ガイ・スタンディング

Reading

がい・すたんでぃんぐ

Born

February 9, 1948 (age 78)

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Aquarius / Rat

Occupation

economist / teacher / university teacher

University

University of Illinois System

Awards & achievements

• 2014 Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences

• Official sitehttps://www.guystanding.com
• Wikipedia (English)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy%20Standing%20(economist)
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3122156

Tags

• economist
• teacher
• university teacher

Last updated

2026-06-20

Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.