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When a city or a people succumb to the gig economy, they reduce the protection set up by the state to keep people either employed and well feed or unemployed an

When a city or a people succumb to the gig economy, they reduce the protection set up by the state to keep people either employed and well feed or unemployed and taken care of by the state. Conveniently, gig workers are no longer counted against the unemployment numbers because they are no longer looking for work, so the state looks great and their currency rises. Cities across the world have been turning a blind eye on Uber/Lyft and their traditional taxi drivers are suffering. Cities are turning a blind eye on Airbnb/VRBO and their tax payers are suffering. This is just the beginning as delivery services are becoming gig-iffied and so are other business models. Soon, some semblance of job security and minimum wage will be laughable qualities only attributed to state employees the same way we treat pension funds today.

closeparen 9y ago
Prohibiting the third zone (partially taken care of by work and partially by the state) is deadweight loss, leading to both less tax revenue and greater need for subsidy. Full welfare dependence is not economically or morally superior to halfway in, halfway out. Designing the welfare and labor protection systems based on this belief leads to all kinds of binary cliffs and thresholds that discourage or punish incrementally improving one’s station. Heaping obligations onto full time work relationships, for example, just encourages employers to keep anyone from getting too many hours. Needing to assemble multiple part time jobs with unpredictable schedules leaves low-income workers worse off than before. You can’t legislate benefits into existence without also funding them. There’s this seductive idea that you can extract more from capitalists by setting high minimum standards for allowable transactions (see: “affordable housing”) and they continue to disprove it by just walking away from the transactions instead.
- ppeetteerr 9y ago
  I would argue that full welfare, depending on how its used or what it provides, is either a blessing or a curse. I Canada, a person can return to a vocational school full time while being on welfare to improve their standing in life. If that same person is unable to better their standing through government services, they have two choices: the black market and the gig economy. Here, the gig economy is a benefit but, the way it's being done now, it's a stand in for regular business. So we're sacrificing regulated, decent paying jobs with unregulated, poorly paying jobs.
  - closeparen 9y ago
    Is it a stand in? My understanding is that there are vastly more workers in the gig economy than the “disrupted” industries previously employed. Seems like a classic case of concentrated downside, diffuse upside, similar to free trade. The existence of the gig economy shouldn’t prevent someone from choosing to be fully welfare dependent for i.e. retraining, if welfare is good enough.
candiodari 9y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unemployment_benefits#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unemployment_benefits#United_S... If you read that and you will quickly realize that most of the changes have been to ignore large portions of the unemployed population. Essentially, if you become unemployed, you are counted starting when you are 1 month unemployed (not from the day you lose your job) and you stop being counted in the 7th-8th month of your unemployment (depending on a few factors, can be up to 12 months). So the vast majority of drop in unemployment rate is government lying. Gig economy actually increases the unemployment rate. Why ? Because it enables the long term unemployed to be employed for a short while, then "lose the job" for valid reasons (ie. lack of demand), and then get unemployment benefits again for 8 months. I'm convinced many unemployed have realized this, and use it. This enables them to not lose benefits and as a side effects reintroduces them to the stats. But the vast majority of the time, they're unemployed. And some periods of the year, e.g. Christmas, it's easy to pull of.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  You've linked to info about unemployment benefit and you are pretending that rules about eligibility for those benefits have something to do with the unemployment rate. But, that's completely wrong. See, e.g., https://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm https://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm – particularly the second question, which addresses directly the mistake underlying your entire post.
  - 0x445442 9y ago
    http://www.shadowstats.com/ http://www.shadowstats.com/ If the spirit of the post was a critique on the Gubment's official unemployment rate, I'd say the post was on point.
    - dragonwriter 9y ago
      > If the spirit of the post was a critique on the Gubment's official unemployment rate, I'd say the post was on point Since every single claim it makes about the method in which things contribute to the official unemployment rate is false (because it is based on rules for qualifying for unemployment benefits that are irrelevant to being counted as unemployed in the unemployment rate), I can't see any reasonable way it can be described as an “on point” critique. It’s conclusionay align with a belief that you bring with you from elsewhere, but that doesn't make it a good argument for that conclusion, irrespective of whatever merit that conclusion has separate from the actual argument offered in the post.

closeparen 9y ago

Prohibiting the third zone (partially taken care of by work and partially by the state) is deadweight loss, leading to both less tax revenue and greater need for subsidy. Full welfare dependence is not economically or morally superior to halfway in, halfway out. Designing the welfare and labor protection systems based on this belief leads to all kinds of binary cliffs and thresholds that discourage or punish incrementally improving one’s station. Heaping obligations onto full time work relationships, for example, just encourages employers to keep anyone from getting too many hours. Needing to assemble multiple part time jobs with unpredictable schedules leaves low-income workers worse off than before. You can’t legislate benefits into existence without also funding them. There’s this seductive idea that you can extract more from capitalists by setting high minimum standards for allowable transactions (see: “affordable housing”) and they continue to disprove it by just walking away from the transactions instead.

ppeetteerr 9y ago
I would argue that full welfare, depending on how its used or what it provides, is either a blessing or a curse. I Canada, a person can return to a vocational school full time while being on welfare to improve their standing in life. If that same person is unable to better their standing through government services, they have two choices: the black market and the gig economy. Here, the gig economy is a benefit but, the way it's being done now, it's a stand in for regular business. So we're sacrificing regulated, decent paying jobs with unregulated, poorly paying jobs.
- closeparen 9y ago
  Is it a stand in? My understanding is that there are vastly more workers in the gig economy than the “disrupted” industries previously employed. Seems like a classic case of concentrated downside, diffuse upside, similar to free trade. The existence of the gig economy shouldn’t prevent someone from choosing to be fully welfare dependent for i.e. retraining, if welfare is good enough.

candiodari 9y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unemployment_benefits#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unemployment_benefits#United_S... If you read that and you will quickly realize that most of the changes have been to ignore large portions of the unemployed population. Essentially, if you become unemployed, you are counted starting when you are 1 month unemployed (not from the day you lose your job) and you stop being counted in the 7th-8th month of your unemployment (depending on a few factors, can be up to 12 months). So the vast majority of drop in unemployment rate is government lying. Gig economy actually increases the unemployment rate. Why ? Because it enables the long term unemployed to be employed for a short while, then "lose the job" for valid reasons (ie. lack of demand), and then get unemployment benefits again for 8 months. I'm convinced many unemployed have realized this, and use it. This enables them to not lose benefits and as a side effects reintroduces them to the stats. But the vast majority of the time, they're unemployed. And some periods of the year, e.g. Christmas, it's easy to pull of.

dragonwriter 9y ago
You've linked to info about unemployment benefit and you are pretending that rules about eligibility for those benefits have something to do with the unemployment rate. But, that's completely wrong. See, e.g., https://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm https://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm – particularly the second question, which addresses directly the mistake underlying your entire post.
- 0x445442 9y ago
  http://www.shadowstats.com/ http://www.shadowstats.com/ If the spirit of the post was a critique on the Gubment's official unemployment rate, I'd say the post was on point.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    > If the spirit of the post was a critique on the Gubment's official unemployment rate, I'd say the post was on point Since every single claim it makes about the method in which things contribute to the official unemployment rate is false (because it is based on rules for qualifying for unemployment benefits that are irrelevant to being counted as unemployed in the unemployment rate), I can't see any reasonable way it can be described as an “on point” critique. It’s conclusionay align with a belief that you bring with you from elsewhere, but that doesn't make it a good argument for that conclusion, irrespective of whatever merit that conclusion has separate from the actual argument offered in the post.