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Comment by ProfessorLayton | Hacker News Reader

I hope that at the end of all this, we as a society realize that we need to actually enforce, as well as update the rules we set regarding employment. We're effectively subsidizing companies that find loopholes, or simply ignore laws.

- Contractor-not-a-contractor employment merely pushes costs and risks on to the worker. We all end up paying for the worker's social safety net, and costs of doing business (Such as insurance premiums, for example).

- Not Uber-specific, but technically-not-full-time employment that just barely allows employers to bypass benefits owed to full-time employees needs to be fixed. See Walmart and how they help employees sign up for government benefits as part of their on boarding in some areas.

In the end, somebody is paying for these costs. Why shouldn't it be the companies doing business?

Interesting how it ends with "Some people don't like to take responsibility for their own actions"

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We all should pay for the worker's social safety net. That shouldn't be dependant on a worker's employer, or even employment status. In the US, tying health insurance to employers was one of the worst public policy mistakes we ever made.

Not only is it tied to employers, it's subsidized! If a company gives you $1 in salary you pay taxes on that dollar. If it gives you $1 of health insurance it's tax free. It's madness.

It's tied to employers because it's subsidized if you get it that way. That's the whole tie.

The subsidy is important, but being in a risk pool is also very important.

Self-employed individuals get to deduct health insurance https://www.irs.gov/publications/p535/ch06.html

> Why shouldn't it be the companies doing business?

Why should it be the companies doing business? Just because someone happens to work for Walmart/Uber/whoever, I don't see why it means that employer suddenly becomes responsible for meeting any particular set of needs that person might have.

If we, as a society, decide that there should be minimum standard of living for citizens than we should fund that from taxes paid by all.

> If we, as a society, decide that there should be minimum standard of living for citizens than we should fund that from taxes paid by all.

I agree, this is the other - perhaps bette - solution. But the corporations that reap huge benefits from public education, infrastructure, healthcare, etc. (and those who currently disproportionately profit from those corporations) need to start contributing their fair share.

As Mitt Romney famously said: corporations are people my friend. Which is to say, they are made up of people. Anything that is benefiting a corporation is benefiting those people. Those people pay taxes. That is how the fair share gets paid.

Tell that to Apple's 200B+ war chest, or to the profits that are distributed as dividends instead of being paid out as wages. A lot of the wealth created by corporations is not subject to income tax (only capital gains tax) and overwhelmingly benefits only those who can afford to be in the market.

> In the end, somebody is paying for these costs. Why shouldn't it be the companies doing business?

Exactly. We have allowed companies to externalize entirely too much risk/responsibility onto the public - from "too big to fail" banks to companies that use "creative" labor classification to save money on health plans and benefits to advertisers that collect reams of sensitive information but are not held to account when that information leaks.

The main problems seem to be that Uber is simultaneously in control of supply and demand and can pretty much single handedly decide the terms of the agreement between them and drivers. Basically they've created a market they are now in control of, which goes against the principles of both capitalism and socialism.

That said, it's hard to determine exactly how to prevent this from happening, and even harder to fix. My current best estimate is that either Uber needs to stop being a market and function as a full fledged company, or supply and demand should be made independent. This could be done by, for example, splitting Uber into a company advertising the services of drivers, and a separate company that buys these services for their customers. This should in theory allow for more competition.

> Why shouldn't it be the companies doing business?

Because that's not fair to those of us who work independently. Why should an "employee" get subsidized healthcare but not a struggling business owner? You're saying the only companies worth having are ones big enough to negotiate with insurance companies?

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