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Comment by ktal | Hacker News Reader

The root cause of all of this is the abysmal safety net in the US. If vitally important things like healthcare, unemployment and disability weren't tied to your employment, then there wouldn't be an issue in the first place because companies couldn't weasel their way out of paying for it by calling employees "contractors".

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This. 100% this. The real thing we should be championing isn't forcing companies like Uber to pay for healthcare because health care is so important.

If healthcare is so important, which it is, our taxes should be paying for it, yes, even (edit: for) the people that don't have work.

Until that safety net exists, it's important that people are provided with health insurance by whatever means are necessary and available. Right now, the system is set up such that health insurance is provided though employers.

Champion the safety net, but also recognize that people need healthcare right now.

> Right now, the system is set up such that health insurance is provided though employers.

Anyone who's self employed (like contractors) already purchases their own health insurance directly.

Or, doesn’t.

There is nothing stopping California from increasing corporate taxes and providing health care to everyone in the state.

Why go through the Rube Golberg solution?

As byzantine as it is, it's more comfortable and familiar than adopting a new unknown system.

So let’s pass more laws that make it more difficult for freelancers, independent truck drivers, etc to earn money as they wish.

Jason Snell for instance was the editor in chief of MacWorld. He was laid off and decided to go full time with his blog, podcasts, etc.

He also wanted to do freelance writing. Now, it’s harder for him to do freelancing because of California laws.

States have much less power to tax than the federal government. Something as big as healthcare funding reform is very difficult to do at the state level.

States can tax income in their own state even corporate tax.

So if Americans are mostly agreeing with it, they should vote for politicians working on this issue. We'll see how it goes this election season.

This isn't about healthcare. Part time employees don't receive it; instacard doesn't provide healthcare to their shoppers as it caps hours at 30 (http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-biz-instacart-shop...).

It's just workers comp and minimum wage.

The key phrase you failed to comprehend was "root cause" two posts up. That's where it was asserted that it is about healthcare. Your comment is therefore out of context.

What's happening in California is exactly what critics of the law said would happen. I don't find arguments that problems created by government can only be fixed by more government to be very persuasive.

Besides, why can't consenting adults simply agree to whatever employment relationships they want?

Because some consenting adults have a lot more power than other consenting adults, and that results in exploitation that we shouldn't abide in a moral, modern country. A huge international corporation versus an individual who will be homeless if they can't come up with a few hundred bucks for rent soon - do you think the negotiation between them would be reasonable?

In what world do some consenting adults not have more power than other consenting adults? Indeed, skills, circumstance, and capital all provide leverage. But consent, the most important factor in all this, is still necessary.

You support the effort, instead, to insert government in such a way to remove consent. Somehow things will be more fair if people have less liberty.

People don’t need do-gooders, bureaucrats, and legislators making every decision for them. Leave people alone to earn a living as they please.

One additional note - a great way for someone to come up with a few hundred bucks for rent soon is to be able to do a bit of ad-hoc contract work. But nope, that's against the law now.

I suspect that the California legislators would agree however they don't feel CA can solve that problem on it's own (due to budget, tax requirements, etc, etc). So they went with the best solution that they could realistically enact. Needless to say, working with your hands tied and blindfolded doesn't lead to great outcomes.

If the richest state in the union with some of the highest taxes in the union can't afford universal healthcare, who can?

The Federal government spends twice as much per person as California so presumably they're in a much better position to afford it.

Why are taxes so high there?

California's budget per person is the 22nd highest among states so it's not like they rake in so much money versus other states. I'm guessing their abysmal property tax law forces them to get tax revenue in other more visible to everyone ways.

They're not, when you consider their very low revenue from property taxes. However, I think it's pretty likely that many people on HN don't own property.

On average, property tax rates are low but property values are very high so it's a wash. They still pull in a lot more per house than many states. Meanwhile California has the highest state income tax rate, with 13.3 percent in the top bracket. Some states have no income tax.

I think people in states like Hawaii and Connecticut might end up being taxed higher overall, but California is certainly near the top of the bunch, not the bottom.

And they are slowly covering more and more of the population with medi-cal. Presumably they want to eliminate the gig economy to make it easier to keep extending it.

Taxes are ridiculously high in California, and amongst the highest in the country. Sales and income taxes more than make up for any savings in property taxes, and now with the SALT deduction changes, it's even worse in CA.

There's just a lot of low-income people here who don't pay taxes which skews the result.

I think it could be within the budget, especially considering how much is currently spent by employers, which could be turned into a tax and funneled into "California health care". The bigger issues would be negotiating with medical providers, the hospital systems and multiple levels of US medical bureaucracy. Even then, for example medicare/medicaid, look how much fraud if often found around over paying / unnecessary procedures etc. In my opinion, because of how much traction and jobs exist at multiple levels of pharma to insurance to medicine in the US, I almost think it's an intractable problem, but I wish it wasn't.

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