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On the other hand, while worker protections had their use a century ago, they have increased cost of labour by a lot, making many low skilled workers unemployab

On the other hand, while worker protections had their use a century ago, they have increased cost of labour by a lot, making many low skilled workers unemployable (the very people they were supposed to protect). I've talked to many gig workers and they all told me that without these jobs, they would have nothing. Sure, we can start imposing strong "protections" on the gig economy, but these jobs would just disappear and those workers would be out of jobs again. No one plans a career on doing gigs their whole life, but for many it's a better source of revenue than just being unemployed and they feel less stuck in unemployment and more accomplished than they used to, which is better for moral and making them want to improve their skills/get back in the labour force.

zwkrt 7y ago
If the current way we structure our economy and society is failing large swaths of people, gigs might be a good stop gap, but how many people can be gigified before the whole thing breaks? What is the acceptable percent of people for whom it is ok that they will never have healthcare?
- patrickaljord 7y ago
  Not sure how this is related to healthcare. I'm from France where everybody has healthcare and the gig economy is still huge. In the US you could either go single payer like France or full private/free market but obligatory like in Switzerland or the Netherlands. Either way, this is not related to the gig economy. The US has a problem where an oligopoly of insurances are trying to keep a bad status quo.
  - zwkrt 7y ago
    Sorry if I was unclear. My point is that gig workers in the US and other people of transient employment status do not generally consider themselves to have access to healthcare, even though they technically do through the accumulation of unpayable debt.
    - rayiner 7y ago
      The average Uber driver makes about $35,000 per year: https://www.thestreet.com/personal-finance/education/how-much-do-uber-lyft-drivers-make-14804869 https://www.thestreet.com/personal-finance/education/how-muc.... That’s about 300% of the federal poverty line. Under the ACA, they can purchase health insurance on the exchanges for a premium that is capped at 8-10% of their income.[1] In Germany, a self-employed person would pay 15% for mandatory state health insurance premiums. (People who work for a company pay half of that, with their employer paying the other half.) Here in Maryland, a quick search of the ACA exchange shows a Silver Kaiser Permanente plan for $266 per month (subsidized) for a 35-year old single person making $35,000.
      - rightbyte 7y ago
        No way they do ... "indeed.com" has no backing of those numbers.
      - mcguire 7y ago
        Mean, median, and mode... "Pay Per Month: A median of $155 per month and an average of $364" Then, there's that "pay" isn't "pay". These are gross numbers rather than net. "The actual expenses of driving, like maintenance and gas, consume about $4.87 per hour of a driver's income."
        rayiner 7y ago
        2/3 of Uber drivers only do it part time, so the median isn’t a useful data point if you’re talking about health insurance. The $36,00 figure is for full time. Regardless, if someone makes less than that driving Uber, their ACA premiums are correspondingly lower. And if they make really little, they are eligible for Medicaid in many states.
      - zaarn 7y ago
        In germany consistently working for a company like Uber as part of "gig" would likely fall under "fake self-employed", so Uber would have to offer you an employment contract and you'd pay half of the 15%, so about 8%, which falls on the lower end of your premium caps. You'd also gain accident insurance and other privileges or protections.
- exelius 7y ago
  It’s just an absurd situation that health care is tied to employment in the first place. If you get sick and can’t work, you just become a burden on society that’s not accounted for anywhere — but society still has to pay for anyway. And we wonder why our healthcare costs are so high...
- Creationer 7y ago
  We aren't failing people: unemployment hasn't been this low in 20 years. We have spent 28 trillion dollars on welfare, yet the poverty rate is unchanged over decades. The only thing that supports people is work, and we need to eliminate as many impediments to it as possible: over-regulation, payroll taxes, income taxes. Make huge cuts to welfare with the savings and streamline healthcare to provide cheap, basic services to every citizen (in line with disallowing citizenship by birth). Then, regulate the supply of labour by barring immigration from poor countries (establish a liberal visa regime with countries in the HDI top 30 though, to allow legitimate talent to come to America). You have the recipe for a reasonable, modern life for any American willing to work. It could be a blueprint for the whole Western world.
  - sgt101 7y ago
    If you were serious about providing a reasonable, modern life for Americans wouldn't you provide high quality free healthcare as a basic right? Wouldn't you provide free education and eliminate student debt? Wouldn't you ensure a dignified retirement and old age for all? Your manifesto doesn't include these things, why not?
    - Creationer 7y ago
      > streamline healthcare to provide cheap, basic services to every citizen Already covered that. We can pay for healthcare for all citizens, but it will mean excluding very expensive things like heart surgery, cancer treatment, joint replacements. We will probably need to be much more forward on euthanasia for the old, to save resources. We can provide free higher education, but its going to mean no student housing, no athletics programs and restricting college to the top 20% of the cohort academically. Why should we have to tax the current worker population in order to pay for old people to do nothing? The current retirement system is a flawed ponzi scheme. People have continued to work until death or impairment in the past - why should retirement be considered a human right now? Cut payroll taxes and income taxes, and the elderly can happily work 1-2 days per week, and businesses will be happy to have them. Store clerks, fast food workers, cleaners, child carers. These jobs can be done well by the elderly, and work keeps the brain active and healthy. What if I want to work part-time throughout my life, and never retire? Shouldn't I have the ability as an individual to decide how and if I want to retire?
- mcguire 7y ago
  What if gigs aren't a stop-gap, but the way our economy and society is failing people? This has been going on for decades---I can remember complaints about UPS, etc., delivery employees being replaced by contractors, and I've worked for places with the infamous 19.5hr/wk schedule.
whatshisface 7y ago
>they all told me that without these jobs, they would have nothing. There are two things going on here that makes this more complicated that meets the eye. For one, as you have pointed out, lowering the price of labor increases the number of things people would be willing to hire someone to do, thereby increasing the number of jobs. However, it's also true that by removing the protections for one specific form of labor but not all, gig economy companies will have a competitive advantage over classical employment companies and put them out of business. So, the gig economy is reducing the number of "classical" jobs. These effects point in opposite directions, and without being able to put numbers on them there's no way judge which wins out. Measured in terms of "money paid to low-skill workers," the reduction in everybody's wages might or might not be offset by the increased number of jobs, an increase which has been attenuated by the gig economy replacing some of the old economy.
- patrickaljord 7y ago
  There's another way to see this, worker protections were invented to put low skilled people out of work (historically, people of color). https://www.forbes.com/sites/carriesheffield/2014/04/29/on-the-historically-racist-motivations-behind-minimum-wage/#4914f8f211bb https://www.forbes.com/sites/carriesheffield/2014/04/29/on-t...
  - deogeo 7y ago
    Countries other than the US have minimum wage laws. Or do you want to imply we have to choose between worker protections and diversity?
    - nostrademons 7y ago
      It's possible for different countries to adopt the same policy for different reasons. Many countries get around diversity issues by not having diversity.
    - patrickaljord 7y ago
      Read the article, it's not just the US, South Africa too. And I know it was the same in France and many European countries to prevent low skilled immigrants from getting jobs. My point is, worker protections almost by definition prevent low skilled workers from getting jobs because they impose additional costs that low skilled workers are the first to pay by losing job opportunities. In the economy, any additional cost has to be paid by someone eventually, guess who that usually is.
NeedMoreTea 7y ago
Would they be out of work otherwise? I saw no lack of deliveries or taxis ten or twenty years ago. Delivery drivers have been moved from secure employment to the gig economy and enforced self-employment. Uber drivers would previously have been taxi or private hire drivers. The problem comes when, after a few months, many realise that the gig role they took simply doesn't pay. Or pays significantly less than minimum wage without rights and benefits that everyone else in the economy takes for granted. For the most part it's simply a way of larger companies outsourcing part of their labour costs to the state (via top-up benefits).
- 0xB31B1B 7y ago
  There are orders of magnitude more uber drivers now than there were taxi drivers ten or twenty years ago. The point isn’t that these jobs didn’t exist or were replaced 1:1, the point is that there is a super steep demand curve in these services so a drop in price by 10% means 10x demand at that reduced price, which means the number of drivers now is much much more tha. It used to be to satisfy those orders
  - AlexandrB 7y ago
    > The point isn’t that these jobs didn’t exist or were replaced 1:1, the point is that there is a super steep demand curve in these services so a drop in price by 10% means 10x demand at that reduced price, which means the number of drivers now is much much more tha. It used to be to satisfy those orders Let me go out on a limb and say: who gives a shit that there’s now more demand? This is not a good thing, demand for Uber is often replacing demand for public transit and bringing with it additional congestion[1], pollution, and waste in the classical “broken window” style. This is economic growth for the sake of itself - not towards any kind long term prosperity for the human race. [1] https://digitalcommons.hope.edu/curcp_16/147/ https://digitalcommons.hope.edu/curcp_16/147/
    - jimmaswell 7y ago
      Make transit as attractive as you think it "should" be and these people wouldn't be choosing uber instead.
smileysteve 7y ago
> they have increased cost of labour by a lot, Though not in real costs
blfr 7y ago
while worker protections had their use a century ago, they have increased cost of labour by a lot, making many low skilled workers unemployable Outsourcing with maybe a dash of mass immigration made them unemployable, not workers protections. Let's not pretend like this is some accidental outcome of well-meaning measures. This is the desired result of deliberately implemented policies.
- wongarsu 7y ago
  Let's not forget automation. A lot of low-skilled jobs from a century ago simply don't exist anymore or have shrunk massively.

zwkrt 7y ago

If the current way we structure our economy and society is failing large swaths of people, gigs might be a good stop gap, but how many people can be gigified before the whole thing breaks? What is the acceptable percent of people for whom it is ok that they will never have healthcare?

patrickaljord 7y ago
Not sure how this is related to healthcare. I'm from France where everybody has healthcare and the gig economy is still huge. In the US you could either go single payer like France or full private/free market but obligatory like in Switzerland or the Netherlands. Either way, this is not related to the gig economy. The US has a problem where an oligopoly of insurances are trying to keep a bad status quo.
- zwkrt 7y ago
  Sorry if I was unclear. My point is that gig workers in the US and other people of transient employment status do not generally consider themselves to have access to healthcare, even though they technically do through the accumulation of unpayable debt.
  - rayiner 7y ago
    The average Uber driver makes about $35,000 per year: https://www.thestreet.com/personal-finance/education/how-much-do-uber-lyft-drivers-make-14804869 https://www.thestreet.com/personal-finance/education/how-muc.... That’s about 300% of the federal poverty line. Under the ACA, they can purchase health insurance on the exchanges for a premium that is capped at 8-10% of their income.[1] In Germany, a self-employed person would pay 15% for mandatory state health insurance premiums. (People who work for a company pay half of that, with their employer paying the other half.) Here in Maryland, a quick search of the ACA exchange shows a Silver Kaiser Permanente plan for $266 per month (subsidized) for a 35-year old single person making $35,000.
    - rightbyte 7y ago
      No way they do ... "indeed.com" has no backing of those numbers.
    - mcguire 7y ago
      Mean, median, and mode... "Pay Per Month: A median of $155 per month and an average of $364" Then, there's that "pay" isn't "pay". These are gross numbers rather than net. "The actual expenses of driving, like maintenance and gas, consume about $4.87 per hour of a driver's income."
      - rayiner 7y ago
        2/3 of Uber drivers only do it part time, so the median isn’t a useful data point if you’re talking about health insurance. The $36,00 figure is for full time. Regardless, if someone makes less than that driving Uber, their ACA premiums are correspondingly lower. And if they make really little, they are eligible for Medicaid in many states.
    - zaarn 7y ago
      In germany consistently working for a company like Uber as part of "gig" would likely fall under "fake self-employed", so Uber would have to offer you an employment contract and you'd pay half of the 15%, so about 8%, which falls on the lower end of your premium caps. You'd also gain accident insurance and other privileges or protections.
exelius 7y ago
It’s just an absurd situation that health care is tied to employment in the first place. If you get sick and can’t work, you just become a burden on society that’s not accounted for anywhere — but society still has to pay for anyway. And we wonder why our healthcare costs are so high...
Creationer 7y ago
We aren't failing people: unemployment hasn't been this low in 20 years. We have spent 28 trillion dollars on welfare, yet the poverty rate is unchanged over decades. The only thing that supports people is work, and we need to eliminate as many impediments to it as possible: over-regulation, payroll taxes, income taxes. Make huge cuts to welfare with the savings and streamline healthcare to provide cheap, basic services to every citizen (in line with disallowing citizenship by birth). Then, regulate the supply of labour by barring immigration from poor countries (establish a liberal visa regime with countries in the HDI top 30 though, to allow legitimate talent to come to America). You have the recipe for a reasonable, modern life for any American willing to work. It could be a blueprint for the whole Western world.
- sgt101 7y ago
  If you were serious about providing a reasonable, modern life for Americans wouldn't you provide high quality free healthcare as a basic right? Wouldn't you provide free education and eliminate student debt? Wouldn't you ensure a dignified retirement and old age for all? Your manifesto doesn't include these things, why not?
  - Creationer 7y ago
    > streamline healthcare to provide cheap, basic services to every citizen Already covered that. We can pay for healthcare for all citizens, but it will mean excluding very expensive things like heart surgery, cancer treatment, joint replacements. We will probably need to be much more forward on euthanasia for the old, to save resources. We can provide free higher education, but its going to mean no student housing, no athletics programs and restricting college to the top 20% of the cohort academically. Why should we have to tax the current worker population in order to pay for old people to do nothing? The current retirement system is a flawed ponzi scheme. People have continued to work until death or impairment in the past - why should retirement be considered a human right now? Cut payroll taxes and income taxes, and the elderly can happily work 1-2 days per week, and businesses will be happy to have them. Store clerks, fast food workers, cleaners, child carers. These jobs can be done well by the elderly, and work keeps the brain active and healthy. What if I want to work part-time throughout my life, and never retire? Shouldn't I have the ability as an individual to decide how and if I want to retire?
mcguire 7y ago
What if gigs aren't a stop-gap, but the way our economy and society is failing people? This has been going on for decades---I can remember complaints about UPS, etc., delivery employees being replaced by contractors, and I've worked for places with the infamous 19.5hr/wk schedule.

whatshisface 7y ago

>they all told me that without these jobs, they would have nothing. There are two things going on here that makes this more complicated that meets the eye. For one, as you have pointed out, lowering the price of labor increases the number of things people would be willing to hire someone to do, thereby increasing the number of jobs. However, it's also true that by removing the protections for one specific form of labor but not all, gig economy companies will have a competitive advantage over classical employment companies and put them out of business. So, the gig economy is reducing the number of "classical" jobs. These effects point in opposite directions, and without being able to put numbers on them there's no way judge which wins out. Measured in terms of "money paid to low-skill workers," the reduction in everybody's wages might or might not be offset by the increased number of jobs, an increase which has been attenuated by the gig economy replacing some of the old economy.

patrickaljord 7y ago
There's another way to see this, worker protections were invented to put low skilled people out of work (historically, people of color). https://www.forbes.com/sites/carriesheffield/2014/04/29/on-the-historically-racist-motivations-behind-minimum-wage/#4914f8f211bb https://www.forbes.com/sites/carriesheffield/2014/04/29/on-t...
- deogeo 7y ago
  Countries other than the US have minimum wage laws. Or do you want to imply we have to choose between worker protections and diversity?
  - nostrademons 7y ago
    It's possible for different countries to adopt the same policy for different reasons. Many countries get around diversity issues by not having diversity.
  - patrickaljord 7y ago
    Read the article, it's not just the US, South Africa too. And I know it was the same in France and many European countries to prevent low skilled immigrants from getting jobs. My point is, worker protections almost by definition prevent low skilled workers from getting jobs because they impose additional costs that low skilled workers are the first to pay by losing job opportunities. In the economy, any additional cost has to be paid by someone eventually, guess who that usually is.

NeedMoreTea 7y ago

Would they be out of work otherwise? I saw no lack of deliveries or taxis ten or twenty years ago. Delivery drivers have been moved from secure employment to the gig economy and enforced self-employment. Uber drivers would previously have been taxi or private hire drivers. The problem comes when, after a few months, many realise that the gig role they took simply doesn't pay. Or pays significantly less than minimum wage without rights and benefits that everyone else in the economy takes for granted. For the most part it's simply a way of larger companies outsourcing part of their labour costs to the state (via top-up benefits).

0xB31B1B 7y ago
There are orders of magnitude more uber drivers now than there were taxi drivers ten or twenty years ago. The point isn’t that these jobs didn’t exist or were replaced 1:1, the point is that there is a super steep demand curve in these services so a drop in price by 10% means 10x demand at that reduced price, which means the number of drivers now is much much more tha. It used to be to satisfy those orders
- AlexandrB 7y ago
  > The point isn’t that these jobs didn’t exist or were replaced 1:1, the point is that there is a super steep demand curve in these services so a drop in price by 10% means 10x demand at that reduced price, which means the number of drivers now is much much more tha. It used to be to satisfy those orders Let me go out on a limb and say: who gives a shit that there’s now more demand? This is not a good thing, demand for Uber is often replacing demand for public transit and bringing with it additional congestion[1], pollution, and waste in the classical “broken window” style. This is economic growth for the sake of itself - not towards any kind long term prosperity for the human race. [1] https://digitalcommons.hope.edu/curcp_16/147/ https://digitalcommons.hope.edu/curcp_16/147/
  - jimmaswell 7y ago
    Make transit as attractive as you think it "should" be and these people wouldn't be choosing uber instead.

smileysteve 7y ago

> they have increased cost of labour by a lot, Though not in real costs

blfr 7y ago

while worker protections had their use a century ago, they have increased cost of labour by a lot, making many low skilled workers unemployable Outsourcing with maybe a dash of mass immigration made them unemployable, not workers protections. Let's not pretend like this is some accidental outcome of well-meaning measures. This is the desired result of deliberately implemented policies.

wongarsu 7y ago
Let's not forget automation. A lot of low-skilled jobs from a century ago simply don't exist anymore or have shrunk massively.