Gig workers are organising in tech-savvy ways
economist.com
economist.com
Labor doesn't have a centralizing node, and is consequently powerless. Even engineers, relatively well paid as they are, are somewhat powerless. The high salary commanded here is due to autonomous market forces, not a coordinated strategy.
Unions used to be strong before the 70s but they've gotten successfully defanged by political parties.
There's definitely room for building MASSIVE and powerful without the political corruption of yesteryear's unions.
while not against unions prima facie, i'd encourage moderating power structures as the first-order solution over building new ones. societies should be people-first and power structures second (or third, or whatever).
It doesn’t need to be wrapped in technical jargon, y’all
Aristotle wrote about this shit 2,000 years ago
This isn’t new territory to society
Look at tax rates between WW2 & Reagan and the growth in the wealth of the middle class during the same period
Ffs just accept it: you’ve been lied to so long you’ve come to believe the lie about taxes
Political unrest at every point along the path of building human society is centered around gross material inequality
Stop bloviating at your screen as mom & dad did when Dan Rather would say something stupid and get to work solving these problems
All I see is people creating a market for more of the same prioritizing rich grandpas demands
Rather than follow Andreessen, the next generation should have what he had as a kid: higher taxes funneling shit tons of resources into local communities to evolve as the people need, not as finance market speculators dictate
Pitter patter
What's different now is what we spend the money on.
How has proportion of taxes levied from persons vs corporations changed over time?
Another $1 Trillion (not Billion, Trillion) is estimated for veterans care for those who were hurt in the endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Are you talking about income taxes? Because, yes you're right that Federal income taxes are nowhere near what they were post-WW2, but...
> and the growth in the wealth of the middle class during the same period
...the wealth of the upper class has grown to historic levels because the vast VAST majority of upper-class wealth right now (top 0.1%) is 1) in unrealized capital gains, and 2) once capital gains are realized, they are taxed at the same rate that they were all the way up until the 70's, where it spent a brief decade moderately higher than it is today.
Bezos doesn't have $100B+ sitting around in a checking account, and a WW2-era marginal tax rate wouldn't really raise as much as you think it would. Most of the richest billionaires have a salary of $1.
If he did pay a high tax rate every time he realized his gains in any way or tapped his equity through a financial instrument, I think things would be much better. But right now Bezos can pay a realized tax rate of under 20% if he wants.
The data in your source indeed does not seem to consider capital gains tax, as they seem to reflect the top tax bracket on average for different states and locales, whereas if capital gains were considered in relation to the state in which they are realized, it would certainly be much lower.
Except this was true during WW2, also. You have to do an apples-to-apples comparison of what the top 1% of income earners paid then vs now. The shift in income to capital gains tax doesn't matter since the capital gains tax is the same, and the shift would have simply happened quicker with income taxed the way it was.
Also, collateralized loans don't change anything besides simply delaying when the tax is paid. One needs to realize some gain somewhere to be able to pay back the loan eventually.
> The data in your source indeed does not seem to consider capital gains tax, as they seem to reflect the top tax bracket on average for different states and locales, whereas if capital gains were considered in relation to the state in which they are realized, it would certainly be much lower.
Yes, but capital gains taxes have been the same, so in effect this source undercounts the intensity of this effect. It doesn't matter if there are more multi-millionaires today that do not qualify as the "top 1% of income earners", because they would pay the same capital gains tax then vs now.
If you see everyone as atomic agents of work, is Bezos worth so much because of cherry picked models favored by law, or is he himself distributing goods in a universally mathematically efficient way by some unknown force, invisible hands and “free markets (in a nation of laws?)”?
If he’s literally doing it, wow! Ok. But if it’s mathematical efficiency it’s mathematical efficiency. Bezos didn’t measure it. He took object distribution and abstracted it. Wow! Business innovation!
Nevermind guys like Krugman openly admit Hari Seldon like powers of bending social agency are exactly his goal
That’s great if the people in charge are truly benevolent
Old enough to wreck the planet and die before it’s a problem doesn’t really suggest to me they’re going to be motivated to voluntarily acquiesce to measurable anxiety this creates for folks that aren’t quite so old
Again more disingenuous western BS
That carbon emissions have detrimental effects on human health and the environment was pretty obvious in London and elsewhere back in the day
But since it’s not in your neighborhood, those laws of physics that matter for computers are lying to us when we annotate the inputs differently?
Ok. Yup. Shark jump achieved.
> If he’s literally doing it, wow! Ok. But if it’s mathematical efficiency it’s mathematical efficiency. Bezos didn’t measure it. He took object distribution and abstracted it. Wow! Business innovation!
I guess optimization of global supply chains in a way that enables anyone to practically materialize literally anything they want within 2 days might not count to you as a real “innovation”, so I’ll take a different angle.
Half of Amazon’s revenue comes from Amazon Web Services. Starting a business today is easier than it has ever been, thanks in large part to AWS. I work at a small seed-stage tech startup, and our product runs on infrastructure that, until recently, was only available to giant blue chip corporations with the resources to employ 100s of engineers to maintain datacenters, databases, tooling, monitoring & alerting, load balancing, etc. All of that is now available to our tiny little team for a simple monthly subscription fee. You can attribute the value of most startups today to the availability of this infrastructure as a service.
> That carbon emissions have detrimental effects on human health and the environment was pretty obvious in London and elsewhere back in the day
Not sure how this is relevant to income tax rates, gig workers, or labor unions — but we probably agree that carbon emissions are bad. IMO we should tax emissions as much as possible.
I'm much less concerned with one Bezos than I am with thousands of multi-millionaires.
Yes, the vast majority of corporate executive wealth is delivered through stock compensation vs cash compensation. Executive compensation can be in the millions of dollars per year, but that's nearly always in stock options[1]. The marginal income tax rate variation between WW2 and Reagan would not have changed this.
Also, the scary wealth disparity numbers you see floating around are typically attributed to the growth in wealth of BILLIONAIRES (usually ultra paper rich founders). Put simply, the GDP has grown at historic rates over the last 40 years, and the gains from that have gone to the founder-class. Most non-founder executives aren't billionaires.
[1] https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/02/05/465747726/-682...
we should instead treat all income the same for tax purposes.
Even back then, none of the super rich were paying that income tax rate, because the wealthiest people in the world owe their wealth to ownership in their corporations.
There are all sorts of ways we could fix this problem. Government-funded elections. Maximum spending limits. Maximum contribution limits. Strong spending disclosure requirements. Real penalties for people who violate spending laws. Requiring all public servants to keep assets in a blind trust. Ending the revolving door. I don't much care which approaches we start with, but I'd love to see us making progress here.
First, corporations and private sector aren’t inherently bad. There is a need to have economic interests in a community heard in politics. They just need a counterbalance like unions have done in the workplace for labor. (Yes, I know unions are a diminished power but their legacy is still strong).
Next, let’s stop being penny wise and dollar foolish. Tech bro’s in San Fran make multiples more than people who make life or death decisions. It’s time for elected representatives to be paid commensurate for the seriousness of their jobs so they care about keeping the job and not leaving for a private sector payday they helped create. Term limits aren’t the issue, who these people really work for is. Start pay at $2M / year for a congressperson with $10M a year in capital they can spend on their local community however they want so long as they and their immediate families don’t benefit. Turn the tables on the well monied interest groups.
We also need to push for a fourth branch of government. One that has 2 people per state chosen at random (like jury duty) to serve a four year term in DC. This branch will have veto rights over any president being able to sign an executive order or a bill. Imagine how many unpopular EO’s or bills would pass (e.g. net neutrality is killed) if average people had a voice.
Also, let’s gut the entire educational system in the country and start over keeping only the actual educators and the real estate as the constants. If you want tomorrow to be better we need an education system that is the envy of the world. We need K-12 to be enough to bring people to an employable level. There is no reason every abled bodies graduate with a fully functioning mind shouldn’t be able to code at least hello world in python.
This sounds like "Instead of creating a 'Legislature', let's just disperse the power of the 'Executive'." Yeah, how do you plan to do that, without a balance?
we do it by rolling back the advantages businesses have amassed over the last half century (or providing residents with all of the same advantages). we institute transparency in labor markets, nullify tax advantages and liability shields, equalize the political voice of the populace, hold companies accountable for (excessive) risk-taking, and rectify thousands, maybe millions, more such injustices. is it that hard to imagine?
change takes work and we have to start somewhere. at least our political system has the levers available to make that change, however hard.
One thing labor has plenty of is apps. It makes things more efficient for us, but what's needed more than anything to organize is workers willing to take risks and stand together.
What do you think they could all agree on though?
Also Oracle licensing.
Any day now.
Ah but then you might lose the interest in the revolution...
If LinkedIn had used its position to charge subscription fees of its users, not its recruiters, then it could have used that to effectively unionize its entire userbase, across a variety of employers and industries.
But Microsoft owns them now. Never going to happen.
For what it's worth, I don't think it's a good idea (Israel has it's country-wide union, Histadrut, and it's one of the poorer examples of unions), so I'm just pointing this out.
I wonder how unions, charging union dues, ever become popular?
Today it's less physically violent, but if you get a job as a floor worker at a big company like Walmart, you've got mandatory videos about how terrible unions are. And yes, you will be fired if the word 'union' comes out your mouth on company property.
The telling of the stories includes a lot of the strategy and tactics, legal and otherwise, of busting unions down to where they are now.
Why doesn’t the US have a Labour Party? That’s what we have in the UK. (But it’s not very popular!)
Ostensibly, the Democrats are the "party of the working people," but a lot of modern leftists (myself included) would argue that the vast majority are barely more worker-friendly than the Republican party.
America's parties have done an astonishingly good job of divvying up the country along lines that really have much more to do with personal identity than with actionable policy, and getting us focused on working against each other instead of together. There are Republican workers and Democrat workers. Both think the other party is where the out-of-touch "elites" lie. Both are mostly right.
Trump for example is not what the GOP Republicans would be. He was his own thing and Trumpism fits within the Republicans, but has pushed out the GOP to the sides of the Republican party. Things like the Trade War would probably never have fit in with regular GOP Republicans. The brand of nationalism that Trump uses is very different from the traditional Republican nationalist rhetoric, which was generally okay with illegal immigration as long as it served the economic engine.
You have similar efforts in the Democrats - although no one has been successful like Trump has been. There is the traditional institutional Democrat (e.g. Pelosi, Obama, Clinton, now Biden) who operates with Wallstreet backing and largely benefits the neo-liberal agenda. You have the Sanders supports, who are not really Democrats at all, but Sanders implanted himself with the Democrats so now they're competing for control. Then you have the "Progressive" Democrats who are very pro-reform, identitarians, pro-socialism, bordering on very strong statism, possibly of the totalitarian variety. These are the AOCs, the Ilhan Omars, the "Squad".
All of the factions in the Democrats are trying to do what Trump achieved with the Republicans, but none have been able to dethrone the institutional Democrats so far. A lot of that is because they lack the impetus, but also because the DNC is extremely corrupt and openly aligned with the institutional Democrats.
So in short, while there are "only two parties", these parties are highly maleable and only really retain their names. If you go even further in history there are times where the parties essentially "flipped" in their entire positions on everything. Republicans, who are accused of being racist by the media were the anti-slavery party, while Democrats were pro-slavery.
Why do they allow outsiders to run to lead their parties?
In the UK you need to be a career member of the party to run as leader.
The most relevent legel precedent I am aware of is Smith v. Allwright (1923), which ruled it was unconstitutional for a political party (the Democrats) to restrict primary voting to whites.
>When, as here, primaries become a part of the machinery for choosing officials, state and federal, the same tests to determine the character of discrimination or abridgment should be applied to the primary as are applied to the general election
> We think that this statutory system for the selection of party nominees for inclusion on the general election ballot makes the party which is required to follow these legislative directions an agency of the state in so far as it determines the participants in a primary election. The party takes its character as a state agency from the duties imposed upon it by state statutes; the duties do not become matters of private law because they are performed by a political party.
Granted, in this case, the court was looking at racial discrimination by the parties, which introduces direct constitutional concerns, and so has a lower bar to warrent governmental interference. However, the principle that "private" political parties are not actually private is fairly engrained in US politics (although the exact legal boundaries are still unclear).
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/321/649/#tab-opi...
One party is "pro establishment". Then you only have one party who is supposedly "anti-establishment".
At this point you only have one party head to keep an eye on.
If the mood turns ugly (and it won't often because the establishment own all the press/media), you have to fix the head of the one "anti" party now and again.
UK: use the media to circulate a smear campaign against Corbyn after he nearly got in power and surprised them
USA: use the media to ignore/denigrate/belittle Sanders as some kind of insane communist.
Trudeau campaigned on removing FPTP and as soon as he got in someone, somewhere told him to drop it like a hot potato. Legalizing weed was fine, even though this was apparently hotly contested before, because it's not a real issue and is there to be sacrificed when real power issues come up.
They got 7.4% of the votes at the last election and 1.9% of the seats. Smaller parties like the green party do even worse.
By design.
Smaller parties... like the SNP? 7% of the seats from 4% of the vote. Seems to fly in the face of what everyone says about what is possible under FPTP. And what's more they've been effective in influencing what happens in parliament!
Here's the "law": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law
So you might think it's possible. But it's a case of in theory, in theory and in practice are the same, in practice, they ain't.
And that is what FPTP is designed for. To over-reward those at the top of the leaderboard. It's designed to not be representative.
It's actually not that different in practice There are a large range on views in both parties, but you put on the Democratic or Republican label in order to build a majority coalition. This is sort of like how the Westminster parliamentary system works: labor forms a government with the greens. Labor has more seats by far is and is mostly in charge, but the greens get some government positions and a little influence on the agenda of state.
As a recent example of this here Bernie Sanders was not at all a Democratic party member but "joined" with them to try and get enough support.
This is not an argument in favor of monopolies, however, because unions can extract more from a monopoly but so can capitalists, and it all comes at the expense of the consumer, which is also you. It's better to make $2 and spend $2 than to make $3 and then have to spend $4 just to get the same stuff.
Google and Apple are competing on selling phones, Google and Facebook are competing on selling ads, yet all sit on billions of dollars of cash. I don't see their workers being able to "extract" more from their companies?
Only "close enough" is required, not perfection. Sure, a union could negotiate a 1% raise without destroying most companies, but then they'd eat that amount in union dues and time value of doing paperwork etc. Meanwhile if they demand a 30% raise, that's more than the companies in a lot of industries could absorb.
> Google and Apple are competing on selling phones, Google and Facebook are competing on selling ads, yet all sit on billions of dollars of cash. I don't see their workers being able to "extract" more from their companies?
Are you not familiar with the level of compensation paid by these employers?
They are also hardly exemplars of competitive markets. Think restaurants or farmers.
Yet in 2013 they found the necessity in colluding in no-poach wage suppression.
> but then they'd eat that amount in union dues and time value of doing paperwork etc
Finland has several software engineer unions. They still seem to be rather competitive both nationally and internationally.
You find it unusual that companies in less competitive markets would collude? They're the only ones who can, because otherwise there are too many entities to coordinate. Yet another disadvantage of uncompetitive markets.
> Finland has several software engineer unions. They still seem to be rather competitive both nationally and internationally.
Finland has unions all over. They also have a different culture and different labor regulations. They're also not the first country that comes to mind as a place to hire software engineers.
I agree that it was simply easier to coordinate as a function of low number of agents in the game. But I doubt the convenience of it was the motivating factor.
> They're also not the first country that comes to mind as a place to hire software engineers.
They don’t come to mind for anything, because they are a very small country. Yet they have the ICT giant Nokia (which is not just the phones). Still with high unionization. In fact, after Nokia sold its mobile division to Microsoft, there has been an influx of ICT companies to Finland to capture the newly unemployed talent.
I take your point regarding culture and other contextual variables, but there is hardly an macroeconomic reality that makes unions unworkable as you generalized.
Well of course the motivation was to suppress wages so they could make more money. All companies have that incentive. Which is why that's illegal independent of unions -- it's an antitrust violation.
> I take your point regarding culture and other contextual variables, but there is hardly an macroeconomic reality that makes unions unworkable as you generalized.
Let's put it a different way though: Do union software engineers in Finland get paid more or less than non-union software engineers in San Francisco?
Because it's possible for a union to make its workers globally competitive by accepting lower wages to offset the cost of dealing with the union, but that's obviously not what we're after, right?
Meanwhile, again, introducing a monopoly increases the money that can be extracted from customers by labor but also by capital. So if you introduce a monopoly and it raises prices by $0.01 or $100 or whatever amount, and you're very lucky and labor gets 90% of the increase and capital only 10%, then on average workers have lost 10% of that amount. Because you still pay 100% of the price increase and then get less than 100% of it back.
There are also taxes, which make it even worse -- you get paid $1 more, the government takes 25%, you go to buy the thing that costs $1 more (so capital is getting 0% of the money) but then you owe 8% of the $1 in sales tax, and you've now lost a third of the money you used to have to Uncle Sam so they can give it to Bank of America and Halliburton.
What happens when you don't increase labor rates, but keep increasing prices anyways? Maybe this is less about increasing prices and more about capital needing to decrease their share.
Sounds like a good argument for universal basic income
Every so often someone suggests that software engineers should unionize. Maybe I'm too pessimistic, but I think that it would be the best thing that ever happened to Bangalore. I worry about all our jobs ending up in Bangalore eventually, I'm just hoping I can make it to retirement before that happens.
Look at actors, screenwriters, and musicians. These fine folk have been gig workers since before the term "gig workers" was coined. They belong to guilds, not unions, but the difference is semantic. There's no monopoly, and the industry is ticking along just fine.
There are tons of unions you've probably never heard of. TAs at your local university -- is your local university a monopoly? No. Costco isn't falling apart -- is it a monopoly? No, they compete with walmart, amazon, etc and show no signs of slowing down. Boeing -- awkward; bad management, not the union, is to blame for that downfall. Longshoremen -- no monopoly there, and no signs of business drying up. I could keep listing examples, but do you have data or just a hunch?
And if you go and unionize workers in an industry where the workers can't command that kind of premium, the next thing that happens is the company goes out of business or moves its operations to Mexico or similar, and then how are the unionized workers doing on the unemployment line?
The disparity between unionized and non-unionized workers in that industry is pretty high. You've got unionized workers starting at $35/h and upwards beyond $50/hour, with included benefits. I've seen non-unionized jobs advertised for as low as $14/h to start with the cap being $25-maybe $30 if you're lucky, without the benefits. The unionized job will also typically be limited to 40h/week.
There was no limit on the amount of hours I would have to work. I would regularly be expected to work 50-60 hour weeks, if I got sick, I kept working, if I hurt myself, I kept working, the level of work would always be beyond what the number of staff employed were physically capable of doing.
The way I see it, a lot of people fought over the decades so workers could have a reasonable standard of living while not having to endure ridiculous conditions. Unions were at the fore in the fight for this.
Businesses have shown time and time again that they're willing to pay as little for as much labour as possible. When it comes down to it, while workers are replaceable to an extent, they are what brings a business profit and to most businesses, they're valued among the least worthwhile of its assets. Unions force businesses to care about employees and though, I know this isn't really a crowd who can relate, but if you don't own a business and you are employed by someone, then unions have your best interests in mind.
They're probably some of the very few entities in this world that do.
That can in theory benefit the union workers, but it comes at the expense of the company's customers, which at scale are ultimately the workers again.
It's also generally not a stable equilibrium, because monopolies are bad and everybody hates them. At some point the government gets around to smacking them with the righteous hammer of antitrust, or the Japanese start making decent cars and disrupt the US auto conglomerates, the internet comes around and destroys your broadcast radio payola system, and then it all turns to rust.
> Businesses have shown time and time again that they're willing to pay as little for as much labour as possible.
Well yes of course. That's what they're supposed to do, so they can charge lower prices and get more customers.
And then what you're supposed to do as an employee is to take the job you like the most based on working conditions and compensation etc. So a company can offer you $25,000/year for 60 hour weeks and no benefits, but if some other company is offering $35,000/year for 60 hour weeks and no benefits then you take that, until the first company starts offering 40 hour weeks and paid sick leave.
A company's ability to underpay people is limited by the willingness of somebody to work for that amount of money. No is a powerful word.
This is also why you get rid of the need for so much of this with a UBI. Because it allows people say no, which requires employers to make better offers.
As long as the company pays its owners more than their lowest-paid employees, it can afford to pay their employees more, without going out of business.
There's plenty of profitable firms that can't just pack up and move to Mexico.
If the CEO makes a million dollars a year in a company with 100,000 empoyees, wiping out that entire salary would add less than $0.01/hour to each of the employees' wages. Also, then you would not have a CEO, which you might actually need sometimes.
The shareholders can't just hire a random janitor at a janitor's salary to be the CEO and expect to not lose more money to unqualified decisionmaking than they would've had to pay a real CEO.
Likewise, they can't just make zero profits forever, because otherwise they couldn't raise capital. If they're a new company they need that investment in order to buy land and build the factory etc. If they're an existing company then they still need that, or the shareholders would sell their shares and the only buyer would be a corporate raider who wants to tear down the factory for scrap and sell the land to a condo developer.
Salaries and profits are relative to the market average. Unless the company is paying its executives more than the average company, or making more profits than the average company, they don't really have a surplus they can give to the workers without becoming uncompetitive.
Plenty of profitable businesses can afford to pay employees more. The fact that they are profitable is testament to it. They choose not to, because their employees don't have enough leverage in the employee-employer relationship. Unions change that.
The fact that not unionizing was how they got the work to begin with. If they tried to do the same thing there, the company wouldn't have any reason not to move back, which the workers in the new place obviously don't want.
You would also run the risk in that case not that they outsource to Bangladesh but that they outsource to Europe, if the union started demanding things they didn't want to give. Or just let the union walk out and hire different workers.
That's the other reason unions don't really work outside of monopolies. If the company needs 100,000 workers and only 200,000 workers with that skillset exist in the world and the other 100,000 work for a competitor, you need the workers you already have. If the company needs 10,000 workers and a million workers with that skillset exist in the world, they can let you walk and hire other people. And in this case it's a real monopoly, not the soft stuff like Google and Facebook have -- Google doesn't have a lot of competition for search, but a random engineer from Facebook or Apple or Microsoft could still do most of the work they need to do, and vice versa.
That assumes everything that is of consideration is already priced into compensation, which is not. Wasn’t it several years ago one of them had its workers a walkout against sexual harassment, forced arbitration, manager retaliation etc?
> You would also run the risk in that case not that they outsource to Bangladesh but that they outsource to Europe
They would be in for a nasty surprise as Europe is more unionized that US.
> Or just let the union walk out and hire different workers
That assumes software engineers are fungible, which is not as much as it appears (at least there is a high cost to “funge” them en masse). Going to your manager with a competitor’s job offer is not an uncommon way to get a raise or promotion.
That doesn't mean it's not priced in. Companies with conditions like that still need to attract employees somehow. When they get a reputation like that they either have to fix it or provide more of something else to compensate for it. Markets don't require unions to function.
> They would be in for a nasty surprise as Europe is more unionized that US.
That's why they don't do it now. If there were more unions in the US, that's no longer a relative disadvantage for the company, which then is a problem for the US workers who just lost their advantage and thereby their jobs.
> That assumes software engineers are fungible, which is not as much as it appears (at least there is a high cost to “funge” them en masse). Going to your manager with a competitor’s job offer is not an uncommon way to get a raise or promotion.
Replacing software engineers isn't free. There is a transition cost. But the transition cost isn't infinite, and it acts as a hard cap on what the union could get out of the company. And from it you immediately have to extract all the overhead costs the company has to incur in dealing with the union to begin with. Which are often difficult to predict ahead of time, so companies may choose to cut their losses immediately rather than risk even higher costs later.
In case you are curious about my actual assumption; I think there are a lot of externalities that are not priced-in in the contract, which will naturally favor the more organized side, which happens to be capital than labor most of the time. I don't know if exploitation is necessarily the right adjective for every case, but I believe there is a large potential for asymmetry in untracked disutility an individual can get out a transaction with their employer.
"Then it could also mean that there hasn't been any working combination of capital and labor that didn't depend on labor being exploited."
Is it not your assumption because of the so-called weasel words "could mean"??
Maybe I’m being stupid but I don’t see how else this works out. Can you expand to help me understand what I’m missing?
They have plenty of power, not to force their companies to do what they want, but to vote with their feet and choose to work for companies that suit their preferences. A robust job market is much more empowering than collective bargaining. With a union you only get 1/10000th of a say in what your union does, whereas you have 100% autonomy over your personal employment choices.
The US can do the same, this doesn't have to be all-or-nothing at the Federal level.
US States are
1) far more powerful than Canadian Provinces, to the extent that anything not explicitly delegated to the Federal government by the Constitution is left to the States (10th Amendment)
2) nearly every single state in the US has a GDP per capita on par with whole European nation-states, which is more than enough to fund a single-payer system
So essentially, de jure States and Provinces are more or less equal in autonomy, but in practice Provinces have much more sovereignty.
The economies of scale that make public healthcare work require you to either control the market or a significant portion of it in order to strong arm the suppliers, A few US states such as California might be able to, but the Federal government would very likely interfere.
Besides Medicaid, the vast majority of State-administered services are paid for through State taxes — a combination of income, sales, and property taxes. The vast majority of Federal taxes go toward Medicare, Social Security, the US Military, and Medicaid — all of those comprise 80% of the Federal budget. Besides Medicaid, none of those other things are State-level programs.
> This means that the Federal government, if it disagrees with a decision of a State, can cripple it by withdrawing funding.
This only applies to Federal highway funding. The Federal government has little control over how States fund their public K-12 schools, public universities (for eg Georgia funds its University system by taxing the lottery), electricity, water, sewage, police departments, fire departments, local public transportation, or public libraries. Further, the Federal government recently cut taxes, making way for States to fill in the gap to further cement control over their own finances. In fact, there is nothing stopping States from increasing the marginal tax rate back to WW2 levels.
> So essentially, de jure States and Provinces are more or less equal in autonomy, but in practice Provinces have much more sovereignty.
Not sure how you think this. US States are arguably more sovereign than Canadian provinces. The States exert more control over the affairs of the Federal government through its equal representation in the Senate. While Canada also has a Senate, in reality, it's like the Queen in that it totally lacks democratic legitimacy and could not actually stop major legislation from the House of Commons without sparking a Constitutional crisis. The Senate basically can force the Commons to vote on amendments, but does not block the government's agenda. This is simply not the case in the US.
Every State has its own Constitution, Legislative Branch, Executive Branch, and a State judiciary that enforces its own Constitution. Most US States even have their own military[1]. Americans are Constitutionally citizens both of the Federal republic and of the state in which they reside.
> The economies of scale that make public healthcare work require you to either control the market or a significant portion of it in order to strong arm the suppliers, A few US states such as California might be able to, but the Federal government would very likely interfere.
Yes, and every state has the ability to do this. Pharma providers, Hospitals, and doctors would be forced to accept a State single payer insurance plan, or they would have to either leave the state or go out of business. A provider in Chicago isn’t competing for patients in Florida. Pharma companies that supply medicine and supplies can either decide to accept lower revenues in a State, or stop operating in the state. The resulting vacuum from doing so presents an opportunity for new Pharma entrants (perhaps even homegrown in those states).
During FY2019, the federal government awarded 9,989 grants, 181,947 contracts, and made 99,148 direct payments to people and organizations in Georgia. This includes $630M from the NIH, at least a billion dollars from the Department of Education, and about three billion more from the USDA. Some of this might happen anyway--the DoD is not going to stop buying stuff from Lockheed any time soon--but a lot of this could be cut off if a state decided to go its own way.
Meanwhile, in Canada, one province has decided to pick its own official language, rolled its own tax scheme, and spent five years trying to opt every law out of federal court via the "notwithstanding" clause (and then used it twice more anyway).
Grant numbers from:
- https://report.nih.gov/award/index.cfm?ot=&fy=2019&state=GA&...
- https://www.usaspending.gov/#/search/3b17d170c1cf87cac2f307d...
And for the sake of argument, let’s say that withholding funding from random institutions that happened to have branches situated in a particular state is an effectively targeted attack, the Georgia state budget is $48B, and there’s more than enough room for Georgia to raise its own taxes.
US States also have the ability to set their own languages, including Hawaii and Alaska. Every state has the ability to set its own tax scheme. Alaska has its own sovereign wealth fund.
"Get with the program, or we're moving the CDC/National Primate Center/etc to Rayleigh-Durham" would certainly get some state politicians moving. Not only is that a lot of money, but those are also good jobs and prestigious institutions. I agree that totally cutting off funding from an agency would be unlikely, but it's not totally unprecedented (55 mph speedlimit and raising the drinking age). And of course, there's the middle ground of changing priorities with a wink and a nudge.
As for language, no. A national language has been politically fractious in the US for decades. States do have them but they're all English, with some symbolic concessions to indigenous peoples' languages in a few states. Alaska's law, for instance, "does not require or place a duty or responsibility on the state or a municipal government to print a document or record or conduct a meeting, assembly, or other government activity in any language other than English." I doubt many people are renewing their drivers' licenses in Lakota or Hawaiian.... Compare this with Quebec, which requires that both official languages be used federally, and not only doesn't use one of them, but even has an office devoted to ensuring that the other isn't too prominent in provincial government or daily life.
Likewise, states certainly can set their own taxes and level of social services, but Quebec itself has tax and social service treaties with other countries. Quebec also runs a parallel immigration system (selection/admission) that again, has treaties with other, mostly francophone, countries. No state in the US does anything like this; in fact, it's explicitly forbidden by the Contracts Clause (Article 1, Section 10).
I'm struggling to examples where US States are stronger than the federal government or their Canadian counterparts. In theory, the 10th Amendment suggests that they could be, but US v. Sprague and Darby Lumber Company basically gutted that idea: the reserved powers clause "added nothing", "states but a truism", etc. In practice, the Commerce Clause and Supremacy Clause let the federal government do nearly anything.
Georgia budget figures from here: https://ballotpedia.org/Georgia_state_budget_and_finances)
Alaska language law: http://www.legis.state.ak.us/PDF/28/Bills/HB0216B.PDF
Quebec-France tax treaty: https://www.revenuquebec.ca/en/citizens/your-situation/new-r...
Quebec vs. Canada Immigration: https://www.immigration-quebec.gouv.qc.ca/en/immigrate-settl...
The Federal government has no right to rescind bonds to States, any more than they have the right to rescind bonds to foreign entities — the stability of US Treasury Bonds is predicated on the Federal government's reliability as a creditor. States also have the ability to issue bonds to pay for programs. Georgia enjoys a AAA rating, one of the highest credit ratings in the Union.
Also, we're just talking about Georgia here, the Federal "aid" as a %age of revenue varies from State to State.
Also the structural gridlock built into the Federal government swings both ways, and you need a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate too be able to do what you're proposing, for instance, decide to cut off Medicaid funding writ large, just to spite certain states. The minority rights baked into the Senate make it incredibly difficult for the Federal government to come down hard on any individual state, in the same way that it makes it difficult for the Federal government to pass laws even if we were able to eke out a simple majority support for that issue.
> "Get with the program, or we're moving the CDC/National Primate Center/etc to Rayleigh-Durham" would certainly get some state politicians moving. Not only is that a lot of money, but those are also good jobs and prestigious institutions. I agree that totally cutting off funding from an agency would be unlikely, but it's not totally unprecedented (55 mph speedlimit and raising the drinking age). And of course, there's the middle ground of changing priorities with a wink and a nudge.
First of all, as mentioned above the Federal government doesn't really have unchecked power to jsut decide to up-and-move the CDC. Second of all, you've given me such an example to demonstrate leverage over Georgia, specifically, but the Federal government has no such leverage over nearly every other State. The States most likely to spearhead a State-level single payer program are probably New York, California, Washington, and Illinois. The Federal government doesn't really have much over them.
> As for language, no. A national language has been politically fractious in the US for decades. States do have them but they're all English, with some symbolic concessions to indigenous peoples' languages in a few states. Alaska's law, for instance, "does not require or place a duty or responsibility on the state or a municipal government to print a document or record or conduct a meeting, assembly, or other government activity in any language other than English." I doubt many people are renewing their drivers' licenses in Lakota or Hawaiian.... Compare this with Quebec, which requires that both official languages be used federally, and not only doesn't use one of them, but even has an office devoted to ensuring that the other isn't too prominent in provincial government or daily life.
I'm not sure what you are arguing here. First of all, we're not talking about a "national language", we're talking about the structural authority for States to define their own language...and there is literally nothing stopping the State of Texas from adopting Esperanto as its State language, if that was something that a majority of its citizens wanted. It just so happens that the majority of citizens everywhere are fine with English, and don't want to change that. Comparing this with Quebec doesn't really prove a point, because you're just giving me an example of a Province that has chosen to exercise this authority. I'm arguing that the US States have the same authority, but simply choose not to exercise it because there isn't the same political will. And further, while Canada recognizes official languages Federally, the United States does not — there is no official Federal language — and it's because this is one of the many matters left to the States.
> Likewise, states certainly can set their own taxes and level of social services, but Quebec itself has tax and social service treaties with other countries. Quebec also runs a parallel immigration system (selection/admission) that again, has treaties with other, mostly francophone, countries. No state in the US does anything like this; in fact, it's explicitly forbidden by the Contracts Clause (Article 1, Section 10).
Sure, again not really relevant to State single payer. And also practically, US States also enter into agreements with foreign entities, one example: California has a cap-and-trade agreement with Quebec. Over the last half-century, states and cities have concluded hundreds to the thousands of agreements with foreign national and subnational governments on a wide range of topics, including trade, tourism, transportation, family issues, sister-sister relations, security, traffic regulation, the environment, and agriculture[1]. Anyway, none of this is really relevant to the discussion at hand — that the level of sovereignty granted to the US states is more than sufficient to enact their own healthcare systems.
> In theory, the 10th Amendment suggests that they could be, but US v. Sprague and Darby Lumber Company basically gutted that idea: the reserved powers clause "added nothing", "states but a truism", etc.
Not really sure how US v Sprague is relevant here, it pertained to the language behind the Article V ratification process. US v Darby Lumber merely state that the Federal government has the right to regulate employment contracts. There's no dispute there, my argument is that States share sovereignty with the Federal government, and States also have the right to regulate employment contracts.
> In practice, the Commerce Clause and Supremacy Clause let the federal government do nearly anything.
Yes, again, the Federal government is empowered to do anything. But so are the States! The Federal government is empowered to start a Federal university system, or a Federal public school system, or a Federal fire safety system, but that doesn't mean that States are prevented from doing those things. The argument here is that, absent the political will to do something at the Federal government, States are empowered to step up. That's what the rigid system of checks and balances with minority rights at the Federal level encourages.
> I'm struggling to examples where US States are stronger than the federal government or their Canadian counterparts.
There are many. Sanctuary laws are one such example. The current Federal government is trying to come down hard against States that have sanctuary laws, but it hasn't really had much luck. Marijuana legalization is another example, it is still technically criminalized at the Federal level, despite being legal in a growing handful of States. The Federal government is empowered to set emissions standards, but States are also empowered to do this, and may even set standards stricter than those of the Federal government, which is exactly what we see happening in California. Net neutrality is perhaps the most recent example, where the courts ruled that the FCC does NOT have the authority to preempt state net neutrality laws[2].
Also, taking a huge step back, we are talking about States deciding to enact their own Single Payer healthcare systems — there is practically no reason for the Federal government to ever withhold funding for anything over that (indeed, Republicans encourage it), the gridlock baked into the Federal government makes that practically difficult, and the States that are most likely to enact such systems are those that have already historically exercised disobedience against the Federal government — to the extent that exercising a State's constitutionally held right to pass their own healthcare laws can even be construed as "disobedient".
[1] https://eelp.law.harvard.edu/2019/11/californias-cap-and-tra...
[2] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/10/net-neutrality-s...
Where I disagree is that the states are generally on par with the federal government or their Canadian counterparts.
I gave some examples showing that this isn’t the case, legally (the upshot of those cases, if not the actual subject matter) or practically. The counterexamples you provided are’s compelling. In some cases the supporting facts are wrong (most of that $14B is not in bonds and the federal government can move agencies at will; in fact the USDA just shifted tons of people to Kansas). Others may be legally possible but are so politically implausible (Texas switching languages and dragging the federal government along). The Cap-and-Trade Agreement is on uncertain legal ground, even though cross-border part is comparatively weak. No argument that states do have powers, though sanctuary cities and marijuana legalization strike me more as selective enforcement/picking battles than actual reserved powers.
Personally, I would very much like better healthcare and action on climate change, but I think it’ll need national coordination and I’m skeptical that the states can force that, even if they can sometimes slow-walk proposals forcing them to do things themselves.
I mean, that's the whole point. If you can't even muster up the political will to do something at the state level, especially in deep-blue states, what hope is there of doing it at the Federal level? States need to prove that ideas work by actually trying them out and finding the right implementations.
> Where I disagree is that the states are generally on par with the federal government or their Canadian counterparts.
The argument is that States are on par with the Federal government and Canadian counterparts as it relates to healthcare policy and taxation, and I'm yet to hear a convincing argument to the contrary. Saskatchewan was able to enact single payer in 1947 despite being 1/20th the population of Canada at the time. Its ability to enter into relations with foreign governments or its political will to set a Provincial language is completely irrelevant to that.
> Others may be legally possible but are so politically implausible (Texas switching languages and dragging the federal government along).
The argument is about the structural right, not the political feasibility of it — and also nobody is arguing for dragging the Federal government along, even for healthcare.
Personally, I would actually like to see States try out different approaches to healthcare — Denmark-style single payer, Germany-style public/private hybrid, Switzerland-style individual mandate, Singapore-style HSA-driven care — so that we can have empirical data to prove which systems are superior.
New York has neither of these options.
They also aren't reliant on funding from the U.S. Federal Government, which is a big deal in this case.
> They also aren't reliant on funding from the U.S. Federal Government, which is a big deal in this case.
Besides Federal highway funding and Medicaid, neither is New York. New York's single payer system can be funded entirely through an increase in its own state tax rate — there's a lot of room to increase taxes back to WW2-levels, and a lot of room to raise the middle class tax-rate to Europe-levels.
https://www.washingtontechnology.org/
Should probably be more of these, cooperatives, and foundations that work on software to support bootstrapping.
It's not being talked about much because it is unpalatable to the pro-big-business arm of the Democrat establishment. And you cannot find a more pro-establishment candidate than Biden.
We'll get a chance to try again in four years.
Single payer means everyone has a health card entitling them to spend tax money on their own healthcare how they want (within certain parameters, of course). This means health insurance companies don't get to act as cartels, limiting (patient) access to care, and, crucially, limiting provider access to patients & patient dollars. If I want to see a doctor in Toronto, I don't go to the doctor "in my network", probably at a big practice that has some convoluted agreement (or not!) with my particular insurance provider. If I want to see a doctor in Toronto, I can basically go to any available doctor who is taking new patients.
Imagine literally everyone has a health-care budget to spend, regardless of how rich poor they are. Can you imagine the type of competition & innovation this creates for those health-care dollars? Pharmacists remember my name & ask whether the meds worked as expected, doctors will visit me at my house (this has been cut back by the latest provincial government), I can check wait times at drop-in clinics online & book an appointment, see a doctor same day, even within a couple hours. Try that in the USA without going to the ER, and even then I'd be surprised if you see a doc in less than a few hours.
I was amazed to see the competition and market innovation in healthcare in Canada when I arrived here. You might be amazed as well.
Either way, we pay a lot more for a very subpar health ecosystem compared to the rest of the world.
The argument for single-payer hinges on the theory that the profit motive is incompatible with the very idea of insurance (that is, as long as denying services is more profitable than providing them, an insurance market is an inefficient way to provide said services).
1) "Single payer" is not the only way to deliver universal healthcare. Germany, Switzerland, Netherlands, Singapore all have thriving multi-payer systems. In Switzerland and the Netherlands, ALL insurance is private. In Singapore, while the government covers catastrophic care, 70% of total health expenditures are private.
2) The biggest problem in the US is that healthcare is just more expensive, and American insurers end up having to pay more. An example: doctors in America earn more (PPP adjusted) than in any other country. MRI's in America cost more (even on the Medicare fee schedule) than almost any other country. A lot of this is actually caused by a series of well-intentioned policies passed over the last half century.
3) In the US, for-profit insurance profit margins are a pretty meagre 5%, which doesn't really make a dent in costs. Also, some of the biggest insurance providers are non-profits (Blue Cross Blue Shield, Kaiser)
4) Medicare fee schedules aren't that much better, in fact the part of Medicare that's actually working the best is Medicare Part C (Medicare Advantage), which relies on private payers.
Source: I work at a claims adjuster
Or if that's too ambitious, how about just knowing that insurance isn't going to deny coverage just because I went to the wrong clinic/hospital? Nevermind that if I've been in an accident I'm not exactly going to be able to choose where I go.
Yeah this is definitely a worthwhile policy solution. Universal catastrophic coverage would also be a pretty solid compromise, especially since that would essentially be "single payer" for financially ruinous treatments. Ambulance ride costs are indeed insane, and something that even municipal cities can (and should) operate for free just like fire departments.
> Or if that's too ambitious, how about just knowing that insurance isn't going to deny coverage just because I went to the wrong clinic/hospital? Nevermind that if I've been in an accident I'm not exactly going to be able to choose where I go.
Yup, also a great solution. I work at a claims processor and have processed claims myself — the current system is asinine. Simply ensuring that all providers charge the same rate to all patients, and for that charge to be transparent upfront can probably go a long way to improving the status quo.
Additionally, providers themselves are starting to charge out-of-network rates that are LOWER than Medicare fee schedules. For example, Wal-Mart has launched healthcare in Georgia, charging $25 for a cleaning[1], which is significantly lower than the amount for a cleaning (procedure code D1110) set by Medicare/Medicaid. You can look it up yourself by visiting the FAIR Health code lookup tool (https://www.fairhealthconsumer.org/dental/results), and setting the ZIP code to that of Carlton, GA (location of the Wal-Mart clinic), 30627. The average allowed amount is $64.
Finally, the US government has historically been pretty bad at setting prices, as a monopsony buyer. The US military spends more per capita on the military largely because it pays more per-soldier, per-fighter jet, etc than any other nation on the planet. You would think that, as the sole buyer of US defense sector fighter jets, it could negotiate better rates. The F-35 is expected to cost $1.5 trillion (!!) over its lifetime, and the US enjooys monopoly/legislative powers over that cost.
Another example: NASA's planned SLS moon mission is a bit of a disaster — way over budget and way behind schedule. Because the boosters aren't reusable, each launch is expected to cost $1B (with a B) dollars — EACH launch! Meanwhile SpaceX's target cost-per-launch is $50M.
So while you're right that, in theory, a monopsony can extract the lowest possible price, there's absolutely no guarantee of this, indeed American empirical evidence has at times proven otherwise.
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-02-25/walmart-t...
I can tell you ALL about M4A vs private insurance, I currently work at a claims adjuster, and adjust claims myself.
I've done gig work for a few years now. I am pro gig work and I think it can be a good deal for the worker even though it currently has a terrible reputation as being a raw deal for the worker. I'm happy to see that the pandemic is fostering development of this sort in this area.
The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers. -- Princess Leia
I think we just need to work out what is a reasonable rate and the expectation that gig work should be a means to make a living wage for people who do it and not just for some sliver of the people who do it, but for most people who do it. I'm okay with there being a learning curve and yadda, but it shouldn't be a situation where only some really tiny fraction of people have any hope of making it and then they have to live in terror of the rules changing overnight on them and killing their livelihood.
Part of the value of labor movements is just setting the expectations for both sides that "You need to pay X amount for this." A lot of stuff we do is basically culturally determined and labor movements help shape culture and cultural expectations and so forth.
So I don't think details like that are necessarily important. Sometimes they are, but sometimes they aren't. And sometimes they can be a real threat but don't have to be if you have your priorities straight.
I don't care how we get there, I just would like to see gig work become something with a reputation as legitimate work that should reasonably support you if you meet some reasonable standard of quality and put in some reasonable number of hours. I think we need to ditch this idea that gig work is simply slave labor and is unfixable and needs to be converted to regular employment because that's the model we are familiar with and know how to package up in a way that works reasonably well for both sides.
So the tricky bit will be that if the caliber of workers in your guild (or whatever you wish to call it) is below average, then you have to make it up in volume.
If it's high, then you will get a feedback loop.
Is there any reason why an OSS Uber competitor wouldn't be tractable? Drivers and passengers can pay a small booking fee which would go towards maintaining server costs. Client app can be really bare bones and I believe people would be willing to use it if it's way cheaper. So many scammy people talking about decentralized computing but this seems like a low hanging fruit which gives gig workers their autonomy back.
Same question for all gig worker apps.
My answer is this: Respectfully, if you think creating & running a platform like DoorDash is not that complicated, I say knock yourself out. Show us the low-fee, "non-exploitative", reliable, "OSS" solution. There's even white-label delivery platforms[1] (you bring your own fleet) that could get you started dispatching orders right away. To be honest I'm not sure what you mean by "OSS" here as the issue is not proprietary software but the digital and physical infrastructure, payment processing, fraud prevention, merchant recruitment etc. as well as the very large support staff.
I would love to see better and better solutions to the "convenient, cheap, fair-to-couriers, fair-to-restaurants food delivery challenge." I think you'll find it's a more difficult problem than it seems at first blush.
1: https://onfleet.com for example
i'd love to organize/contribute to something like this, but it has some serious hurdles to think through.
>who handles crimes like assault or theft between the various parties? who sets up payments and issues refunds?
Lawyers. You're going to need a lot of lawyers.
> who handles crimes like assault or theft between the various parties?
If it's P2P, then the same as any other P2P transaction. If I pay a random dude to deliver my lunch, and he assaults me, this is handled by the local police. It's a risk I'm willing to take if I choose to trust him. A distributed trust system w/ reviews will help make things safer.
I feel like sometimes we seek 100% safety in a world where that's not possible, and when it DOES happen we point fingers. With a middleman like Uber we can point fingers more easily, but ultimately we're responsible for ourselves.
> who sets up payments and issues refunds?
There are public escrow services such as escrow.com that could be integrated. And there's always cryptocurrency.
totally agree that the world is full of risks and sometimes we just have to accept them.
escrow in some form would likely be necessary, but the fees of escrow.com are prohibitive for this use case.
instead of pricing being controlled by the marketplace, it'd be cool if it were more like a trading platform where riders bid for rides and drivers offer rides (with considerations for starting point, distance, and trip time).
Best of luck on your OSS endevor.
Not to say that this CANNOT be done in a decentralized, OSS way — but it's not just a CRUD app.
It's surprising to read anything semi pro-worker coming from the economist, which run far more articles against unions and worker rights than giving a fair analysis.