“Society” should have things like universal healthcare like every other industrial country in the world. The US is the only country with an ass backwards system where you are dependent on your employer for health benefits.
“Society” should have things like universal healthcare like every other industrial country in the world. The US is the only country with an ass backwards system where you are dependent on your employer for health benefits.
It’s by design.. America is all about using you up as an asset then discarding you when you are no longer productive and generate economic benefits.
I always laugh when Americans poke fun at Europeans… we have it much better over here. I assure you of that.
But that's the thing, isn't it? Universal healthcare isn't magic. It's paid for by taxes. Yet Uber claimed its drivers where independent contractors that had to pay for anything: taxes, medical, insurance, car depreciation etc. etc.
And that’s fine. Uber drivers should pay taxes and Uber itself pays taxes - or at least should.
And the drivers have the free will to choose to drive for Uber.
> Uber drivers should pay taxes and Uber itself pays taxes - or at least should.
Yup. The drivers should have to pay everything because despite working for Uber they are "free contractors"
> And the drivers have the free will to choose to drive for Uber
Ah yes, I forgot that's exactly how price dumping works: there are multiple companies to chose from and all of them offer competitive wages.
I mean, it's not ancient history. For half of Uber's existence the ongoing story was: drivers have to drive almost 24 hours a day to make living wage with Uber randomly stealing their wages.
This only somewhat changed once governments stepped in and forced Uber to change some of its practices.
There are multiple jobs to choose from. California’s attempt to regulate contractors was a disaster. Jason Snell, the former editor of Macworld, left to go independent and makes a living based on a combination of podcasting, writing books and freelance writing and he said how much harder the rules made it for him to do freelance writing because of the requirenments around hiring contractors.
Trust me, Snell is far from a fire breathing libertarian conservative.
It’s not the responsibility of a corporation to decide what a “living wage” is. Should Uber pay more to a single mother with three kids than a single father with no kids? Again it’s society’s responsibility to provide for a safety net and to tax corporations to fund it.
On the federal level, that’s what the earned income tax credit was suppose to do and until 2016, it had wide bi-partisan support and was championed by both Republican and Democratic Presidents.
> California’s attempt to regulate contractors was a disaster.
You have to decide whether you want the society to provide safety nets through healthcare, strong labor protections etc. or not.
> Again it’s society’s responsibility to provide for a safety net and to tax corporations to fund it.
Indeed. That's why governments and regulators eventually stepped in.
You can't in good conscience or good faith argue that Uber didn't offload anything onto society and people working for it just because "it's not the job of a company" etc. Uber literally engaged in multiple illegal and borderline illegal practices across the globe, including the US.
And yes, it's the literal job of a taxi company to make sure its drivers work a healthy amount of hours. In Uber's case it meant that it had to pay drivers enough money to cover the costs Uber offloaded onto them, and enough money left over so that they didn't have to drive 18-20 hours a day to make ends meet.
And yeah, not everyone can become Jason Snell
> You have to decide whether you want the society to provide safety nets through healthcare, strong labor protections etc. or not.
My argument is simply that the only “labor protections” the government should enforce on private enterprise is that a company can’t actively harm employees - OSHA protections, discrimination etc.
> And yes, it's the literal job of a taxi company to make sure its drivers work a healthy amount of hours. In Uber's case it meant that it had to pay drivers enough money to cover the costs Uber offloaded onto them, and enough money left over so that they didn't have to drive 18-20 hours a day to make ends meet.
It’s up to individuals to decide whether the tradeoffs are worth it. It’s not the responsibility of private industry to calculate what a “living wage” is for an individual. Uber never put a gun to anyone’s head to force them to drive for Uber. If anything the government should enforce how long someone can drive because it puts others in danger. But does the government stop people from working two jobs that might add up to 20 hours? What should happen when the driver drives for Uber, Lyft and DoorDash?
The illegal practices at least in New York were around taxi medallion monopoly where taxi drivers were getting in hundreds of thousands in debt to own them for the right to drive.
As far as not everyone being Jason Snell, there were other freelance writers and contractors like truck drivers who had to leave California to save their business
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/i-had-leave-california-save-...
It even affected 1099 (as opposed to W2) tech workers who were contractors.
If that is the world you want, then boy are you going to love living in Somalia. You could even move today!
Now you are going to come up with an intelligent counter argument to my saying that the government should enforce laws where the employer can’t actively harm employees, where the government should respect the fact that adults have agency to make their own choices and the United States should offer universal healthcare like every other industrialized first world and second world country equates to living in Somalia…
> Uber never put a gun to anyone’s head to force them to drive for Uber.
Oh no. Uber only spent 20 billion dollars on price dumping, driving competing companies out of business, and was the poster child for gig economy.
> If anything the government should enforce how long someone can drive because it puts others in danger.
Once again, the wages Uber was paying were below substinence if you were to drive just within the safe margin of hours. Oh, I forgot, it's ridiculously easy to become a writer and sustain living from a podcast. Those ~400 000 people could've easily found a different job.
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However, the actual insane thing is this worldview that companies are not responsible for anything, and can do whatever they want; that people have to be punished for working because it's easy to not just switch jobs but to go and start supporting yourself with books and podcasts; and that there should be some magical government that provides some safety net, but still actively punishes people if they end up at a wrong job.
> Oh, I forgot, it's ridiculously easy to become a writer and sustain living from a podcast. Those ~400 000 people could've easily found a different job.
So the only choices anyone has in the US is to become a writer or an Uber driver? Does Uber have some type of monopoly on employment?
> However, the actual insane thing is this worldview that companies are not responsible for anything, and can do whatever they want;
I said that companies shouldn’t be able to do things that harm their employees - I never said that OSHA and safety standards shouldn’t exist. They also shouldn’t be able to do anything that hurts others. I even said that they should pay taxes to fund a safety net and to provide universal health care like every other civilized company.
> but to go and start supporting yourself with books and podcasts
No I said that the government shouldn’t get involved with creating an environment where adults can’t get into voluntarily contracts where they get to decide how much their labor is worth.
Even a cursory reading of whey I wrote would tell you I used Snell as an example of all of the contractors that wanted to do freelance who were harmed by a law meant to protect them but only created a nanny state that took away agency from adults who freely made a choice.
> and that there should be some magical government that provides some safety net
You mean the same type of safety net that every other industrialized company provides?
My employer is a lot more dependable than the US government.
If you trust the overlord you didn't choose more than the one you did, then you might want to rethink your career.
What’s more likely - your company is going to get rid of you in the next five years or the government is going to take away your citizenship?
Did you try to get insurance on the open market before 2012 with a pre-existing condition? Every other industrial country in the world has health insurance not tied to your employer. Even smaller countries like Costa Rica and Panama have better more affordable insurance. Yes I’ve done my research on caja, Costa Rica’s national health care system. We will be staying there a couple of months in the winter starting next year and it’s our Plan B to retire there.
I got my job because I had a life threatening illness at the time. My employer saved me when no one else would. After spending all that money saving my life, it'd be a shame if they got rid of me before I had the chance to fully repay their kindness. There are a lot of other good countries where you can go for care. For example, if you have an impressive looking GitHub then Audrey Tang will give you a gold card. That's privileged elite immigrant status and you don't even need a college degree. You get your gold card. You go to Taiwan. The place where some of the greatest people in the world (e.g. Jensen Huang) are from. You're under no obligation to get a job. You get free health care. The ER waits are ~15 mins. If your heart bleeds red instead then the Chinese also say on RedNote that if you're a sick American, then just come on down to China and they'll treat you and take care of you, no matter how bad it is, or how long it's going to take.
You know you’re arguing my point for me that universal health care provided by taxpayer funds is better than depending on your employer for health care?
And becoming a permanent resident of Costa Rica is just a matter of either proving you have $1000 a month in guaranteed income as a retiree or $2500 a month in passive income or put $60K in a local bank account and they will dispense $2500 a month to you. They don’t tax foreign income.
The best thing about Costa Rica is the Sloth Sanctuary.
You and your wife should send me photos of yourselves with the sloths when you get there.