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They're calling that "Remaking the Gig Economy"? Making Uber and Lyft drivers into employees? What a sham. For 10 years I ran my own consultancy. Every new eng

by tylerl 7y ago

They're calling that "Remaking the Gig Economy"? Making Uber and Lyft drivers into employees? What a sham. For 10 years I ran my own consultancy. Every new engagement was a new "job" where I could negotiate the rules of engagement however I deemed fit. Usually lasting no more than 5 days each. Every new month for 10 years I'd think: "this is it, it's over; I have no work scheduled for next month, I'm going to have to give up and get a real job." But somehow the work always rolled in, and I did really well. By the end I was billing over $300/hr, and I worked when and where I saw fit. As far as "gig workers" go, I was about as successful as you can possibly be. And yet my wife had to work a Real Job at a Real Company because I couldn't buy reasonable health insurance for any price. Any price at all. So I spun down my company and got a real job. The Gig Economy is an utter poopshow; not even at the very top is it sustainable. Making Uber's bottom-of-the-barrel jobs slightly less abysmal doesn't do crap for the Gig Economy. Driving for Uber isn't a Gig. You're not negotiating your rate on each pickup. It's a carefully managed relationship with the same company each time, who pays for your service on a recurring and predictable fee-for-work basis. It's a job. Fixing the Gig Economy means making it possible for people to make a living without the shelter of an employer. And making Uber and Lift into real employers doesn't fix it. It's not even related.

onion2k 7y ago
Your post makes it sound like the gig economy is actually unworkable right now, so the right solution, at least in the short term while we don't have an answer to problem of how to make it workable, would be to make those 'jobs' actual jobs with real benefits.
- username90 7y ago
  California loves making bandaid state fixes to federal problems, I think this is the wrong way to go. Problem: You need a full-time job at a company to get benefits such as healthcare. Californian solution: Reclassify as many as possible as full-time workers. Problem: USA immigration laws are horribly inflexible. Californian solution: Make it illegal to go after illegal immigrants. I don't think that these passive-aggressive fixes are good for USA's democracy. Either we need to split up the country into more manageable chunks and make moving between states as hard as moving between EU countries or we need to accept the intent of federal laws. Otherwise we will just end up in an ever escalating war of dumb bills to counteract the other sides dumb bills.
  - throwawaynihil 7y ago
    > California loves making bandaid state fixes to federal problems, I think this is the wrong way to go. You just hit the nail on the head. The real problem is that California is grossly under-represented in government, thanks to the founding fathers and gerrymandering. We have to slap together these hacks because otherwise we would wait centuries to get any real change out of the Fed. As for "USA's democracy", screw the USA and its' democracy. As a Californian, I care about California's democracy, not the GOP's federalist plutocracy. Republikans look at California as a rich man to mug who won't fight back. These laws are how we fight back. The USA needs us, we don't need them.
    - paul_f 7y ago
      How does gerrymandering affect California's representation at the Federal level? And the makeup of the Senate? It's that darn constitution again :-)
      - throwawaynihil 7y ago
        If you really don't understand how gerrymandering screws over our democracy, then you're not worth responding to. The fact is a state with 38 million people and a GDP equivalent to 20% of the nation should have more representation than moscow mitch's welfare state of kentucky.
        umanwizard 7y ago
        That's not related to gerrymandering though, which is why I think the post you're replying to is confused. The unfairly low representation of large states in the Senate is a huge issue, but it's not what "gerrymandering" means.
        throwawaynihil 7y ago
        Forgive my wording, gerrymandering is the primary tool used by the GOP to control the USA. It's their strongest tool to cheat their way into elections, we've seen that clearly in North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Georgia. If we actually followed the spirit and intentions of the founding fathers, then California would already be grossly under-represented. Add to that the way the GOP rigs the elections via gerry-mandering and . voter suppression, and Californians are treated like slaves, not citizens. They have all forgotten the battle cry of the republic, "NO TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION". #calexit
hayksaakian 7y ago
Your case seems to be a consequence of how healthcare works in America (insurance). For those of us lucky enough to be in good health, the "Gig economy" as-described would be just fine.
- cheriot 7y ago
  > For those of us lucky enough to be in good health It's a common refrain that only people with health problems need health care, but that's just not true. Risk has a price. That's why health care and life insurance for healthy people is not free. Good health just makes it easier to pretend that risk isn't there. Tying health care to employment is a historical accident long overdue for change.
  - WalterBright 7y ago
    > Tying health care to employment is a historical accident long overdue for change. Ironically, it came about because of wage freezes imposed by the government during WW2. Employers had to find something to offer to attract workers, and employer-paid insurance did the trick. The trap, though, was that employer paid insurance was paid with pre-tax dollars, while if you bought it yourself you'd pay in post-tax dollars, making it far more expensive.
    - cheriot 7y ago
      That's an interesting tidbit of history. Thanks
    - erik_seaberg 7y ago
      Also adverse selection. Healthy people are tempted to only pay for catastrophic or no coverage, so a lot of individual policy buyers are sicker than the average employee in a group policy (because large companies cover everyone).
  - moduspol 7y ago
    > Tying health care to employment is a historical accident long overdue for change. This, 100%. It wouldn't solve everything, but it'd be a huge positive step to roll back tax incentives that encourage this.
chirau 7y ago
What's your point, really? Other than telling us you got to 300 per hour. Please, ELI5
- malloryerik 7y ago
  > What's your point, really? That health care should be decoupled from employment.
  - mirimir 7y ago
    As it is in just about every other developed economy.
djrobstep 7y ago
As well as laws like this that recognize the reality of the employment relationship, making these jobs decent requires: - unionization and industry bargaining to get decent wages and conditions - quality social welfare systems (including universal healthcare) so that people aren't afraid of poverty if they get fired/quit/change jobs I've always wondered why there isn't more of an appetite for Medicare for All and universal healthcare on this site. How many people would like to do a startup but don't because they'd have no health insurance?
- kmjg88nvf8 7y ago
  Why doesn't anybody do a startup providing health insurance to the uninsured? Are there too many regulations? Insurance is just a business, it seems to me.
  - davidgh 7y ago
    The USA did such a startup. It’s called healthcare.gov, AKA Obamacare. It allows you to get health insurance, without consideration for pre-existing conditions and provides you with significant tax credits to offset the premiums, based on your income. Most of the policies are high-deductible, which means you’ll end up paying for the “scratches and sniffles” yourself but have a per-year maximum-out-of-pocket that can be planned for. It’s not perfect but it at least provides an option whereas before if you had any non-trivial pre-existing condition you couldn’t find any insurance at all.
    - kmjg88nvf8 7y ago
      Maybe it is wrong to ask insurances to insure people with pre-existing conditions. Perhaps such cases should be considered charity or social help, and convered by the state? Just wondering if reframing the problem as such could help. I'm not from the US, so not sure what exactly the issues are. It seems healthcare.gov is not good enough yet? I don't think classifying government institutions as startups is really correct, though. They have infinite money supply and no requirement to be profitable.
- 7y ago
writepub 7y ago
The lesson here is for Uber drivers to realize it can't be a career, and quit, just like you did. I don't believe they're being compelled or misled into driving for Uber/Lyft. Additionally, mass exodus of drivers from Uber/Lyft will compel those companies to increase rates
astockwell 7y ago
As an American living in Ontario, Canada for a time, I literally COULD NOT BELIEVE the gig economy there. It is what the US aspires to: a guy owns a snow plow business, employs 30 other gig workers 6mos a year. A woman does city/house hunting tours. Contractors are consistently self-employed. On and on. These folks, earning enough to live, and (to another commentor’s point) without fear of medical bills/issues. That really is it: that’s the difference. And it makes all the difference.
- jaaron 7y ago
  I often wonder about this cost to the US economy due to a lack of universal health care: how much productivity is lost due to people staying in jobs just for health care, how many businesses not started, etc.
  - dpau 7y ago
    Here in the US I'm personally forgoing health insurance to pursue my craft while developing software on the side for extra income. One medical emergency will end it all. I've often wondered myself if, in a country with universal healthcare, people would be more willing to take risks and start businesses, pursue their art, develop inventions, etc. Would love to see an analysis of the economic cost of not having universal healthcare in terms of startups not pursued, inventions not made, etc.
    - fuzz4lyfe 7y ago
      >One medical emergency will end it all. One medical emergency and your credit will be ruined. Wait a seven years without contracting the debt collector and the debt becomes uncollectible. After three years roughly three quarters of the effect on your credit will evaporate. That's what actually happens beyond the hyperbolic political grandstanding. Remember kids, if you get a bill that you can't possibly pay. Don't pay it. Let it go to collections and pay it for pennies on the dollar (another trick, tell them the most you can pay is $10 a month or something else low. Pay off that debt in 2075) or just wait for it to become uncollectible.
ummonk 7y ago
Post-obamacare, getting healthcare isn't hard, especially if you're making almost half a million a year as you must have been.
kmjg88nvf8 7y ago
Seems more of an issue with health insurance than with the Gig Economy, though. What is the reason insurance providers don't want to insure contractors?
mirimir 7y ago
It is misleading to lump people billing at $100s/hr with drivers, shoppers, dog walkers, etc. But what's the median billing rate for the "gig economy"? Given my experience with consulting, it seems odd to use the "gig" label. But whatever, it did suck to pay ~$1K per month for health insurance.
- RonaldSchleifer 7y ago
  My thought too. I also did not get the sense that someone who “ended up billing at $300/hr and was still struggling with month to month work is someone who really realized the full cost of self-employment, because that is what he was really doing, employing himself … not “just like you guys” gigs. If you’re billing at $300/hr and working when and how you want, it actually seems immensely disingenuous to try to associate with the sympathies for people stuck in the gig economy con job the tech tyrants have been imposing on society as a kind of excuse why you couldn’t manage to fill your consultancy pipeline. I also guarantee he could have gotten health insurance, he just did not feel comfortable paying the roughly $1,000 to $2,000 per month it would have cost because his business pipeline was not full of work consistently. People don’t realize just how much health care costs, regardless of whether it’s American employees who don’t realize the employers contribution is about 4-5 time what they pay monthly, or the worshiped and beatified “universal healthcare” that is “free” in Europe where massive taxes are paid to augment the also massive individual monthly cost taken out of people’s paychecks.
  - CPLX 7y ago
    > People don’t realize just how much health care costs The American system costs way more for comparable care, precisely because of our insane system. Every single dollar or hour spent on medical billing issues and dealing with insurance and arguing over who pays is total deadweight loss.
  - nickjj 7y ago
    > I also guarantee he could have gotten health insurance, he just did not feel comfortable paying the roughly $1,000 to $2,000 per month it would have cost because his business pipeline was not full of work consistently. I don't think it's abnormal not to want to pay those rates. $1,000+ a month is absolutely insane for health insurance and at $2,000 a month you're now beyond the cost of most rent for something that you'll hopefully never need to use for decades, but more importantly you have no options. It's either pay massive fees (+ copays, etc.) due to no real competition or go without insurance. For the last few years no insurance also came with paying thousands upon thousands of dollars a year in fines too. I am an uninsured freelance worker too for reference. But that plan definitely wouldn't work out if I had a family to insure, and then the costs are astronomical to the point where you would be in debt and have no savings unless you were absolutely crushing it.
echelon 7y ago
> I couldn't buy reasonable health insurance for any price. Any price at all. What? Can't you buy personal health insurance with decent coverage for on the order of $500/month? And that's for plans with low deductables. $6000/yr for personal health insurance for an individual seems perfectly reasonable. I'm concerned because I'm planning on eventually pursuing my own startup. If I can't get health insurance, this becomes extremely risky and untenable. If your post is correct, how does self-employment even work? My understanding is that individuals can buy affordable personal health insurance. Am I wrong?

by tylerl 7y ago

onion2k 7y ago

Your post makes it sound like the gig economy is actually unworkable right now, so the right solution, at least in the short term while we don't have an answer to problem of how to make it workable, would be to make those 'jobs' actual jobs with real benefits.

username90 7y ago
California loves making bandaid state fixes to federal problems, I think this is the wrong way to go. Problem: You need a full-time job at a company to get benefits such as healthcare. Californian solution: Reclassify as many as possible as full-time workers. Problem: USA immigration laws are horribly inflexible. Californian solution: Make it illegal to go after illegal immigrants. I don't think that these passive-aggressive fixes are good for USA's democracy. Either we need to split up the country into more manageable chunks and make moving between states as hard as moving between EU countries or we need to accept the intent of federal laws. Otherwise we will just end up in an ever escalating war of dumb bills to counteract the other sides dumb bills.
- throwawaynihil 7y ago
  > California loves making bandaid state fixes to federal problems, I think this is the wrong way to go. You just hit the nail on the head. The real problem is that California is grossly under-represented in government, thanks to the founding fathers and gerrymandering. We have to slap together these hacks because otherwise we would wait centuries to get any real change out of the Fed. As for "USA's democracy", screw the USA and its' democracy. As a Californian, I care about California's democracy, not the GOP's federalist plutocracy. Republikans look at California as a rich man to mug who won't fight back. These laws are how we fight back. The USA needs us, we don't need them.
  - paul_f 7y ago
    How does gerrymandering affect California's representation at the Federal level? And the makeup of the Senate? It's that darn constitution again :-)
    - throwawaynihil 7y ago
      If you really don't understand how gerrymandering screws over our democracy, then you're not worth responding to. The fact is a state with 38 million people and a GDP equivalent to 20% of the nation should have more representation than moscow mitch's welfare state of kentucky.
      - umanwizard 7y ago
        That's not related to gerrymandering though, which is why I think the post you're replying to is confused. The unfairly low representation of large states in the Senate is a huge issue, but it's not what "gerrymandering" means.
        throwawaynihil 7y ago
        Forgive my wording, gerrymandering is the primary tool used by the GOP to control the USA. It's their strongest tool to cheat their way into elections, we've seen that clearly in North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Georgia. If we actually followed the spirit and intentions of the founding fathers, then California would already be grossly under-represented. Add to that the way the GOP rigs the elections via gerry-mandering and . voter suppression, and Californians are treated like slaves, not citizens. They have all forgotten the battle cry of the republic, "NO TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION". #calexit

hayksaakian 7y ago

Your case seems to be a consequence of how healthcare works in America (insurance). For those of us lucky enough to be in good health, the "Gig economy" as-described would be just fine.

cheriot 7y ago
> For those of us lucky enough to be in good health It's a common refrain that only people with health problems need health care, but that's just not true. Risk has a price. That's why health care and life insurance for healthy people is not free. Good health just makes it easier to pretend that risk isn't there. Tying health care to employment is a historical accident long overdue for change.
- WalterBright 7y ago
  > Tying health care to employment is a historical accident long overdue for change. Ironically, it came about because of wage freezes imposed by the government during WW2. Employers had to find something to offer to attract workers, and employer-paid insurance did the trick. The trap, though, was that employer paid insurance was paid with pre-tax dollars, while if you bought it yourself you'd pay in post-tax dollars, making it far more expensive.
  - cheriot 7y ago
    That's an interesting tidbit of history. Thanks
  - erik_seaberg 7y ago
    Also adverse selection. Healthy people are tempted to only pay for catastrophic or no coverage, so a lot of individual policy buyers are sicker than the average employee in a group policy (because large companies cover everyone).
- moduspol 7y ago
  > Tying health care to employment is a historical accident long overdue for change. This, 100%. It wouldn't solve everything, but it'd be a huge positive step to roll back tax incentives that encourage this.

chirau 7y ago

What's your point, really? Other than telling us you got to 300 per hour. Please, ELI5

malloryerik 7y ago
> What's your point, really? That health care should be decoupled from employment.
- mirimir 7y ago
  As it is in just about every other developed economy.

djrobstep 7y ago

As well as laws like this that recognize the reality of the employment relationship, making these jobs decent requires: - unionization and industry bargaining to get decent wages and conditions - quality social welfare systems (including universal healthcare) so that people aren't afraid of poverty if they get fired/quit/change jobs I've always wondered why there isn't more of an appetite for Medicare for All and universal healthcare on this site. How many people would like to do a startup but don't because they'd have no health insurance?

kmjg88nvf8 7y ago
Why doesn't anybody do a startup providing health insurance to the uninsured? Are there too many regulations? Insurance is just a business, it seems to me.
- davidgh 7y ago
  The USA did such a startup. It’s called healthcare.gov, AKA Obamacare. It allows you to get health insurance, without consideration for pre-existing conditions and provides you with significant tax credits to offset the premiums, based on your income. Most of the policies are high-deductible, which means you’ll end up paying for the “scratches and sniffles” yourself but have a per-year maximum-out-of-pocket that can be planned for. It’s not perfect but it at least provides an option whereas before if you had any non-trivial pre-existing condition you couldn’t find any insurance at all.
  - kmjg88nvf8 7y ago
    Maybe it is wrong to ask insurances to insure people with pre-existing conditions. Perhaps such cases should be considered charity or social help, and convered by the state? Just wondering if reframing the problem as such could help. I'm not from the US, so not sure what exactly the issues are. It seems healthcare.gov is not good enough yet? I don't think classifying government institutions as startups is really correct, though. They have infinite money supply and no requirement to be profitable.
7y ago

writepub 7y ago

The lesson here is for Uber drivers to realize it can't be a career, and quit, just like you did. I don't believe they're being compelled or misled into driving for Uber/Lyft. Additionally, mass exodus of drivers from Uber/Lyft will compel those companies to increase rates

astockwell 7y ago

As an American living in Ontario, Canada for a time, I literally COULD NOT BELIEVE the gig economy there. It is what the US aspires to: a guy owns a snow plow business, employs 30 other gig workers 6mos a year. A woman does city/house hunting tours. Contractors are consistently self-employed. On and on. These folks, earning enough to live, and (to another commentor’s point) without fear of medical bills/issues. That really is it: that’s the difference. And it makes all the difference.

jaaron 7y ago
I often wonder about this cost to the US economy due to a lack of universal health care: how much productivity is lost due to people staying in jobs just for health care, how many businesses not started, etc.
- dpau 7y ago
  Here in the US I'm personally forgoing health insurance to pursue my craft while developing software on the side for extra income. One medical emergency will end it all. I've often wondered myself if, in a country with universal healthcare, people would be more willing to take risks and start businesses, pursue their art, develop inventions, etc. Would love to see an analysis of the economic cost of not having universal healthcare in terms of startups not pursued, inventions not made, etc.
  - fuzz4lyfe 7y ago
    >One medical emergency will end it all. One medical emergency and your credit will be ruined. Wait a seven years without contracting the debt collector and the debt becomes uncollectible. After three years roughly three quarters of the effect on your credit will evaporate. That's what actually happens beyond the hyperbolic political grandstanding. Remember kids, if you get a bill that you can't possibly pay. Don't pay it. Let it go to collections and pay it for pennies on the dollar (another trick, tell them the most you can pay is $10 a month or something else low. Pay off that debt in 2075) or just wait for it to become uncollectible.

ummonk 7y ago

Post-obamacare, getting healthcare isn't hard, especially if you're making almost half a million a year as you must have been.

kmjg88nvf8 7y ago

Seems more of an issue with health insurance than with the Gig Economy, though. What is the reason insurance providers don't want to insure contractors?

mirimir 7y ago

It is misleading to lump people billing at $100s/hr with drivers, shoppers, dog walkers, etc. But what's the median billing rate for the "gig economy"? Given my experience with consulting, it seems odd to use the "gig" label. But whatever, it did suck to pay ~$1K per month for health insurance.

RonaldSchleifer 7y ago
My thought too. I also did not get the sense that someone who “ended up billing at $300/hr and was still struggling with month to month work is someone who really realized the full cost of self-employment, because that is what he was really doing, employing himself … not “just like you guys” gigs. If you’re billing at $300/hr and working when and how you want, it actually seems immensely disingenuous to try to associate with the sympathies for people stuck in the gig economy con job the tech tyrants have been imposing on society as a kind of excuse why you couldn’t manage to fill your consultancy pipeline. I also guarantee he could have gotten health insurance, he just did not feel comfortable paying the roughly $1,000 to $2,000 per month it would have cost because his business pipeline was not full of work consistently. People don’t realize just how much health care costs, regardless of whether it’s American employees who don’t realize the employers contribution is about 4-5 time what they pay monthly, or the worshiped and beatified “universal healthcare” that is “free” in Europe where massive taxes are paid to augment the also massive individual monthly cost taken out of people’s paychecks.
- CPLX 7y ago
  > People don’t realize just how much health care costs The American system costs way more for comparable care, precisely because of our insane system. Every single dollar or hour spent on medical billing issues and dealing with insurance and arguing over who pays is total deadweight loss.
- nickjj 7y ago
  > I also guarantee he could have gotten health insurance, he just did not feel comfortable paying the roughly $1,000 to $2,000 per month it would have cost because his business pipeline was not full of work consistently. I don't think it's abnormal not to want to pay those rates. $1,000+ a month is absolutely insane for health insurance and at $2,000 a month you're now beyond the cost of most rent for something that you'll hopefully never need to use for decades, but more importantly you have no options. It's either pay massive fees (+ copays, etc.) due to no real competition or go without insurance. For the last few years no insurance also came with paying thousands upon thousands of dollars a year in fines too. I am an uninsured freelance worker too for reference. But that plan definitely wouldn't work out if I had a family to insure, and then the costs are astronomical to the point where you would be in debt and have no savings unless you were absolutely crushing it.

echelon 7y ago

> I couldn't buy reasonable health insurance for any price. Any price at all. What? Can't you buy personal health insurance with decent coverage for on the order of $500/month? And that's for plans with low deductables. $6000/yr for personal health insurance for an individual seems perfectly reasonable. I'm concerned because I'm planning on eventually pursuing my own startup. If I can't get health insurance, this becomes extremely risky and untenable. If your post is correct, how does self-employment even work? My understanding is that individuals can buy affordable personal health insurance. Am I wrong?