Maybe the Gig Economy Isn’t Reshaping Work After All
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Re: Maybe the Gig Economy Isn’t Reshaping Work After All
#2Reminds me of the economist Robert Solow's quip:
"You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics."
Re: Maybe the Gig Economy Isn’t Reshaping Work After All
#3People(most people) like to do the same thing every day. Even me, I'm a programmer and have different tasks, but I get most of my work through one client. I would hate to be chasing down new clients all the time.
Re: Maybe the Gig Economy Isn’t Reshaping Work After All
#4I think the Gig Economy is supplementing regular economy, provides a good chance for certain people to break off the 9-5 and gives more of a positive social impact than a negative one.
Re: Maybe the Gig Economy Isn’t Reshaping Work After All
#5It did reshape it. Turns out you can offload your costs to your 'employees' that hardly will organize and project costs and earnings to the future (like a competent business). I've talked with bunch of car sharing drivers who were bamboozled with car loans, get hit by traffic infractions, costs of maintenance and the list goes on and on. I feel that the gig economy preys on people who have not developed that risk management and are lured by the promise of easy money (make $500 this weekend). That can be verified by reading on what kind of game theory the big companies investing in (how to sweeten a deal, making people decide on the spot yes or no, etc). It's an interesting state, but I hope they turn it around. There is potential.
Re: Maybe the Gig Economy Isn’t Reshaping Work After All
#6NPR covered this yesterday.
https://www.npr.org/2018/06/07/617863204/one-in-10-workers-a...
One note from that story was they missed 25M low-income workers.
Jennifer Curry, a senior director at Samaschool, a San Francisco training program for low-income contract workers, estimates the government left out 25 million to 30 million freelance or contract workers who do some part-time work.
Re: Maybe the Gig Economy Isn’t Reshaping Work After All
#7Reminds me of the economist Robert Solow's quip: "You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics."
This is a good comment. It is interesting to consider how much rhetoric there is about robots and AI and Machine Learning and how these technologies can revolutionize work and lead to big productivity gains. And yet, in reality, the economy shows no sign of this. Productivity growth was very strong in the mid-20th century, but since 1973 productivity growth has been stagnant.
Re: Maybe the Gig Economy Isn’t Reshaping Work After All
#8The reduction in jobs in the gig economy has to be a direct result of the overall recovery of the economy. We are at a point where there are more jobs than workers to fill the jobs. Why would anyone take a crap gig job if they can get a steady paycheck? There are people that like the flexibility but the pay sux and no benefits for most of those jobs. The gig economy job is the new temp job. Just like temp jobs, they will start to increase as the economy cools. But for now, there's little incentive to get one over one with a steady paycheck.
Re: Maybe the Gig Economy Isn’t Reshaping Work After All
#9People(most people) like to do the same thing every day. Even me, I'm a programmer and have different tasks, but I get most of my work through one client. I would hate to be chasing down new clients all the time.
Is that true, do most people like doing the same thing every day? It certainly is not true for me.
EDIT: A few repliers clarified that it's probably about the stable and reliable income, and not about the nature of the work that's done every day. I can agree with that!
Re: Maybe the Gig Economy Isn’t Reshaping Work After All
#10People(most people) like to do the same thing every day. Even me, I'm a programmer and have different tasks, but I get most of my work through one client. I would hate to be chasing down new clients all the time.
Is that true, do most people like doing the same thing every day? It certainly is not true for me. EDIT: A few repliers clarified that it's probably about the stable and reliable income, and not about the nature of the work that's done every day. I can agree with that!
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