So, not exactly temp workers, but contract workers who require less overhead and are easy to fire.
I fit into this category and my anecdotal experience tells me that hiring managers favor contractors for that reason as well as the fact that the money to pay them sometimes is listed as a different line-item on the budget. I think the combination of the two helps as well - when looking at a large contractor line-item, knowing that it can be scaled back with less headache than a Full Time Employee (FTE) makes it easier to stomach I think.
If you're comfortable with hustling for work when the time comes, then contracting can be a much better arrangement. I work from home, basically whenever I want, and I make more money than I would as a FTE (even when factoring in the outrageous cost of health insurance these days).
The biggest thing I think is the mental shift. As a FTE, there's a stronger sense of job security. But really, layoffs happen all the time and as a FTE I feel like I'd be less prepared to find another job, whereas being a contractor means I have to constantly be thinking about the future.
Pick your poison I guess.
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 so I think people have been fair warned that uber is not sufficient to support yourself.
When I went home to the UK at Christmas, Uber wanted to charge around 3 times the price of the monopolistic black cabs.
Uhh... Uber is, like, 5-6 years old in most locales, less in many. This isn't some alternative universe we have to imagine. We just have to think back to before 2010... you know, the before time. The long long ago.
And back then, taxi rates were hardly "outrageous". Hell, even today, Uber isn't necessarily that much cheaper in a lot of places.
Don't think this isn't on purpose. Every last dime is getting squeezed out.
* Sponsored by corporate *
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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 paying attention) so of course it’s just fine to keep it that way.
I encounter people of all ages and backgrounds with that notion kicking about, every day. Having lived and traveled the world, Americans are unique in their ignorance that the world was just as corrupt a generation ago.
Now let’s go watch some TVLand and chill
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 intervention is equally a myth as the US modern history as a free-market friendly place is a myth.
This debate should be about whether certain market niches make the more sense as public entities. NOT as an example of "free markets" failing as a general rule and trying to sell the idea "you just need to accept that government knows best" (I'm paraphrasing).
Rather it should be sold as an exception to the rule. The simple fact is government should not be in the vast majority of industry. But healthcare (specifically health insurance) has many unique and perverse incentives making it poorly suited for markets and the public alternative offers plenty of benefits to a society, including a capitalist society. Healthy workers are good workers, small business is less burdened with expensive healthcare packages, the morality of treating a seriously sick person who can't work then billing their family $10k, etc, etc.
I believe there is still a good argument to be made in favour of public health insurance without alienating those who put their trust in markets. It's a unique exception and is already far from operating as a free market in the US. So why not bite the bullet and entirely subsidize it for everyone? That is a much smaller ask than the typical democrat "corporations are evil" pitch on this matter.
Messaging is important.
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.
I've said this before: Society has already made it's choice. Society doesn't want people dying in the streets. Once you've made that decision, universal healthcare in some form or another just flows from that. The US has a form of it right now, it's just extremely perverse and expensive.
So I agree with the parent: it's not enough to just say that health care is important, therefore it should be single payer. There are too many counter examples for such a simple argument to pass muster. Discussions of health care policy need to start with a detailed and honest accouting of the health care market specifically.
And nearly all governments provide countless services from welfare, public housing, shelters, the foster care system, food stamps, etc for that as well.
Society has already made the decision about socialized healthcare; the only real question is how to implement it. The current implementation where you have socialized healthcare but deny it's existence is the worst possible and least efficient system.
I have lived in both systems and have experienced pro and cons with both of theem.
I agree but the political will to do it is just not there. Not yet, anyway.
I think it comes down to the fact that risk-taking cannot be a luxury, if we want the United States to remain a competitive and dynamic society. "Party of jobs?" How about a party for workers?
After all, as many conservatives will happily tell you, true value comes from the heads, the hearts, and the hands of individuals. Why are we giving so much free stuff to Big Jobernment?
You might be making more from unemployment than by working a min wage job so why take it?
Possible principles for a workers party:
- maximize after-rent and after-tax disposable income of workers
- shift all taxes off of wages from labor and onto ground rent from private enclosures of land and natural resources
- support a universal public savings account for all citizen residents over 20
- democratically divide and deposit all surplus natural resource rents directly into the universal savings accounts
- have the Federal Reserve conduct monetary policy by setting the interest rate on the universal citizen savings accounts, rather than by buying up assets from investors
This should increase the disposable income for a super-majority of workers by decreasing rent, making acquiring a house more affordable, making land for new small farms and businesses near competitive markets easier to obtain, increasing private savings to ensure workers have access to a large-runway of cash and high bargaining power while in between jobs, reducing the severity of economic depressions and recessions created by idle land speculation, and by directing capital flows away from mortgages and mortgage-backed assets and into productive businesses which will actually increase the demand for labor and raise wages.
wait no, you aren't suggesting communism.
I don't think switching to a property tax system is the way to go. Wouldn't it end up hurting people as you just see rents rise?
> Wouldn't it end up hurting people as you just see rents rise?
No, rents would not rise in proportion to the tax. Adding a tax as a carrying cost on a good of fixed supply such as land produces the opposite effect of a tax of goods and services. It increases the supply of available land and decreases prices because the tax makes land less attractive as a speculative investment and store of wealth. It encourages land holders to sell off any underutilized land being held for speculative purposes, thus increasing the supply of land available for actual use and improvement by workers, and lowering its price.
The 'ground rent' collected by landholders is the surplus profit above what is necessary to bring the land into use. If no one paid ground rent to private landholders, the supply of land would still remain the same, and there would still be just as much land available for everyone to use. Confiscating private ground rent simply shifts this payment from private parties to the state, and the tax cannot be passed on to renters through higher prices at all.
This increases the disposable income of a super-majority, because once all private ground is instead paid to the government for the provision of essential goods and services, all other taxes which fall upon the labor of workers, such as payroll and consumption taxes, can be eliminated.
Why would I not just raise rents to preserve my profits?
The vacant building may be replaced with several small town houses, the low density commercial buildings may be replaced with multi-story mixed used buildings with additional housing built-in, as property owners seek to increase the value of their buildings relative to surrounding buildings in order to acquire a profit larger than the land value tax. They would pay the same tax regardless of whether they left the land vacant or put it to use, so there is a strong incentive for them to put it to the best use possible.
When land is actually improved and put to use, this increases the demand for labor and raises wages so that wages increase faster than rent. When land is held idle for speculative purposes, rent increases faster than wages and the average worker becomes poorer even if the output of the economy is increasing. Nominal prices may change in reaction to market condition, but what is important is wages relative to rent.
However the base means of production for any economy as recognized by the Physiocrats and all classical economists is land and natural resources, which are non-produced resources of fixed supply that are a wholly distinct factor of production than capital.
While it is not necessary or desirable for the state to seize capital or private interest payments paid for the use of capital, it should sieze the 'ground rent' which is acquired from private enclosures of natural resources, as unlike interest on capital the surplus ground rent paid to landholders does nothing to increase the supply of land, and is collected even if the land were to remain idle and the landholder invested nothing in its actual improvement.
Can you expand on what you mean by this, please? If I understand it correctly, you're saying that organisers of the means of production would draw benefit which is not distributed to the collective of people who "own" the means of production. How would they do this?
I think it is important also to note that capital requires circulation, as in M-C-M', which not only requires money but also the value-form - these two things are what the Communists desire to render useless through the collective control of means of production.
There are strong currents in Communism which are anti-bureaucracy, and insist on models which do not place the economic organisers of a lower-stage Communist society to be above others in terms of access to goods. As I understand it, within Communist society a line is drawn between end goods and goods which will be used for further production.
What is the justification for separating natural resources from other forms of capital? They require labour to extract, transport and refine so in my view they are as much capital as outputs from previous industrial processes.
Which is not to say that is not a problem in capitalist society or something that strong democratic foundations cannot alleviate.
I think the problem with central planning stretches further; the goal of the Communists is to avoid alienation from one's labour, the non-commodity of labour-power, however having labour being externally imposed (whether by the capitalist and the "market" within capitalist society, or by the central planner within Socialist society) is alienation by definition. Therefore some change in the method of planning is required. Marx wrote that there are four forms of alienation, one which I think is important here is alienation of the worker from the act of production; the Communist movement aims to reject this alienation through making the whole productive capacity of society available to all such that the worker can in almost all cases direct his own labour, all production is social therefore, as all workers contribute.
So the kind of planning in higher stage Communism is much past the idea of a government planning, rather, as Marx wrote (to what some consider a contradiction), society regulates general production. To quote,
>For as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a herdsman, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.
- Capitalist markets
- USSR style central planning
- Anarchist-leaning gift economy, not scaleable beyond n=1000 or so
- Market socialism strains like mutualism or ParEcon, both of which have major issues of their own
- Any mix of the above, e.g. "Socialism with Chinese characteristics", which has been the best economic performer of the last 30 years or so.
In other words, at some point you need to come down from pie in the sky Marx quotes and make physical implementations, which is always more difficult than theory.
So if central planning is problematic, what do you choose then?
Thiss could not possibly be more wrong. Experience has shown that if a "public savings account" can be raided by its controllers to support some more powerful constituency (shareholders, current voters and taxpayers, etc.) it will. We've seen with this corporate pensions, state government pensions, and Social Security. A workers' party would immediately and forcefully end all "public savings account" schemes which are really wealth transfers away from workers in disguise, and (at most) force workers to save in accounts for which they are the custodians.
Universal healthcare is a good thing, but it won't really change things in that way.
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.
No, it wouldn't. Neoliberal corporate hegemony rules all of the developed world, all of which, except the US, has universal healthcare.
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.
However, independent contractors are not without risk because the independent contractor is suppose to operate fully independent without your supervision. If you violate certain guidelines then you have to classify the worker as an employee which entitles them to certain rights.
If working for your employer became a negative ROI, you'd quit your job.
If employing somebody becomes a negative ROI, I don't see why it shouldn't be equally easy to stop employing them.
As long as the relationship is mutually beneficial, neither party will terminate it.
I think a lot of the talk is also due to unhappiness with the economic trend that is drawing the median and minimum incomes closer together, which is a reversal of a trend that gave widespread optimism and contentment.
I think you mean "at-will employment". All American states have that. "Right to work" laws refer to laws banning union contracts from creating "closed shops".
Also, many employers expect contractors to be always available, or available full time for long stretches, but that makes it impossible to diversify their income.
So it can become very one-sided. A possible answer would be to make it normal for employees to have contracts with several employers at once, but that can create conflicts of interest in a lot of professions, and would make things like IP very messy.