But, it is not the court's job to substitute their stupidity for the stupidity of Congress -- Congress has the latitude to demonstrate their stupidity (as they did in so many ways with the PPACA) and the sole latitude to correct their own stupidity except in response to Constitutional challenges where the Federal Courts have that latitude. This was a statutory interpretation case, not a Constitutional questions.
No. Congress (the Federal government) controls D.C. so without incorporation of the Second Amendment (as happened in McDonald), D.C. might be the ONLY place that the Second Amendment applied.
The use of the term "State" here is not referring to who has the right, the use of "People" (just 5 words away if you keep reading) clearly is who has the right. At most the "necessary to the security of a free state" is indicative of general intent, but the clear wording of the Second Amendment specifies it is the People who have the right which can not be infringed and that's the controlling verbiage.
Dissents, in part because they set no precedent, are often cutting and less than cordial. This is not unique to Scalia (and, note, that two other justices joined him in the dissent rather than writing their own, so at least two other justices agreed with Scalia's legal reasoning). Having read the dissent, I wonder what specific legal point you challenge in it -- what case law did he clearly misstate or misinterpret specifically?
No, because that exchange would have been established BY that STATE - the state hired the contractor to perform the task which makes it an action the state took to establish the exchange.
This, in fact, was probably an easy solution for any state that wanted an exchange 'established by the state' if today's ruling had been decided correctly. Such states could have just sent a request to HHS requesting a quote for what it would cost HHS to provide contracting services for a state ESTABLISHED exchange which happened to be, ironically, identical to the exchange the Federal government had already provided for that state. The state could then sign a contract and fully cover the cost of their portion of the Federal exchange that just happened to be implemented on a multitenant system -- making it a State ESTABLISHED exchange with the stroke of a pen and some money. Obviously HHS would have to cooperate, but since it would save them money or at least be revenue neutral, I don't see why they couldn't.
If you did some research, you would discover [pdf] that in the last full term, Breyer and Sotomayor were the most in agreement (87% of the time the agreed in full, 93% of the time they agreed at least in judgement) while Thomas and Scalia are not even in the running for being the pair that agrees the most (61% of the time they agreed in full, 75% of the time they agreed at least in judgement).
In non-unanimous cases, Breyer and Sotomayor agreed in full 82% of the time and agreed at least in judgement 86% of the time. On the other hand, in such cases, Thomas and Scalia only agreed in full 37% of the time and agreed at least in judgement only 53% of the time.
It's true that In 5-4 cases, Thomas and Scalia were the most aligned of any pair of justices and agreed at least in part 100% of the time and no other pair of justices were that close -- but Breyer and Sotomayor agreed at least in part in all but one such case so the difference is probably not statistically significant (Ginsburg and Sotomayor also agreed at least in part in all but one such case).
You also realize that Thomas' failing to ask questions during oral arguments just reflects his belief that justices derail the oral arguments by asking questions - I believe he has actually said that he thinks oral arguments should be eliminated at the SCOTUS and everything should be done via briefs. His failure to speak in hearings is not just a tacit approval of what another justice has said.
The Federal courts also legitimately decide cases of statutory law, not only those based on Constitutional issues.
To pick an extreme example (which would get dispatched by the lower level courts and never get accepted by SCOTUS), if a Federal law said that no one shall possess cannabis but someone claimed that they possessed "pot", "weed", or "grass", not "cannabis" so were not guilty of the crime, the courts would rule against them and allow charges for possession of cannabis to stand. That's clearly an interpretation of statutory Federal law and within the Federal courts' purview.
The Bush/Gore case was, I think, the most legally flawed SCOTUS decision of the past 25 years. Today's ruling is, however, in the top 20 of most legally flawed SCOTUS decisions of the past 25 years.
They should have just refused to hear the Bush/Gore case when it was presented and, if four justices voted to grant cert, the rest should have ruled in the majority that the case was, at that time, not ripe. Yes, in a few weeks, they would likely have had a legitimate case before them and the correct legal decision would have resulted in the same outcome. When the second case came before them, the deadline for certification would have passed and the court should have ruled THEN that the only valid indication of the will of the voters was the original count since no recount had met the criteria set down in the law and Florida must either certify that count or refuse to certify any count (and a few weeks later possibly be faced with addressing what the law says about how to handle the case of a state refusing to certify election results for a Presidential election).
At least the Bush/Gore case was likely to become a Constitutional issue where SCOTUS appropriately would exercise more latitude because the Constitution generally lacks much detail and because there is no realistic way to change it quickly to add detail that was left out or resolve ambiguities. Federal statutory law, on the other hand, is easy to change (consider how many words are in bill signed each year by the President) and can be done quickly without election or concurrence of the states. In this PPACA case, the court substituted their opinion instead of letting the legislative branch "fix" the law if they felt it needed "fixing".
The Second Amendment doesn't contain the word "state" in referring to who has the right -- it contains the word "people" (and the phrase "not be infringed") when describing who retains the right. How does any definition of state (no matter what it is) affect the definition of the word "people"?
Consider if an amendment read something like "A well informed public being essential to effective democratic processes within a state, the right of the people to speak freely shall not be infringed". Would you argue that the right to speak freely was granted to the state, not retained by the people?
As well, through (an admittedly somewhat creative) interpretation of the 14th amendment, most of the individual rights listed in the Bill of Rights have been "incorporated" onto inferior governments (state, regional, local). This now includes the Second Amendment (McDonald v. Chicago) in the wake of Heller validating that the right is one the people have -- just like it says in the plain text.
Some participants in the market try to get apartments for below market rent (those are the tenants) and some try to get above market rent (those are the landlords) - when they reach agreement, that number becomes market. Obviously if the landlord gets overly aggressive and sets the price at 5x market, their demand doesn't become "market" just because they are asking it -- in fact, in that case, they will probably never rent the unit. However, if they price it 5% over market, they will likely eventually rent it (each applicant's desires, price sensitivity, and urgency vary) but on the average it will take longer to rent. So, it's probably most accurate to talk of "market rent" as being a price that, on the average (or perhaps median), results in the unit being rented within some fixed period (perhaps two weeks). If the units are being snapped up the moment they are marketed, the landlord will generally raise the price even if it means it now takes a day extra to rent, if they are sitting vacant for months, they will generally lower the price.
Of course, unlike a commodity such as table salt, every apartment is different so the price discovery process is a bit ad hoc and imprecise. Although the differences, for a given size/bedroom count, is usually greater across complexes than across apartments within a complex, there are often substantial differences between seemingly similar apartments within the same complex (for example 1st floor vs. top floor, overlooking courtyard vs. overlooking parking lot, near the pool vs. far from the pool).
The landlord needs to come up with some number for rent that they think is market -- but they don't really know if they are right (regardless if the process involves a seat of the pants guess by the on-site manager or a statistical market research data driven approach done by corporate using analytics). This number is often non-negotiable, esp. at the big complexes -- but it also sometimes changes quite often as price discovery proceeds to figure out what market rent is for that particular unit.
I've lived on a large complex (about 3000 residents) where their web site listed every available apartment by unit number, the price, and the availability date. I created a cron job to pull all that information every morning at 3AM and massage it into a database. It was quite interesting, one unit sat vacant, for example, for six months and the price vacillated all over the map during that time from absurdly high to comparatively cheap. Prices often changed daily - sometimes by 0.1% and sometimes by 15% -- probably mostly driven by some algorithm that changed some of the prices for the purpose of price discovery. Due to local laws, this particular property had some odd constraints on it, but a more casual analysis of other properties without those constraints seemed to yield rather similar results.
California "solved" the raising property tax problem via Prop 13 back in the 70's. Of course, you might want to modify things a bit as it hasn't worked out well in all respects in California. Get your legislators to limit property tax increases until a property changes hand (maybe, at least, deferring taxes and recovering them via a lien on the property which gets satisfied when the property changes title or effective ownership).
Do you remember in the 80's when the Japanese were buying every hotel and resort they could get their hands on in Hawaii? Until they went bust and lost their shirts on many of the deals. History likely will repeat itself. Bubbles are the nature of real estate. Without bubbles, we would have much less investment in new housing/facilities - some of which investors lose their shirts on if they get in the wrong time. Those that time it right, make great money of course. It's a little like going to Vegas but where the house doesn't always win.
But, nothing is stopping other rich "fuckholes" (including publicly traded REITs) from buying the land that these "billionaire fuckholes" pass up in preference for buying old, high maintenance properties and then building new, high efficiency, desirable apartments if there's money to be made doing that.
Each player acts pretty much on their own selfish desire to make money. This is just like when you buy a car -- you try to get the best deal you can from the dealer and the dealer tries to get the best deal they can. Both you and the dealer is looking out for your individual selfish interests -- you are not looking out for the next customer and the dealer isn't looking out for the dealer across town.
Do you think all the billionaires meet weekly to decide how to mold markets? No, any one of them that sees an opening keeps their mouth shut about it and exploits it as much as possible before it becomes public -- they don't want the next billionaire to bury the deal or drive the price up.
True to a limited extent. Though, that's true of almost any product since welfare can be spent on anything (at least in most cases). It's true of food due to SNAP and WIC. It's true of health care due to Medicaid.
Most of the perturbation to the rental market caused by subsidies is probably focused in the low end although there would be some ripple effect up to the higher end apartments.
Increasing prices when demand increases and supply doesn't is just a free market.
Is it a bubble? Maybe. But, almost every market has bubbles. In fact, the sweet corn market where I live has a bubble every damned year - supply peaks in spring/summer and everyone is selling corn cheap then, as sure as fall follows summer, local supply plummets and the price goes up (and I stop buying corn -- reducing demand).
If rents stay high, investment in rental property will rise and supply will increase if it's allowed to. In the Silicon Valley, that's exactly what is happening. All over the place existing structures (crummy strip malls for example) are being scraped and replaced with multistory apartment buildings (sometime w/retail on the first floor). Many of the few parcels of land that have been sitting with nothing on them for decades have had, or are currently having, multistory apartment buildings built on them. As these apartments come onto the market, rents will drop (or not rise as fast) compared to what they would have been if these new units hadn't been built. If it turns out that demand doesn't keep increasing or even declines (i.e., the Silicon Valley is no longer a magnet for tech workers), the rents will plummet. If rents drop much, the investors who built these apartments will likely be wiped out and the properties will be sold in bankruptcy to new investors for much lower prices and the new owners, with less debt, will be able to make money even with lower rents.
Of course this market doesn't work as smoothly in places like San Francisco which is surrounded by saltwater on three sides and city/county boundaries on the fourth side. Various government regulations and policies in SF also contribute to the problem. But, ultimately, it works out -- people just stop moving to the city or demand ever higher salaries to work in the city which tempers demand. Most people in the country don't live in a high priced city like SF and they get along quite nicely. I'd like to have a 200 foot yacht with maintenance, fuel, and slip included for $10/month -- but I can't find that so I do without.
Currently, just 25 states and the District of Columbia allow computer science to count as a math or science graduation requirement.
It seems to me that "computer science" classes should not count towards either math or science High School graduation requirements (which are fairly low in most schools). Even, based on sample questions on the test, the AP "Computer Science A" test is not much "science" (or, "math"). Instead, it's more of a shop/trade class and should be entitled "Computer Programming A".
This isn't to say we should not teach computer programming in High School - we should and there should probably be a required semester class in it. Just don't call it "science" -- that's both a misnomer and likely to actually turn off some students who would be fine technicians.
Even many Computer "Science" BSc curricula are very light, within CSxxx classes, on anything resembling science or math, but at least they usually contain some courses that touch on such things as analysis of algorithms (I guess I could consider that science, although it strikes me as being more like math).
Of course, that's not as bad as elementary and middle schools that have "Computer Science" classes that turn out being about how to use Excel and Word.
The problem is the truckers are only allowed to use trucks they lease from the trucking companies
This requirement to lease the truck from a particular source is one thing that distinguishes these two cases very significantly. Uber doesn't even OFFER to lease cars or narrowly limit the vehicles that Uber drivers can use (requirements vary by city, but I recall that the requirements for the basic service are something like the car can't be more than about 15 years old, must have four doors, can't be one of a very few prohibited models, can't be a salvage vehicle, and must pass a very basic mechanical inspection). In most cases, the car is a fine personal use vehicle (I suspect few Uber drivers have a dedicated car specifically for their Uber work) and has a liquid resale market as well.
Critically, the drivers cannot avail themselves of workers comp, overtime or any of the other things an employee would be entitled to.
Sure they can. They can pay themselves whatever they want and offer whatever benefits they want. If one of these truckers wants to take the day off, I don't believe they have to tell a soul (not even their wife if they intend on spending the day with their mistress -- but there may be other ramifications of that). Yes, if they accept a load, they agree to perform THAT single task.
Uber owns these drivers because, like employees, they have to bow down and follow Uber's rules:
When you hire a contractor, even if they are going to do all the work themselves, to remodel your kitchen, I can assure you that there are often many rules in the contract that the contractor must follow.
For example, the contract may say that interior work shall only be performed between 9:30AM and 4:30PM. It may say that the interior work area must be broom clean at the end of every work day. It may say that no dangerous tools (power, sharp etc) shall be left out in the open in the work area at the end of the work day. It may say that the contractor will provide and pay for a porta-potty and no workers on the site shall use the bathrooms in the house. The contract may specify that the plans shall be followed (which includes a lot of things -- including using a particular product or even applying it in a particular way) unless an ECO is approved. None of these factors makes the contractor (or other workers) your "employee" (for which you should be thankful if one of them falls off a ladder).
Monitoring and firing people based on their performance sounds like a boss/employees type of relationship.
Sounds more like a contractor relationship to me. If I'm a realtor and one of the services I arrange for my clients is offering contractors from my "recommended list" and I make it clear to both parties that I get a cut of the job, you can be damned sure that if I begin to receive complaints from my sellers that a particular contractor is rude, doesn't show up on time (or at all), or leaves a mess behind, that contractor will no longer be on my "recommended list" (and may be on my "not recommended" list). My list == Uber.
(Uber, for example, doesn't compensate you the same way if you won't work during their required hours)
How is that different than a painter who charges more for their services during the spring/summer than the winter when they are not in as much demand due to less construction/remodels/home sales? AFAIK, Uber doesn't require you to work any particular hours to remain an Uber driver (but I could be mistaken).
Suppose you contract with a gardener to mow your lawn once a week and, unbeknownst to you, you're his only client after all the other ones terminated their contracts. Do you expect to pay back Payroll Taxes and get dinged for not withholding income taxes years later when the government discovers you were his only customer so you were his employer, not a contracting client?
How many incomes one has is irrelevant to their status as an employee (quite a few employees have multiple employers, does that make them contractors?)
If so, likely no differently than if the gardening service (a one man operation) I contract with doesn't show up and mow my lawn on Thursday too often and I tell them their services are no longer necessary.
Or, no different than if the gardening service I contract with decides that I'm wasting their time negotiating on the price of removing some shrubs and they tell me that they will no longer provide services to me.
He's definitely a contractor, not an employee of mine.
Indeed. I read one article about this that indicated that drivers were complaining about working more than 40 hours a week (presumably, w/o receiving premium pay for those additional hours). However, with these services, the only reason that they worked more than 40 hours was because they decided to - they are never required to work. If they were employees, they would almost always be banned from working more than 40 hours (or, maybe, 30 hours just to keep them from being "full time employees" for some government regulation) because Uber would usually would choose to pay someone else who hadn't worked 40 hours yet at a "regular" rate rather than an "overtime" rate. Those whiners would probably not like the result.
If a pizza delivery driver doesn't show up at their job as scheduled or decides they won't deliver a particular pizza, they can expect to lose their job.
If a Uber driver decides not to work at any point in time or decides not to take a particular fare I don't think they are at any risk of their relationship with Uber being terminated for those actions.
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But, it is not the court's job to substitute their stupidity for the stupidity of Congress -- Congress has the latitude to demonstrate their stupidity (as they did in so many ways with the PPACA) and the sole latitude to correct their own stupidity except in response to Constitutional challenges where the Federal Courts have that latitude. This was a statutory interpretation case, not a Constitutional questions.
FTFY
No. Congress (the Federal government) controls D.C. so without incorporation of the Second Amendment (as happened in McDonald), D.C. might be the ONLY place that the Second Amendment applied.
The use of the term "State" here is not referring to who has the right, the use of "People" (just 5 words away if you keep reading) clearly is who has the right. At most the "necessary to the security of a free state" is indicative of general intent, but the clear wording of the Second Amendment specifies it is the People who have the right which can not be infringed and that's the controlling verbiage.
Dissents, in part because they set no precedent, are often cutting and less than cordial. This is not unique to Scalia (and, note, that two other justices joined him in the dissent rather than writing their own, so at least two other justices agreed with Scalia's legal reasoning). Having read the dissent, I wonder what specific legal point you challenge in it -- what case law did he clearly misstate or misinterpret specifically?
No, because that exchange would have been established BY that STATE - the state hired the contractor to perform the task which makes it an action the state took to establish the exchange.
This, in fact, was probably an easy solution for any state that wanted an exchange 'established by the state' if today's ruling had been decided correctly. Such states could have just sent a request to HHS requesting a quote for what it would cost HHS to provide contracting services for a state ESTABLISHED exchange which happened to be, ironically, identical to the exchange the Federal government had already provided for that state. The state could then sign a contract and fully cover the cost of their portion of the Federal exchange that just happened to be implemented on a multitenant system -- making it a State ESTABLISHED exchange with the stroke of a pen and some money. Obviously HHS would have to cooperate, but since it would save them money or at least be revenue neutral, I don't see why they couldn't.
If you did some research, you would discover [pdf] that in the last full term, Breyer and Sotomayor were the most in agreement (87% of the time the agreed in full, 93% of the time they agreed at least in judgement) while Thomas and Scalia are not even in the running for being the pair that agrees the most (61% of the time they agreed in full, 75% of the time they agreed at least in judgement).
In non-unanimous cases, Breyer and Sotomayor agreed in full 82% of the time and agreed at least in judgement 86% of the time. On the other hand, in such cases, Thomas and Scalia only agreed in full 37% of the time and agreed at least in judgement only 53% of the time.
It's true that In 5-4 cases, Thomas and Scalia were the most aligned of any pair of justices and agreed at least in part 100% of the time and no other pair of justices were that close -- but Breyer and Sotomayor agreed at least in part in all but one such case so the difference is probably not statistically significant (Ginsburg and Sotomayor also agreed at least in part in all but one such case).
You also realize that Thomas' failing to ask questions during oral arguments just reflects his belief that justices derail the oral arguments by asking questions - I believe he has actually said that he thinks oral arguments should be eliminated at the SCOTUS and everything should be done via briefs. His failure to speak in hearings is not just a tacit approval of what another justice has said.
The Federal courts also legitimately decide cases of statutory law, not only those based on Constitutional issues.
To pick an extreme example (which would get dispatched by the lower level courts and never get accepted by SCOTUS), if a Federal law said that no one shall possess cannabis but someone claimed that they possessed "pot", "weed", or "grass", not "cannabis" so were not guilty of the crime, the courts would rule against them and allow charges for possession of cannabis to stand. That's clearly an interpretation of statutory Federal law and within the Federal courts' purview.
The Bush/Gore case was, I think, the most legally flawed SCOTUS decision of the past 25 years. Today's ruling is, however, in the top 20 of most legally flawed SCOTUS decisions of the past 25 years.
They should have just refused to hear the Bush/Gore case when it was presented and, if four justices voted to grant cert, the rest should have ruled in the majority that the case was, at that time, not ripe. Yes, in a few weeks, they would likely have had a legitimate case before them and the correct legal decision would have resulted in the same outcome. When the second case came before them, the deadline for certification would have passed and the court should have ruled THEN that the only valid indication of the will of the voters was the original count since no recount had met the criteria set down in the law and Florida must either certify that count or refuse to certify any count (and a few weeks later possibly be faced with addressing what the law says about how to handle the case of a state refusing to certify election results for a Presidential election).
At least the Bush/Gore case was likely to become a Constitutional issue where SCOTUS appropriately would exercise more latitude because the Constitution generally lacks much detail and because there is no realistic way to change it quickly to add detail that was left out or resolve ambiguities. Federal statutory law, on the other hand, is easy to change (consider how many words are in bill signed each year by the President) and can be done quickly without election or concurrence of the states. In this PPACA case, the court substituted their opinion instead of letting the legislative branch "fix" the law if they felt it needed "fixing".
The Second Amendment doesn't contain the word "state" in referring to who has the right -- it contains the word "people" (and the phrase "not be infringed") when describing who retains the right. How does any definition of state (no matter what it is) affect the definition of the word "people"?
Consider if an amendment read something like "A well informed public being essential to effective democratic processes within a state, the right of the people to speak freely shall not be infringed". Would you argue that the right to speak freely was granted to the state, not retained by the people?
As well, through (an admittedly somewhat creative) interpretation of the 14th amendment, most of the individual rights listed in the Bill of Rights have been "incorporated" onto inferior governments (state, regional, local). This now includes the Second Amendment (McDonald v. Chicago) in the wake of Heller validating that the right is one the people have -- just like it says in the plain text.
No "market rent" is set by the market.
Some participants in the market try to get apartments for below market rent (those are the tenants) and some try to get above market rent (those are the landlords) - when they reach agreement, that number becomes market. Obviously if the landlord gets overly aggressive and sets the price at 5x market, their demand doesn't become "market" just because they are asking it -- in fact, in that case, they will probably never rent the unit. However, if they price it 5% over market, they will likely eventually rent it (each applicant's desires, price sensitivity, and urgency vary) but on the average it will take longer to rent. So, it's probably most accurate to talk of "market rent" as being a price that, on the average (or perhaps median), results in the unit being rented within some fixed period (perhaps two weeks). If the units are being snapped up the moment they are marketed, the landlord will generally raise the price even if it means it now takes a day extra to rent, if they are sitting vacant for months, they will generally lower the price.
Of course, unlike a commodity such as table salt, every apartment is different so the price discovery process is a bit ad hoc and imprecise. Although the differences, for a given size/bedroom count, is usually greater across complexes than across apartments within a complex, there are often substantial differences between seemingly similar apartments within the same complex (for example 1st floor vs. top floor, overlooking courtyard vs. overlooking parking lot, near the pool vs. far from the pool).
The landlord needs to come up with some number for rent that they think is market -- but they don't really know if they are right (regardless if the process involves a seat of the pants guess by the on-site manager or a statistical market research data driven approach done by corporate using analytics). This number is often non-negotiable, esp. at the big complexes -- but it also sometimes changes quite often as price discovery proceeds to figure out what market rent is for that particular unit.
I've lived on a large complex (about 3000 residents) where their web site listed every available apartment by unit number, the price, and the availability date. I created a cron job to pull all that information every morning at 3AM and massage it into a database. It was quite interesting, one unit sat vacant, for example, for six months and the price vacillated all over the map during that time from absurdly high to comparatively cheap. Prices often changed daily - sometimes by 0.1% and sometimes by 15% -- probably mostly driven by some algorithm that changed some of the prices for the purpose of price discovery. Due to local laws, this particular property had some odd constraints on it, but a more casual analysis of other properties without those constraints seemed to yield rather similar results.
California "solved" the raising property tax problem via Prop 13 back in the 70's. Of course, you might want to modify things a bit as it hasn't worked out well in all respects in California. Get your legislators to limit property tax increases until a property changes hand (maybe, at least, deferring taxes and recovering them via a lien on the property which gets satisfied when the property changes title or effective ownership).
Do you remember in the 80's when the Japanese were buying every hotel and resort they could get their hands on in Hawaii? Until they went bust and lost their shirts on many of the deals. History likely will repeat itself. Bubbles are the nature of real estate. Without bubbles, we would have much less investment in new housing/facilities - some of which investors lose their shirts on if they get in the wrong time. Those that time it right, make great money of course. It's a little like going to Vegas but where the house doesn't always win.
But, nothing is stopping other rich "fuckholes" (including publicly traded REITs) from buying the land that these "billionaire fuckholes" pass up in preference for buying old, high maintenance properties and then building new, high efficiency, desirable apartments if there's money to be made doing that.
Each player acts pretty much on their own selfish desire to make money. This is just like when you buy a car -- you try to get the best deal you can from the dealer and the dealer tries to get the best deal they can. Both you and the dealer is looking out for your individual selfish interests -- you are not looking out for the next customer and the dealer isn't looking out for the dealer across town.
Do you think all the billionaires meet weekly to decide how to mold markets? No, any one of them that sees an opening keeps their mouth shut about it and exploits it as much as possible before it becomes public -- they don't want the next billionaire to bury the deal or drive the price up.
True to a limited extent. Though, that's true of almost any product since welfare can be spent on anything (at least in most cases). It's true of food due to SNAP and WIC. It's true of health care due to Medicaid.
Most of the perturbation to the rental market caused by subsidies is probably focused in the low end although there would be some ripple effect up to the higher end apartments.
Increasing prices when demand increases and supply doesn't is just a free market.
Is it a bubble? Maybe. But, almost every market has bubbles. In fact, the sweet corn market where I live has a bubble every damned year - supply peaks in spring/summer and everyone is selling corn cheap then, as sure as fall follows summer, local supply plummets and the price goes up (and I stop buying corn -- reducing demand).
If rents stay high, investment in rental property will rise and supply will increase if it's allowed to. In the Silicon Valley, that's exactly what is happening. All over the place existing structures (crummy strip malls for example) are being scraped and replaced with multistory apartment buildings (sometime w/retail on the first floor). Many of the few parcels of land that have been sitting with nothing on them for decades have had, or are currently having, multistory apartment buildings built on them. As these apartments come onto the market, rents will drop (or not rise as fast) compared to what they would have been if these new units hadn't been built. If it turns out that demand doesn't keep increasing or even declines (i.e., the Silicon Valley is no longer a magnet for tech workers), the rents will plummet. If rents drop much, the investors who built these apartments will likely be wiped out and the properties will be sold in bankruptcy to new investors for much lower prices and the new owners, with less debt, will be able to make money even with lower rents.
Of course this market doesn't work as smoothly in places like San Francisco which is surrounded by saltwater on three sides and city/county boundaries on the fourth side. Various government regulations and policies in SF also contribute to the problem. But, ultimately, it works out -- people just stop moving to the city or demand ever higher salaries to work in the city which tempers demand. Most people in the country don't live in a high priced city like SF and they get along quite nicely. I'd like to have a 200 foot yacht with maintenance, fuel, and slip included for $10/month -- but I can't find that so I do without.
If they are renting them, they must not be getting higher than market rent - market rent is what something will rent for.
It seems to me that "computer science" classes should not count towards either math or science High School graduation requirements (which are fairly low in most schools). Even, based on sample questions on the test, the AP "Computer Science A" test is not much "science" (or, "math"). Instead, it's more of a shop/trade class and should be entitled "Computer Programming A".
This isn't to say we should not teach computer programming in High School - we should and there should probably be a required semester class in it. Just don't call it "science" -- that's both a misnomer and likely to actually turn off some students who would be fine technicians.
Even many Computer "Science" BSc curricula are very light, within CSxxx classes, on anything resembling science or math, but at least they usually contain some courses that touch on such things as analysis of algorithms (I guess I could consider that science, although it strikes me as being more like math).
Of course, that's not as bad as elementary and middle schools that have "Computer Science" classes that turn out being about how to use Excel and Word.
This requirement to lease the truck from a particular source is one thing that distinguishes these two cases very significantly. Uber doesn't even OFFER to lease cars or narrowly limit the vehicles that Uber drivers can use (requirements vary by city, but I recall that the requirements for the basic service are something like the car can't be more than about 15 years old, must have four doors, can't be one of a very few prohibited models, can't be a salvage vehicle, and must pass a very basic mechanical inspection). In most cases, the car is a fine personal use vehicle (I suspect few Uber drivers have a dedicated car specifically for their Uber work) and has a liquid resale market as well.
Sure they can. They can pay themselves whatever they want and offer whatever benefits they want. If one of these truckers wants to take the day off, I don't believe they have to tell a soul (not even their wife if they intend on spending the day with their mistress -- but there may be other ramifications of that). Yes, if they accept a load, they agree to perform THAT single task.
When you hire a contractor, even if they are going to do all the work themselves, to remodel your kitchen, I can assure you that there are often many rules in the contract that the contractor must follow.
For example, the contract may say that interior work shall only be performed between 9:30AM and 4:30PM. It may say that the interior work area must be broom clean at the end of every work day. It may say that no dangerous tools (power, sharp etc) shall be left out in the open in the work area at the end of the work day. It may say that the contractor will provide and pay for a porta-potty and no workers on the site shall use the bathrooms in the house. The contract may specify that the plans shall be followed (which includes a lot of things -- including using a particular product or even applying it in a particular way) unless an ECO is approved. None of these factors makes the contractor (or other workers) your "employee" (for which you should be thankful if one of them falls off a ladder).
Sounds more like a contractor relationship to me. If I'm a realtor and one of the services I arrange for my clients is offering contractors from my "recommended list" and I make it clear to both parties that I get a cut of the job, you can be damned sure that if I begin to receive complaints from my sellers that a particular contractor is rude, doesn't show up on time (or at all), or leaves a mess behind, that contractor will no longer be on my "recommended list" (and may be on my "not recommended" list). My list == Uber.
How is that different than a painter who charges more for their services during the spring/summer than the winter when they are not in as much demand due to less construction/remodels/home sales? AFAIK, Uber doesn't require you to work any particular hours to remain an Uber driver (but I could be mistaken).
Suppose you contract with a gardener to mow your lawn once a week and, unbeknownst to you, you're his only client after all the other ones terminated their contracts. Do you expect to pay back Payroll Taxes and get dinged for not withholding income taxes years later when the government discovers you were his only customer so you were his employer, not a contracting client?
How many incomes one has is irrelevant to their status as an employee (quite a few employees have multiple employers, does that make them contractors?)
Especially since "Contract" FedEx Drivers are much more tightly controlled by FedEx than Uber Drivers are by Uber.
If so, likely no differently than if the gardening service (a one man operation) I contract with doesn't show up and mow my lawn on Thursday too often and I tell them their services are no longer necessary.
Or, no different than if the gardening service I contract with decides that I'm wasting their time negotiating on the price of removing some shrubs and they tell me that they will no longer provide services to me.
He's definitely a contractor, not an employee of mine.
Indeed. I read one article about this that indicated that drivers were complaining about working more than 40 hours a week (presumably, w/o receiving premium pay for those additional hours). However, with these services, the only reason that they worked more than 40 hours was because they decided to - they are never required to work. If they were employees, they would almost always be banned from working more than 40 hours (or, maybe, 30 hours just to keep them from being "full time employees" for some government regulation) because Uber would usually would choose to pay someone else who hadn't worked 40 hours yet at a "regular" rate rather than an "overtime" rate. Those whiners would probably not like the result.
If a pizza delivery driver doesn't show up at their job as scheduled or decides they won't deliver a particular pizza, they can expect to lose their job.
If a Uber driver decides not to work at any point in time or decides not to take a particular fare I don't think they are at any risk of their relationship with Uber being terminated for those actions.
Quite a difference.