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Hillary Clinton Plans to Campaign Against Uber’s Contractor Economy

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Re: Hillary Clinton Plans to Campaign Against Uber’s Contractor Economy

#51

Post by brc »

rspeer wrote: post #42
brc wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems to work ok in many places around the world and in different products within the us. You don't need 'group buying' for auto or home insurance, or car or home purchases. In fact group buying probably hinders the ability to get the right product/person match. Of all the problems to solve, it seems pretty easy. Even if that just means groupon for benefits.

I'll bite. Where are these "many places around the world" that have your desired laissez-faire approach to health care? Are you talking about places like India or what? Also, I would hate to see a health care system as badly managed as Groupon.

I live in Australia. I have private health insurance. It's an old policy from when I was employed with a package. The policy costs no more than when it was part of that package. That's maybe because the policy is priced based on me (age mostly) rather than the employer. I'm not 100% sure why there's no real difference between employer based policies and personal policies.

Anyway point is the problem is solve able.

Re: Hillary Clinton Plans to Campaign Against Uber’s Contractor Economy

#52

Post by brc »

danieltillett wrote: post #21
brc wrote: post #7

The reason airbnb and uber exist is because the prior business models are broken with regards to a big enough portion of their potential customers. A conversation with the average taxi driver will reveal the job is no ticket to the high life or consistent pay. The way forward is to get rid of the concept of 'benefits' packages and just let people work for a gross pay and let themselves choose their own benefits from…

>The way forward is to get rid of the concept of 'benefits' packages and just let people work for a gross pay and let themselves choose their own benefits from that. Well until you change the tax laws any such change is just going to result in a pay cut. The whole reason things like healthcare are offered as benefits rather than straight salary is because benefits are tax efficient. >Ultimate flexibility is what effi…

You misrepresent my argument. It's not about stripping people of benefits, it's about not forcing contractors to become employees. Paying a gross salary and letting the person choose their own benefits from that is better for all involved. If someone wants to be tax efficient for retirement contributions, vehicles, whatever, then let them do so. Others may prefer to claim all their income and just pay the tax.

Separating the makeup of compensation and benefits is separate from organizing to negotiate for higher pay. You do t need a permanent union to organize for benefits.

Re: Hillary Clinton Plans to Campaign Against Uber’s Contractor Economy

#53

Post by seanflyon »

danieltillett wrote: post #44
ikt wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you I think there's too much idealism in here and not enough reality. For example this: > The way forward is to get rid of the concept of 'benefits' packages and just let people work for a gross pay and let themselves choose their own benefits from that. is the quickest way to lose all your benefits and gain nothing... why does he think corporations are really nice caring people who will give you a littl…

Even if companies wanted to do the right thing and keep the overall pay constant (history would suggest otherwise), because of the way benefits like healthcare are treated by the tax system, getting rid of benefits would make all employees worse off - basically more of your income would go in tax. I don’t think this is an ideal outcome.

> Even if companies wanted to do the right thing and keep the overall pay constant

It has nothing to do with what companies want. They don't pay an employee $X because they like to get rid of money, they pay $X because if they offered less that employee would go elsewhere and they would have to settle for a less productive employee, or none at all.

Re: Hillary Clinton Plans to Campaign Against Uber’s Contractor Economy

#54

Post by danieltillett »

seanflyon wrote: post #53
danieltillett wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if companies wanted to do the right thing and keep the overall pay constant (history would suggest otherwise), because of the way benefits like healthcare are treated by the tax system, getting rid of benefits would make all employees worse off - basically more of your income would go in tax. I don’t think this is an ideal outcome.

> Even if companies wanted to do the right thing and keep the overall pay constant It has nothing to do with what companies want. They don't pay an employee $X because they like to get rid of money, they pay $X because if they offered less that employee would go elsewhere and they would have to settle for a less productive employee, or none at all.

Actually it is a bit more complex than this. There is a lot of stickiness in wages, but ultimately all wages are set at the margin. Assuming an efficient market then any change from tax efficient benefits to straight salary will result in an effective cut to the employee.

Re: Hillary Clinton Plans to Campaign Against Uber’s Contractor Economy

#55

Post by danieltillett »

brc wrote: post #52
danieltillett wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The way forward is to get rid of the concept of 'benefits' packages and just let people work for a gross pay and let themselves choose their own benefits from that. Well until you change the tax laws any such change is just going to result in a pay cut. The whole reason things like healthcare are offered as benefits rather than straight salary is because benefits are tax efficient. >Ultimate flexibility is what effi…

You misrepresent my argument. It's not about stripping people of benefits, it's about not forcing contractors to become employees. Paying a gross salary and letting the person choose their own benefits from that is better for all involved. If someone wants to be tax efficient for retirement contributions, vehicles, whatever, then let them do so. Others may prefer to claim all their income and just pay the tax. Separa…

No you don't need a union, but when the group you are negotiating with is in a union (trade association) and you aren't then you might find yourself at a major disadvantage. You are not in a strong position to argue for benefits or salary on your own.

Unions are neither all good nor all evil. They are one way that employees can gain some leverage in the negotiation process. If they didn't make sense then companies would certainly not form their own to argue for their interests.

I should mention that I am an employer not an employee.

Re: Hillary Clinton Plans to Campaign Against Uber’s Contractor Economy

#56

Post by brc »

danieltillett wrote: post #55
brc wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You misrepresent my argument. It's not about stripping people of benefits, it's about not forcing contractors to become employees. Paying a gross salary and letting the person choose their own benefits from that is better for all involved. If someone wants to be tax efficient for retirement contributions, vehicles, whatever, then let them do so. Others may prefer to claim all their income and just pay the tax. Separa…

No you don't need a union, but when the group you are negotiating with is in a union (trade association) and you aren't then you might find yourself at a major disadvantage. You are not in a strong position to argue for benefits or salary on your own. Unions are neither all good nor all evil. They are one way that employees can gain some leverage in the negotiation process. If they didn't make sense then companies wo…

Still not understanding me. Currently the union might bargain for employment benefits. This is antiquated and treats all employees as though they want the same things, which cannot be true. Why would you collectively bargain for things that each person values differently?

So it's better to agree to a rate of gross pay, and get paid as a contractor. The individual can then choose what benefits to award themselves, whether it is a higher level of healthcare or retirement payments, or just take the maximum up front income and pay taxes accordingly.

From an employers point of view, a whole piece of headache goes away if the people you pay sorts out their own benefits packages.

The Orignal article is about trying to reclassify contractors as employees, and do so in the name of 'benefits' as though contractors can't get the benefits themselves. Well, that's simply not true.

Whether you organise for higher pay is another thing, and you can form a union to do that, or not.

Re: Hillary Clinton Plans to Campaign Against Uber’s Contractor Economy

#57

Post by danieltillett »

brc wrote: post #56
danieltillett wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No you don't need a union, but when the group you are negotiating with is in a union (trade association) and you aren't then you might find yourself at a major disadvantage. You are not in a strong position to argue for benefits or salary on your own. Unions are neither all good nor all evil. They are one way that employees can gain some leverage in the negotiation process. If they didn't make sense then companies wo…

Still not understanding me. Currently the union might bargain for employment benefits. This is antiquated and treats all employees as though they want the same things, which cannot be true. Why would you collectively bargain for things that each person values differently? So it's better to agree to a rate of gross pay, and get paid as a contractor. The individual can then choose what benefits to award themselves, whe…

Actually many unions argue for flexibility of how their members are paid - it is the overall pay that is important.

Once you have settled on a gross pay, how it is paid needs to take into account the tax system. In the case of some benefits it is better for the employer to pay since the effective tax rate is lower.

The whole issue of contractors verse employee is quite complex and even from a employers perspective it is not clear cut that one is better than the other in all cases. I think we can agree that in general it is best if people have the maximum flexibility possible without creating external costs.

Re: Hillary Clinton Plans to Campaign Against Uber’s Contractor Economy

#58

Post by norea-armozel »

danieltillett wrote: post #24
ageek123 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The way forward is ton get rid of the concept of 'benefits' packages and just let people work for a gross pay and let themselves choose their own benefits from that. This. Among other things, it would go a long way towards fixing the health insurance problems in the country. One of the reasons the private health insurance market is so dysfunctional is that relatively few people participate in it (most people are co…

The way the rest of the world has “fixed” health insurance is to have the state involved. Even the USA does this for anyone over 65 (where most of the spending occurs) and for anyone who is a veteran. For some reason covering the young and healthy seems too hard. It is almost as though there is a huge vested interest keen on maintaining the status quo at the expense of everyone else. Given that only unions are evil t…

Kevin A Carson outlined in an essay how hospitals justify their prices on everything from saline to surgery on a managerial model which treats every service/good as revenue on the accounting books. Oddly enough, they got this model from the auto industry which did the same sort of model which obviously demands consumers to use the service/good as much as possible.

For example, how many patients actually need a CT scan? Not many, really, but if you dig deeper the reason they do this is to get the maximum value of of their CT scan equipment even if a patient's symptoms don't match anything that would require such a service. Equally, many hospitals also compete with each other thus duplicate services or spend their budget on the look/feel of their facilities (how many people care wth the foyer of a hospital looks like?) which leads to the higher prices. Essentially, each patient pays the full cost of the medical services rendered unlike how consumers in other industries (the price of a meal or a cell phone is not at cost, often it's lower when you factor in everything to bring it to market).

I think the way to clear the system is to do a multi-tier approach which may include single payer healthcare, but if you were to install that system into our hospital system as is then expect the US to go bankrupt in less than a decade. We have to break the back of the monopolists before we can get anything close to sane market prices.

Re: Hillary Clinton Plans to Campaign Against Uber’s Contractor Economy

#59

Post by norea-armozel »

brc wrote: post #7

The reason airbnb and uber exist is because the prior business models are broken with regards to a big enough portion of their potential customers. A conversation with the average taxi driver will reveal the job is no ticket to the high life or consistent pay. The way forward is to get rid of the concept of 'benefits' packages and just let people work for a gross pay and let themselves choose their own benefits from…

I don't think this is the best idea in terms of solving the labor problem. It's more likely we need to make it easier for workers to form cooperatives and/or unions to minimize the excess economic rents on labor. That way, the workers can economize better in terms of healthcare or anything else really. Benefits is just a stop gap that should've been replace by better wage regulation or worker owned businesses where a worker's daily wage doesn't come below their cost of living (housing, healthcare, and food being the core line items in it).

Re: Hillary Clinton Plans to Campaign Against Uber’s Contractor Economy

#60

Post by norea-armozel »

ageek123 wrote: post #9

Labor market flexibility is one of the great strengths of the US economy. It's one of the reasons why unemployment is back to reasonable levels even after the Great Recession. The freelancer economy has some downsides but in aggregate it's a good thing, both for workers and the economy as a whole. The opposite end of the spectrum is the labor market regulations in a country like Greece, which has always been a drag o…

It would be fine if the price of housing, food, and healthcare weren't so far out of sync with the wages earned. This is going to lead to a permanent underclass where people are worse off than even serfs of the medieval period.
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