71–80 of 127 posts
You'd think that where workers are easy to fire such as in the US, there would be less incentive to use contractors over employees, than in places with very rigid rules for firing.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Instead of understanding the history of labor force exploitation in the United States, everyone wants to pretend that a high-tech gloss over a return to Gilded Age-style Robber barons is a “natural evolution.” Tech workers survive in comfort within the last remaining vestiges of benefits that union members fought and died to obtain. The gig economy is just what they called “piecework” a century ago.
You can make all of the correlations to historical trendlines you like but this is a new phenomenon with plenty of benefits to both the customer and workers compared to previous systems, which is why it exists, almost entirely as a result of technology. It's been disruptive and sudden largely due to a complete lack of innovation within existing systems, a possibly inherently feature of previous models. Not driven by…
Sweeping aside history because you’re arriving at the same kind of poverty by novel means is quite the hand wave. No one disagrees that how we address these problems is going to be different from times past, but to pretend that things like class relations are ahistorical defies any notion of reasoned consideration. And especially in an age of such extreme income inequality that the greatest predictor of one’s future wealth is that of their parents.
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Its not well paid IT contractors its all the minimum wage disguised employment "gig" jobs that is where the growth is.
Yeah, and these gigs aren't the best thing around for sure. But I wonder where people would be without them, you know? Would it be huge unemployment? Or would conventional employees be the result?
Don't think this isn't on purpose. Every last dime is getting squeezed out.
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> Americans seem in love with a fictional account of the countries history. This shouldn't be about historical narratives or ideology, that's largely why public health insurance is dead-on-arrival in US politics. Both sides are terribly ideological about it and unrealistic as a result. The healthcare industry is already the most heavily regulated of all industries in the US. Saying it's been held back from government…
Wouldn't universal health care and public health insurance be completely different things? The primary issue with "insurance" as I see it is that it separates where the cost is generated from who pays it. This removes the responsibility and incentive to keep costs low. I'd hope if we had a universal health care system this would not be the case.
The features of 'basic care' that I think everyone should have:
* Everyone has it
* It's only paid for by taxes
* There are still systems in place for keeping costs low.
* MOST doctors in the area should be options for care, assuming they're open.
* /bad/ doctors (those who don't produce good results) shouldn't get to stay doctors.
* The malpractice part of the equation is covered by a combination of
* * social disability (care for the victim) and
* * criminal justice (doctor is guilty of malpractice).
* Government care/doctors (military docs) should be possible.
* Mass bulk procurement / manufacture of basic supplies.
* No more billing, lawyers fighting for/against costs, etc.
* Some kind of auction bid for the services of doctors performing classes of common work.
I thought this was called a Dutch Auction, but it seems that what I'm thinking of is some kind of combination of second-price and other types of auction. In this case the buyer of services (the government) wants to buy a projection of X units within a given geographic region and wants the option of exceeding that by a factor of Y.
X units would set the minimum cost paid out (doctors would be paid for the minimum work they're expected to do irrespective of need), but more work might be required. Disaster rates would be a third category of bid.
The way that the cost for a procedure would be set would look something like this.
* Geographic regions are defined.
* Doctors/Clinics within all regions report their current and potential capacity
* *as well as the rate they would prefer to charge for known services.
* Expected rates of need for regions are calculated.
If there is major discrepancy in price between areas, investigation of collusion and/or re-locating those who can to other areas for some procedures could be determined.
> “We find that 94% of net job growth in the past decade was in the alternative work category,” said Krueger. “And over 60% was due to the [the rise] of independent contractors, freelancers and contract company workers.” So, not exactly temp workers, but contract workers who require less overhead and are easy to fire.
Exactly why we need universal healthcare in the US It’s something every worker should be fighting tooth and nail for It would go a long way to breaking up the neoliberal corporate hegemony Sadly, and regardless of education and political leanings, Americans seem in love with a fictional account of the countries history. That it was all great 50 yrs ago without universal healthcare (when they were kids and not really…
Universal healthcare is a good thing, but it won't really change things in that way.
It's unsurprising considering the increasing costs and regulations imposed upon full time workers. When you see figures on what workers are paid, the figure should be "total compensation", which includes things like benefits, FICA taxes paid on behalf of the employee, etc. These can easily add 50% to the compensation. Showing just the wage is disingenuous.
Can you give some examples of what these costs are and how they've increased since 2005 (or 1995)?
> “We find that 94% of net job growth in the past decade was in the alternative work category,” said Krueger. “And over 60% was due to the [the rise] of independent contractors, freelancers and contract company workers.” So, not exactly temp workers, but contract workers who require less overhead and are easy to fire.
Exactly why we need universal healthcare in the US It’s something every worker should be fighting tooth and nail for It would go a long way to breaking up the neoliberal corporate hegemony Sadly, and regardless of education and political leanings, Americans seem in love with a fictional account of the countries history. That it was all great 50 yrs ago without universal healthcare (when they were kids and not really…
Not to mention, it's pretty hard to reshape ideas that have been adopted or bred into the culture over the years. Health care should not be tied to employment but it's been that way for years with a lot of large incentives to keep it that way.
As an unemployed person, it sucks and you're looked down upon as it being your fault instead of a working for a poorly-run company or something else. You're not a victim, you're a perpetrator with a flaw. An undesirable.
That's the beauty of the 'real' Christian society of America - it's all black and white, good and evil. It's God's grace that they have their jobs and some flaw in your that you don't. It's not about luck, or business downturn, etc.
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Really depends. If you think about uber then without uber or similar services then people would use taxis. The taxi drivers would get paid more due to having monopolies in most cities and fares would be outrageous. Most of the gig type companies are able to offer lower prices to consumers at the expense of workers. Also important to note is that uber and lyft sell their gigs as just side income, not a full time job s…
Usually high taxi fares don't go to the drivers, they go to the owners of the licenses. I think a NYC medallion used to cost $1.3 million before Uber; I don't think most of the drivers were shelling that out.
In the time since the end of the article's data was sourced, until now, the U6 rate has fallen from 11% to 8.3% - which is back to where it was in the Summer of 1998. When it gets into the 7.x% levels, the employment market will be the second hottest in roughly 50 years next to the year 2000. The time frame sourced, includes an U6 rate that reached nearly 18% and a U3 rate that hit 10%. It's not surprising that conve…
If there is a labor shortage then why are the jobs being created of the kind that are less advantageous to workers? Isn’t the market supposed to “correct” in favor of labor in that scenario? Because it looks like the opposite has happened.
The purpose of neoliberalism is to ensure that no matter the actual ratio of supply to demand, the price of labor will never rise. Must never rise. The basis of this entire economy is low wages.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Has the increasing cost of health insurance motivated employers to start using more contract workers?
Employers have been operating without any sense of social responsibility since long before health care became a part of the national conversation. You could entirely remove any obligation of providing health insurance from all employers, and they'd still replace payrolled employees with contract workers if it saved them a buck.