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The Gig Economy Keeps Growing, But Worker Benefits Aren't (technologyreview.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from MIT Technology Review: According to a new report out from Brookings, the number of non-employer firms -- primarily incorporated freelancers and gig-economy workers -- has grown 2.6 percent every year since 1997. By contrast, payroll employment has grown by only 0.8 percent annually in that time. That means a growing number of people lack employer-sponsored benefits like paid leave, health care, and retirement assistance. The Aspen Institute has proposed a system of portable benefits that are not tied to one job. Companies would make contributions to a worker's benefits on the basis of how much the employee works for them. To date, the U.S. government has not been helpful. House and Senate bills supporting gig-worker benefits have died in committee. But state and local governments are taking action. Washington, California, New York, and New Jersey are exploring avenues to provide benefits to their gig workers.
Everyone thinks they deserve something for nothing. Premium benefits, unlimited time off, first class insurance. All paid for by someone else. Look, if you're driving people around from point A to point B, or answering customer complain calls for a living, you aren't doing something that's worth those kind of benefits. Sucks, but it's true. Improve your skills, become marketable, hoist yourself up by your own petards, and join the economy as a maker and not a taker.
The "gig-economy" isn't a new concept. This is how things used to be before there were unions. What happened was laborers were exploited and then unionized to fight back for fair treatment. The outcome here will be no different, even if different means are used.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
12000 PER year in insurance.
Yeah. In 1999 12k per year would have bought me a full coverage plan with 0 co pay for my whole family and then some etc etc etc.
This year that buys me basically catastrophic coverage for 2 people.
We dumped HUGE sums of cash into the system and all of the pencil pushers raised the prices accordingly.
between "The Gig Economy" and running your own business where you use a service to find customers?
around minimum wage and overtime laws. There's no other purpose. If you're a worker then you should be deeply opposed to this. Unless you're in a strong union they _will_ eventually come for you too. And the only strong union left I know of is the AMA. Lord knows us tech workers don't have anything of the sort.
The only potential good that might come out of all this is America might wise up and vote single payer healthcare in. But right now the party in charge is completely opposed to it and I don't see them getting kicked out anytime soon. We're still arguing over assault rifles and abortion for Pete's sake (hurray for wedge issues!).
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Legal chain immigration brings about 1M legal immigrants into the country per year. That's on top of the illegals, most of whom compete with workers on the low end.
It doesn't matter what you feel about immigration. The fact is that our immigration policies are nothing more than a safety valve on capital to ensure that the supply side is always high enough that the demand side never has to negotiate.
Here's a simple plan that would cause real growth in average wages very quickly:
1. Build the wall with the military's budget like Trump is threatening.
2. Abolish chain immigration.
3. Shred the green cards of all immigrants who arrived on chain migration in the last 20 years and order them to self-deport or face prison time.
4. Tie corporate taxes to how much business and how many American citizens are employed by the business.
5. Impose steep FICA excise taxes on outsourced labor. Make that offshore team in India so damn expensive in FICA costs that its not competitive.
6. Shred NAFTA and impose a minimum 25% tariff on all goods made by American companies in Mexico for the American market.
7. Pass a federal law that allows state and federal law enforcement to declare any business that relies on illegals to be a criminal enterprise as a whole entity and make its entire asset sheet liable for liquidation upon conviction.
Ladies and gentlemen, what we have here is a supply problem. The world is oversupplied with labor (people) for the amount of work demanded, thanks to productivity, automation, and the gradual end of the baby boomer growth era that fueled jobs and pay for everyone without a college degree.
No amount of hand-wringing or puzzling over the edges of the gig economy, or living wages, the decline of manufacturing, or working conditions, are going to overcome the fundamental pressure of demographics.
There are too many workers for companies to feel any pressure to raise wages, provide better benefits, or do anything that they don't need to, to keep sufficient workers on staff. (in general).
Welcome to what it feels like when growth stalls -- everyone yells at everyone else thinking that someone caused / can fix the problem, when in fact it's mostly out of our hands. Don't worry, it'll work itself out -- in about 10-15 years... just wait a while.
The problem with using "just get better" as a justification for accepting growing inequality is that it does not scale. If everyone had PhD's, there wouldn't be enough room for the elite positions, and many PhD's would end up mopping floors and other grunt work.
It's not a zero-sum game, but close enough that "just get better" isn't a complete solution.
American workers rank among the top in the world in economic productivity, but the benefits of that hard work is not trickling down to most workers. I'm not proposing pure socialism, just enough of it to distribute the wealth better without significantly harming incentives. There's a better balance point than what we have now. Set the dial to 5 instead of 9 on the socialism-to-plutocracy scale.
Table-ized A.I.
minimum wage laws stop the race to the bottom. They buoy up wages leading to consumers who can purchase your goods and services. Without them a handful of robber barons monopolize everything. Great if you end up one of the barons, but that's highly unlikely.
tl;dr. No man is an island.
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The Gig Economy Keeps Growing, But Worker Benefits Aren't
Umm... wasn't that kind of the whole point of companies pushing for a gig economy? Does anybody really believe that this consequence wasn't at least foreseen, if not downright planned for, by the corporate sector? Corporations believe it to be in their best interests both to reduce the amount of money they pay their employees, and to decrease those employees' freedom and autonomy so as to make them more docile and compliant. A gig economy gives workers the illusion of increased freedom, even as it increases their servitude. I'm pretty sure that's the penultimate wet-dream of c-levels and board members everywhere. Of course, the ultimate wet-dream is to replace all those workers with machines.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
Gig-work is meant to undermine worker benefits by turning everybody into a private contractor who gets no benefits.
If it is lowering costs to business owners as well, then it is working entirely as designed.
Anybody who expected a different outcome is just a sucker
Gig-work is meant to undermine worker benefits by turning everybody into a private contractor who gets no benefits.
Nonsense!
Lack of *employer-sponsored benefits* does not mean a lack of benefits. One can buy health insurance, invest in health savings plans, and whatever other investment strategies you'd prefer like money markets, stocks, bonds, etc. As much or as little, any combination or none at all, whatever the individual chooses.
It's all about asking oneself how much individual liberty are you prepared to be responsible for? How much of your life do you want government and corporations involved in?
Having everyone as working-dead meat-popsicle in wage-slave dependency, working cookie-cutter corporate cubicle job-hells makes Zorg's layoffs (and the implied political-economic*control*) from The Fifth Element possible.
Remember, the easiest way to solve "income inequality" is to make everyone equally poor.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Err...because in the real ADULT world of work, especially if you incorporate and do 1099 contract work, you'd better put on your big boy pants, and realize to do it full time, you need to learn to find jobs that have a high enough bill rate that you can negotiate for your needs.
This isn't rocket surgery, you need to figure what you need for expenses, (your salary you pay to yourself), and also out of that bill rate you figure in enough for you to take off maybe 3 weeks a year for vacation/sick leave...you set up a HSA (Health Savings Account) and fully fund it pre-tax with money you put into your bill rate to pay routine medical expenses, and finally..yes, you calculate enough into your bill rate to pay for medical insurance.
If you are not working in an area that you can bill that much, then you have a couple of choices...work multiple gigs at once that can pay this amount totaled together, or realize this is just side money, and you need a W2 regular job until you are valuable enough with your skills to negotiate jobs that pay enough to do 1099 full time.
This isn't for everyone.
But if you are an adult, can act like an adult....and take care of yourself, your work, paperwork, taxes, etc....it can be a fulfilling work lifestyle, it can be lucrative and there is a good amount of freedom to enjoy from it.
I personally like the S-corp filing for my business....extra paperwork etc....BUT, it allows me to save substantially on how much of my bill rate I have to pay in employment taxes (SS/medicare)....
But again, this isn't for everyone....you have to know what you cost to live, and bill accordingly and hunt only jobs that pay that much...otherwise, this is not a full time "gig" for you.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
It can and often does....you just need to have skills valuable enough to commend the bill rate that can sustain you as a full time "gig".
If you aren't making that kind of $$ doing 1099, then you face facts that this is either just extra income to embellish the regular W2 job you really need, or you just find it isn't worth your time.
We should all be adults here, and these are very simple and plain choices to make here.
No one is holding a gun to your head to do this.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........