Uber for Welfare
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Uber for Welfare
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Re: Uber for Welfare
#2To be clear, this article is advocating forcing people in poverty into gig economy jobs where there have been issues of low pay, terrible working conditions, and few if any employee protections. As a civilized country we should not demand that people give up their basic rights to earn a living.
Re: Uber for Welfare
#3To be clear, this article is advocating forcing people in poverty into gig economy jobs where there have been issues of low pay, terrible working conditions, and few if any employee protections. As a civilized country we should not demand that people give up their basic rights to earn a living.
Yeah, it's worked out pretty badly in the UK.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workfare_in_the_United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_%28Reilly%29_v_Secretary_of_...
(the latter is particularly odious; having been told by a court that it owed people £130m in back-dated benefits, the government retroactively changed the law to avoid paying them. This is almost certainly a human rights violation but that litigation has not finished yet).
Re: Uber for Welfare
#4I wonder what on demand services think about this idea. On the one hand: more supply of gig workers. On the other hand:
People who are forced to work in jobs (or gigs) they didn't choose voluntary might not be the best way to ensure good service quality for customers.
Re: Uber for Welfare
#5This is ridiculous. The stereotype of welfare recipients as lazy, unemployed people is completely inaccurate. I'm a former Welfare Clerk, and the vast majority of welfare recipients I dealt with---in a district that covered West Philadelphia---were employed.
The work varied: childcare, retail, and hair salon work were the most common, but there were also school staff, church secretaries, and construction workers who needed welfare. Some of these jobs were under the table, but most were legitimate, W-2 jobs. If anything, my district had a higher percentage of people not employed, as we covered the University of Pennsylvania and Drexel University campuses---so there were often grad students applying along side single mothers working in hair salons.
Re: Uber for Welfare
#6To be clear, this article is advocating forcing people in poverty into gig economy jobs where there have been issues of low pay, terrible working conditions, and few if any employee protections. As a civilized country we should not demand that people give up their basic rights to earn a living.
This is an extreme misrepresentation of the article. Anyone who doesn't want to work is free to stop telling the welfare office they want work but can't find it.
No one is forced to do anything.
Re: Uber for Welfare
#7How about hell no? I'm curious who this author is, a lobbyist for Uber?
How about a Guaranteed Minimum Income for every American, which will do far more to address poverty as well as raise wages (if you're already receiving money, you'll be able to demand a higher wage for working a job).
Screw welfare, and its tenuous political existence. Support everyone and the government doesn't need to invent more regulations and punish poor people.
Re: Uber for Welfare
#8How about hell no? I'm curious who this author is, a lobbyist for Uber?
How about a Guaranteed Minimum Income for every American, which will do far more to address poverty as well as raise wages (if you're already receiving money, you'll be able to demand a higher wage for working a job).
Screw welfare, and its tenuous political existence. Support everyone and the government doesn't need to invent more regulations and punish poor people.
Re: Uber for Welfare
#9To be clear, this article is advocating forcing people in poverty into gig economy jobs where there have been issues of low pay, terrible working conditions, and few if any employee protections. As a civilized country we should not demand that people give up their basic rights to earn a living.
This is an extreme misrepresentation of the article. Anyone who doesn't want to work is free to stop telling the welfare office they want work but can't find it. No one is forced to do anything.
I vehemently dislike when people say "no one is forced to do anything" in situations where, say, you will lose your food stamps if you do not do something. That is a force, the force of starvation.
Re: Uber for Welfare
#10To be clear, this article is advocating forcing people in poverty into gig economy jobs where there have been issues of low pay, terrible working conditions, and few if any employee protections. As a civilized country we should not demand that people give up their basic rights to earn a living.
Yeah, it's worked out pretty badly in the UK. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workfare_in_the_United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_%28Reilly%29_v_Secretary_of_... (the latter is particularly odious; having been told by a court that it owed people £130m in back-dated benefits, the government retroactively changed the law to avoid paying them. This is almost certainly a human rights violation but that litigatio…
Yeah, making people work for free at for-profit businesses is not a valid precondition for welfare. I didn't see that in this article though.
There has to be a social safety net, but I think it's a valid goal to encourage welfare recipients to work if they are able. One thing we should definitely do is reform the "vertical cliff" of payments, where once you make above a certain threshold, you stop receiving all benefits. That's a definite disincentive to get a better job past a certain point.