Hacker News Reader

Comment by pembrook | Hacker News Reader

So you're suggesting...the solution is to raise prices, and then transfer the added cost to drivers to give them benefits?

I actually know of a system by which you could do that on a grand scale...for every single worker in America. Not just rideshare drivers!

It's a concept commonly found in a far away continent most Americans have only dreamed of one day traveling to, called "Europe." How it works is simple. You raise prices throughout the entire economy via taxation, and then redistribute that money back to the less fortunate via a government provided healthcare program.

...And here's the best part, studies show it ends up lowering the price of healthcare for everybody. I wonder if something like that might be a better use of our time than trying to put Lyft out of business?

View on HN

This may be poe's law at work, but it's pretty disingenuous to have the conversation in this fashion. Of _course_ it would be better to raise taxes and have a universal basic income and free healthcare. That's because the ultimate problem here isn't taxes or taxis or lyft or uber, it's capitalism.

However, given the system under analysis, because corporations have a history of making it very difficult for labor to be paid a fair and living wage, it falls to the government to use the tools at its disposal to ensure (as much as possible) that employees are paid fairly and have an opportunity to spend that pay on health insurance, because corporations won't be volunteering to do that, especially if they're already burning in excess of a billion dollars a year.

Healthcare I agree with, universal basic income I don't agree with. Healthcare should be a human right but giving everyone $X a month doesn't make much sense as it doesn't promote self reliance. I have no problem helping those who can't help themselves but healthy adults really should take on some responsibility.

And why do you believe that it's important to force self-reliance onto a society that is already ultraproductive by any comparison through history? Why does it have to be punitive instead of inspirational to be self-reliant?

Because it sounds very unnatural for a social animal such as us humans to try to be completely self-reliant... We depend on others, we always have been and we probably always will, so leverage that instead of striving for some weird artificial sense of independence.

The American system is equal opportunity not equal outcomes. The latter is the euro model. Both parts of the world often underperform the stated value/goal and we American's have some work to do here. Without throwing capitalism out it would not kill to restore the pendulum back to the middle. US corporations under the rubric of maximizing shareholder value + DC support for tax accounting + liberal accommodation for globalism has given the powerful too much of a structural bias. And def not talking solutions ala Trump here. In this way universal or basic income is a no go here.

As someone who was born in the UK and lived until the age of nearly 30 in Australia, I'd be entirely inclined to agree with you.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com