California sues Uber and Lyft, claiming workers are misclassified

They are not looking for another job and just want to maximize flexible revenue.

I really can't think of a more fitting analogy for what has happened with Bernie bros over the past 6 months.

Regulation never raises the floor. It raises the first step. To raise the floor you have to actually provision services.

What stops the state from adding its own set of classifications and filing requirements in addition to the federal ones?

I think California could have said "pay gig workers with a W-2 but you don't need to give them all the exact same benefits as employees (health insurance, 401k, disability)”. Basically I'm not sure that it matters much, but you are correct in that California cannot amend federal law.

Congress passed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which eliminated the individual mandate penalty, effective January 1, 2019

This comment was typed on a keyboard manufactured with chemicals known to the state of California to cause cancer.

While sitting in a chair manufactured with chemicals known to the state of California to cause cancer.

At a computer manufactured with chemicals known to the state of California to cause cancer.

And the cables supplying power to that computer were also manufactures with chemicals known to the state of California to cause cancer.

That same argument also argues that a job for $1 per hour is reasonable, or that a dangerous job is OK. Do you believe that jobs need minimum standards to protect the most powerless in our societies? Most first world countries accept that restrictions are necessary, and many restrictions have come about to avoid the gross abuses that occurred without restrictions.

All minimum standards hurt some proportion of potential employees, and any one average individual may have a significant marginal gain by ignoring the standard.

The judgement to be made is about whether the potential for benefits is realised, and how much the harms are restricted, and how much the harms are not concentrated on particular subgroups.

Jesus man, did you just write that? Seriously? WTF? The fact that our society's economic structures do not allow these people meaningful employment is NOT justification for some capitalist to come along and exploit them as modern-day coolies. Rather, it is justification for reforming those structures so these people can obtain meaningful employment. Get your head on straight man, you are off-base.

It could be argued that, because the powers that be willingly prioritized their individual interest over their subjects ' collective wellbeing (be it intentionally "Let them eat cake"-style or because they were just dysfunctional rulers who couldn't keep their subjugates from starving, it doesn't matter; either way they dedicated more resources to themselves at the expense of everyone), these rulers were overthrown: the United States Declaration of Independence, the Magna Carta, the French Revolution, the Bolshevik Revolution, the Cultural Revolution, etc. were all products of the elite few irresponsibly divvying up resources for themselves to the point where their subjects decided en masse it would be better to fight to change the system and possibly die rather than live under present conditions; regardless of how each of those revolutions turned out, what is clear is that if the government (or whatever powers that be) prioritizes its own interests too much over those it supposedly represents, it, too, will be overthrown (or at least, changed by external forces).

Modern day governments have an intrinsic interest in making sure that doesn't happen, and a big part of that means making sure society is collectively content enough to not pull the plug. But now I'm just philosophizing.

Ah but that's the rub. They still can't feed themselves, but it's the only job in town, and some money is better than no money.

If we don't create a set of rules that prevents the behavior of places like Walmart, it allows them to create a monopoly of available jobs in an area by being the only one who can operate profitably (or can absorb a loss until all other choices are gone).

At that point they can create jobs that aren't good enough, but also leave no other choice.

Please avoid calling arguments emotional / irrational just because you disagree. The parent argument is that people are forced into bad situations by contingencies that aren't facts of nature but human policy choices. There's nothing emotional or irrational about that.

To make a tortured analogy to illustrate a point, are the victims in the movie Saw not responsible for their own deaths, as they voluntarily chose the actions which lead to their untimely deaths?

Voluntary choices don't imply preferrable or desirable choices. When Walmart arrives and lowers prices to the point of bankrupting small business in the town, residents certainly welcome the provided conveniences and lower prices, but are faced with the choice between paying higher prices, or paying lower prices and destroying small business within their towns. Humans aren't perfect economic machines, so they're likely to pick the lower prices, paying the long-term consequences for those decisions. Hence, people don't want Walmarts moving into their towns, since the outcomes are fairly predictable at that point.

However, with the way tax revenues are collected in the US (with anywhere from 80-100% going to the federal government, not states), a vast majority of states would not be able to pay for such a big program.

It seems Americans have the worst of both systems. A strong, wealthy, do-nothing federal government; and motivated, weak, underfunded state governments.

I was not aware of this example. You make some very good points, especially re: deadlock at the federal level.

However I do wonder if the way tax revenues are distributed in the United States makes this a non-starter.

For example, maybe California can afford it with 10% state tax rates. But what about states with 0% tax rates?

Meanwhile a large bulk of your tax dollars is going to a single payer federal heathcare system already (medicare & medicaid).

It seems the current structure of the US would lend itself more an implementation of single payer at the federal level, via an expansion of our existing single payer systems.

I wouldn't expect them to be able to prohibit being active on one service while not active on the other (except maybe if you've got committed hours, and working another driving job would put you over DOT permitted hours, as prima facia evidence that additional driving hours would be unsafe)

Amazon doesn't sell their app...it maintains partnership with businesses, and manages their business using technology. Why shouldn't Amazon employ their retailers, who power their app just as much as the developers who created it?

Also: Uber is set to announce 25% layoffs, but not a single driver will be affected by this. To the extent that Uber drivers are "out of work", it's because there are no riders requesting rides — but that's a direct relationship between buyer and seller.

Instead, the strongest argument in favor of classifying Uber drivers as employees is the fact that they are unable to set their own prices. On the flip side, Uber has been gradually rolling out a new feature that allows drivers to do just that, which makes that argument moot.

For taxable depreciation, which is generally equally spaced over a fixed time, ok. For actual economic depreiciation, as in the difference in what you paid vs what you could sell it for, time and mileage are both factors, extra miles from driving for hire reduce the sales value of the vehicle.

They don't subsidize their rides on a per unit basis. The driver expects to earn a base fare + some amount based no distance + time, and Uber takes a 20% cut from that. The actual marginal cost to providing a second ride, for Uber, is maps licensing, server costs, and maybe marketing promotion costs for that market.

The loss that Uber makes, instead, is because the amount that they pull in from the service fee isn't enough to cover the facilities and corporate salaries (they have 27,000 employees).

Uber rides were "adjusted EBITDA" profitable for 2 straight quarters before this — take "adjusted EBITDA" with a grain of salt, but it's also not "nothing".

Instead, Uber will almost certainly have to raise prices. We all collectively pay for the Uber drivers' welfare, but rather than having it be progressively paid for through taxation, it will be regressively paid for through price increases that disproportionately impact the poor / middle class.