311–320 of 423 posts
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Forgive my ignorance, but doesn't California have public transport? Renting cars isn't the only option I would think? I dunno, I'm not from the US so maybe I just don't understand.
I think a lot of Europeans don't appreciate just how abysmal the public transport options are in practically every American city.
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Some people, in some jobs at least, aren't productive enough to support themselves. It's not about "deserve". Some people have a lot of potential but need a chance to prove themselves and gain experience. Maybe they would start by bussing tables and eventually own their own restaurants. They need a ladder to success with rungs that are actually climbable. If we mandate that you must be able to support a family of fou…
> If we mandate [a living wage]… You're right, lots of exploitative jobs will be destroyed, and businesses will have to adapt. Thing is, they will adapt to the new market conditions, or else they'll be replaced by other businesses catering to the market's demands, or the market's demands will change. In the painful transition period, lots of exploited "employed" people will become unemployed, and lots of businesses t…
You also ignore the point that entry level jobs provide advancement opportunities that are sometimes better for disadvantaged folks (or even folks changing careers) compared to expecting them to (re)train at four year universities, etc.
People talk a lot about apprenticeship these days... Apprenticeships are entry level, low paid positions.
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A few points. It's not just benefits that employees receive, it's also taxes paid on employees. Moving benefits out of employment is a good idea, but if that happened, the taxes to fund these services would come from employers again. So Uber would still be more or less leeching off of society by not paying its share of social funds Secondly, the discussion of hours, while potentially having some philosophical merit,…
Ok so then Uber would just be paying taxes from the sale of the rides. I'm kind of confused as to why that would be an issue. But happy to hear more about it. > If there's a cap on hours, you've now got a competing interest which says there's an incentive to NOT work while the market isn't surging- because you might cost yourself greater earnings down the line. Ok so then is the cap 8 hours? 10? Is it 7? It seems to…
Odds are good that if health insurance benefits are pushed out of employers, you're going to see it funded by a tax on top of wages, not a corporate income tax, because the former is directly tied to the number of people the org is supporting in the United States and the latter is not. The classification of employee vs. contractor is still salient. It's still a good idea nonetheless.
> Ok so then is the cap 8 hours? 10? Is it 7? It seems to me that you're inventing more problems to solve a different problem than is worthwhile. You can have more drivers doing less hours, if the economics of it work (and neither of us know whether or not it does, and ironically enough I doubt the State of California does either).
I don't think there's any philosophical merit to claiming someone working 7+ hours a day is not a full time worker. We may not know the exact economics, but we do know they're not great. Uber loses billions per year, and pays substantial money to deal with high driver turnover. A mixed system makes it worse.
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I can only speak for SF. While SF does have a public transportation system it leaves a lot to be desired. It usually runs late or not at all. Sometimes it's faster to walk 40-50min than it is to wait for the bus to stop by.
SF is pretty much the best in the state overall for public transportation, except for maybe small portions of San Diego (like downtown or the UCSD area).
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"Making minimum wage" in CA means minimum wage( for the whole time you are working, not just when you have a passenger) the employer paying a share of the taxes including unemployment, 3 days of sick leave a year if you work full time, being eligible for healthcare if you work full time(that you still have to pay for), and your employer reimbursing employer related expenses like mileage.
Sure, but then again, the Uber drivers know what their getting into. You might argue that they are underpaid, but it’s hard to argue that they are getting scammed or cheated : the arrangement is clear upfront, and the earnings follow not too long after.
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You have basically said that the republicans are simply bad in the state because they “campaign like it’s Kansas,” which is ridiculous because candidates are always local. That type of dismissiveness of an entire party is exactly the issue.
> You have basically said that the republicans are simply bad in the state because they “campaign like it’s Kansas,” which is ridiculous because candidates are always local. The state party officials (and party aligned interest groups) have a big impact on candidate grooming, funding, selection, and messaging, and the influence they exert results in campaigns that are ineffective in much of the state. And it wasn't a…
This has been an interesting battle in terms of civil governance. Basically Uber & Lyft threatened to put the initiative they wrote, on the ballot if the legislature passed AB5, which they did. Uber and Lyft are now doing everything they can to get it to pass which will set up its own court fight. Watching this fight I wonder "Who is in charge of governing California?" is it the Legislature/Governor or is it special…
> Watching this fight I wonder "Who is in charge of governing California?" is it the Legislature/Governor or is it special interests who can spend enough to put bespoke laws into effect and make bespoke changes to the state constitution? Neither. It's the people, who, after all the spending choose both the legislature and the governor, and choose the results ofinitiatives and referenda, and who have, on making all th…
California allows any coalition to initiate referendums and bring the vote to the people, if that's not democratic, I don't know what is.
Edit: And it's a bit insulting to say California voters don't have the wherewithal to digest political advertisements and make their own decisions.
This has been an interesting battle in terms of civil governance. Basically Uber & Lyft threatened to put the initiative they wrote, on the ballot if the legislature passed AB5, which they did. Uber and Lyft are now doing everything they can to get it to pass which will set up its own court fight. Watching this fight I wonder "Who is in charge of governing California?" is it the Legislature/Governor or is it special…
Look for example at prop 23 (a doctor must be present for dialysis). There's a clear interest group here (dialysis clinics are in existential crisis) but if you look at a bigger picture, you may see why it might not be economically feasible for clinics in less densely populated areas to hire full time doctors, considering the associated costs and even just the general supply of doctors.
In that light, does it make sense to try to pass blanket regulation that can have wildly different outcomes depending on hyperlocal factors such as population density? I recently watched a debate between a couple of right leaning folks and they talked about how the left tends to lean towards trying to generalize universally, and this seems like a pathological example where such an approach might not make sense, compared to hyperlocal municipality-driven regulation, or even no regulation at all.
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Ok so then Uber would just be paying taxes from the sale of the rides. I'm kind of confused as to why that would be an issue. But happy to hear more about it. > If there's a cap on hours, you've now got a competing interest which says there's an incentive to NOT work while the market isn't surging- because you might cost yourself greater earnings down the line. Ok so then is the cap 8 hours? 10? Is it 7? It seems to…
> Ok so then Uber would just be paying taxes from the sale of the rides. I'm kind of confused as to why that would be an issue. But happy to hear more about it. Odds are good that if health insurance benefits are pushed out of employers, you're going to see it funded by a tax on top of wages, not a corporate income tax, because the former is directly tied to the number of people the org is supporting in the United St…
Sure, but there are ways to fix that. I'm not really a big fan of corporate taxes just because they seem to always either find a way around it, or they just raise prices. It's hard to escape.
> I don't think there's any philosophical merit to claiming someone working 7+ hours a day is not a full time worker. We may not know the exact economics, but we do know they're not great. Uber loses billions per year, and pays substantial money to deal with high driver turnover. A mixed system makes it worse.
I think the issue here is the definition of full-time work is not enough. It has to include other things, like having to physically go to a place of employment, work hours that you're told to work, etc. Should AirBnB have to employee hosts? Why is it different? You can't make the hours argument, because there are plenty of Uber drivers that don't drive "full time" and plenty of AirBnB hosts that run AirBnB full time. It also messes with any other sort of gig work, hence why the state had to go back and carve out all these exceptions - which is in my opinion usually an indicator of a bad or poorly thought out law.
Here's the actual issue. These gig workers, or contractors, or whatever you want to call them need benefits (healthcare etc.) that the government isn't paying for. The government needs to pay for that by raising taxes and/or lowering costs, etc. The way to do that isn't to make Uber and Lyft leave California and leave those workers without any sort of income. Even if it was right to do so morally (and I doubt that it is), it's wrong to do so practically. To me as I've stated previously, this looks like a government failure, not a failure of Uber and Lyft.
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At the risk of sounding like a stereotypical leftist, I'm struggling to see how more of the blame can be on term limits, and not just a side-effect of our current version of democracy under capitalism. Simply put, if I had 100B, and there was outside force threatening my business I would certainly invest to protect myself - this includes mundane things like investing in security and outside threats like regulation. I…
> democracy under capitalism Left wing systems also have powerful special interests.
In America, at least, I do not see any significantly powerful, economically left, political structures.