Or, "Gig economy is the natural evolution of free markets".
With the Internet, now I can find the best logo designer in the world, rather than within 30min driving distance. When the supply of labor goes up, prices go down.
I'm sure just the top X% of gig workers reap the most rewards in the gig economy, but it's a free market situation and if they weren't being rewarded enough they'd raise their rates or stop working. That doesn't seem to be the case though.
Still does not mean that you as a civilian (i.e. you don't work for WPP or similar agencies ) can get this generations Saul Bass to work for you for tuppence ha'penny.
> When the supply of labor goes up, prices go down.
When labor protections go down, prices go down. Remember, the cheapest person to do most of the physical, low-skilled work you want doing is still a child.
The problem is that the rest of the economy is not catching up to the new economic reality , largely because those older generations are too invested in heavy taxation / large penseions / welfare / expensive housing etc. I 'm mainly talking about Europe
I don't think it's as much a generational issue vs. a haves vs. have-nots issue. It's just more likely that younger folks fall into the have-nots category and thus gives the appearance of a generational issue. To wit, I can provide lots of anecdotes of Baby Boomers and Gen Xers suffering in this economy in the same manner as the Millenials described in this article. What they have in common is their (lack) of economic power. You should acquaint yourself with the term "monopsony" and how it relates to a labor market.
The fact that the content of the story implies strongly that the author is well aware of this makes me wonder if the editor exerted a bit of pressure on him to change the title.
I wonder if advertisers like seeing the word 'millenial' in the title of stories.
> I wonder if advertisers like seeing the word 'millennial' in the title of stories.
Yes, they certainly do.
> The Importance of Millennials to Brands
> In the U.S. alone there are about 80 million millennials, making them larger than any other demographic in the country. There are also more Millennials in the workforce than other generations, with an expected $1.4 trillion in disposable income by the year 2020.
> There hasn't been such a fixation on marketing to a specific generation since the baby boomers, and so many consumers outside of this demographic are left wondering why they're being ignored.
Source: Why Are Marketers So Obsessed With Millennials? https://outline.com/Ybsrdv [ad clutted-free link]
When a city or a people succumb to the gig economy, they reduce the protection set up by the state to keep people either employed and well feed or unemployed and taken care of by the state. Conveniently, gig workers are no longer counted against the unemployment numbers because they are no longer looking for work, so the state looks great and their currency rises.
Cities across the world have been turning a blind eye on Uber/Lyft and their traditional taxi drivers are suffering. Cities are turning a blind eye on Airbnb/VRBO and their tax payers are suffering. This is just the beginning as delivery services are becoming gig-iffied and so are other business models.
Soon, some semblance of job security and minimum wage will be laughable qualities only attributed to state employees the same way we treat pension funds today.
Prohibiting the third zone (partially taken care of by work and partially by the state) is deadweight loss, leading to both less tax revenue and greater need for subsidy. Full welfare dependence is not economically or morally superior to halfway in, halfway out. Designing the welfare and labor protection systems based on this belief leads to all kinds of binary cliffs and thresholds that discourage or punish incrementally improving one’s station.
Heaping obligations onto full time work relationships, for example, just encourages employers to keep anyone from getting too many hours. Needing to assemble multiple part time jobs with unpredictable schedules leaves low-income workers worse off than before.
You can’t legislate benefits into existence without also funding them. There’s this seductive idea that you can extract more from capitalists by setting high minimum standards for allowable transactions (see: “affordable housing”) and they continue to disprove it by just walking away from the transactions instead.
I would argue that full welfare, depending on how its used or what it provides, is either a blessing or a curse. I Canada, a person can return to a vocational school full time while being on welfare to improve their standing in life. If that same person is unable to better their standing through government services, they have two choices: the black market and the gig economy. Here, the gig economy is a benefit but, the way it's being done now, it's a stand in for regular business. So we're sacrificing regulated, decent paying jobs with unregulated, poorly paying jobs.
Is it a stand in? My understanding is that there are vastly more workers in the gig economy than the “disrupted” industries previously employed. Seems like a classic case of concentrated downside, diffuse upside, similar to free trade.
The existence of the gig economy shouldn’t prevent someone from choosing to be fully welfare dependent for i.e. retraining, if welfare is good enough.
If you read that and you will quickly realize that most of the changes have been to ignore large portions of the unemployed population. Essentially, if you become unemployed, you are counted starting when you are 1 month unemployed (not from the day you lose your job) and you stop being counted in the 7th-8th month of your unemployment (depending on a few factors, can be up to 12 months).
So the vast majority of drop in unemployment rate is government lying. Gig economy actually increases the unemployment rate.
Why ? Because it enables the long term unemployed to be employed for a short while, then "lose the job" for valid reasons (ie. lack of demand), and then get unemployment benefits again for 8 months. I'm convinced many unemployed have realized this, and use it. This enables them to not lose benefits and as a side effects reintroduces them to the stats. But the vast majority of the time, they're unemployed. And some periods of the year, e.g. Christmas, it's easy to pull of.
You've linked to info about unemployment benefit and you are pretending that rules about eligibility for those benefits have something to do with the unemployment rate. But, that's completely wrong.
See, e.g., https://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm – particularly the second question, which addresses directly the mistake underlying your entire post.
> If the spirit of the post was a critique on the Gubment's official unemployment rate, I'd say the post was on point
Since every single claim it makes about the method in which things contribute to the official unemployment rate is false (because it is based on rules for qualifying for unemployment benefits that are irrelevant to being counted as unemployed in the unemployment rate), I can't see any reasonable way it can be described as an “on point” critique.
It’s conclusionay align with a belief that you bring with you from elsewhere, but that doesn't make it a good argument for that conclusion, irrespective of whatever merit that conclusion has separate from the actual argument offered in the post.
Thanks for that link with the very detailed explanation. That's really informative, even though it's pretty in line with what is reported on financial websites.
So this does not improve my opinion on the government's falsification at all. Especially how the numbers have changed over the years is telling (see later).
Even discounting changing the reporting, it seems extremely unfair in a number of ways, for instance how part-time work is counted (anyone who made or did something attempting to make 1$ in the past week is employed. Worked 2h babysitting ? You're employed)
(especially this affects a LARGE number of workers)
To make matters worse, anyone "temporarily unemployed" is considered employed. For instance, if you're a freelance construction worker that didn't do anything for a month, you're employed.
Anyone employed by a bankrupt business is employed, despite of course very likely neither working nor getting paid.
Furthermore they demand active job search methods only. So anyone who's passed by every employer in their town ... is not unemployed from that point forward.
This is, of course, bullshit. Reality is that anyone who wants a job but doesn't have one is unemployed. Anybody forced to work less than they want to is partially unemployed (this is a large number of people). This is not measured at all.
And the changes in methodology are the really telling part. An example:
> Up until the Clinton administration, a discouraged worker was one who was willing, able and ready to work but had given up looking because there were no jobs to be had. The Clinton administration dismissed to the non-reporting netherworld about five million discouraged workers who had been so categorized for more than a year. As of July 2004, the less-than-a-year discouraged workers total 504,000. Adding in the netherworld takes the unemployment rate up to about 12.5%.
One might wonder, was the purpose of the government's changes to increase accuracy, or was it to falsify the number ? Well one can easily distinguish between these 2 goals.
If the goal was increased accuracy, then the BLS would have been instructed to adjust it's historical time series, at least in estimation, so that comparisons would be fair.
If the goal was falsification, then numbers from the old and new methodology would be reported, with no or hidden references to the changed methodology.
The situation is that the latter is what was done [1]. The difference in methods is downplayed to an extreme degree, clearly indicating that falsification was the goal.
The Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations all changed the methodology of counting the numbers, and especially Obama, but also Clinton are guilty of claiming what are very clearly statistical artifacts from changing the methodology as accomplishments of their administrations.
I think part of the issue is how much income is derived from “gigs.” I know a few friends (comically all genx, not millennial) who drive for uber, do thumbtack jobs, fiver, stuff like that. They have full time jobs and do this on the side. I don’t know what percent of income, but they are happy as it’s extra income.
If they’re driving for Lyft or Uber in the UberX/Standard Lyft category, they are arithmetically challenged. Or perhaps in a new market where the economics are “throw money at anyone who will drive”.
In an established market, the economics of driving for Lyft turn out to be worse than minimum wage, and and continued participation is reinforced by magical thinking about hitting that jackpot - Prime Time.
I live in a top 10 city. I get about 50-75 cents per mile net before bonuses and whatnot. Now if you look it at a straight business this is terrible as the standard mile deduction is 53.5 cents per mile. So sometimes you technically lost money just by driving.
However, my car payment is fixed. I didn’t buy a new car for Uber. My marginal costs are quite low at about 5 cents/mile in gas and 12 cents/mile in extra wear and tear. My insurance difference is negligible because I don’t drive that much.
So I have coats of 20 cents and make between 30 and 55 cents per mile. This is especially good for taxes as I get to deduct 53.5 cents per mile even though my costs are much lower. So I net about $10/hour after expenses and taxes. That’s not bad for an extra 10-20 hours per week whenever I feel like it.
My arithmetic is certainly different than others as there’s lots of variables, but certainly not challenged with my math.
I think different people just value their time more. But having the option to make $10 whenever I have free time is better than watching tv or whatnot.
Your car payment is fixed, but you are likely to need to replace the car X months/years sooner if you put miles on it more rapidly. So the question isn't whether you need to spend extra on your current car because of Uber, its whether you'll need to spend more on future cars (i.e. buy one sooner)
That’s the 12 cents per mile in depreciation. This is maintenance, warranty costs, earlier wear out, etc. So far this hasn’t resulted in any real costs, just depreciation from the miles so it’s getting saved away for exactly my next car.
It’s odd how many people I have to go through this math with. I guess people can’t break out the different expenses. Again, cars vary so if you have a high cost car rather than Prius it will be harder.
It can theoretically be less than minimum wage, but even so. There’s no minimum wage that lets me work between 0-20 hours a week and take off as many days as I want, whenever I want.
That’s why it’s cool for part time. But using it as your primary income is much different. But I’d rather do it than work retail.
I think my original comment wasn’t clear enough. My car depreciated at 12 cents / mile. This includes depreciation and maintenance. I described it as “wear and tear” but three didn’t people didn’t understand so I need to explain better.
So, less than minimum wage when the time for the big repairs comes. Clutch / transmission / brakes / struts. Perhaps batteries if you’re in a hybrid. And let’s not forget that accident, not your fault of course, that is much more likely with the increased mileage. And don’t forget to factor in that underinsured driver who hits you.
Your scenarios are all built into my cost model. And since I don’t realize the depreciation until I sell the car or fix a clutch/battery/whatever so far it’s just piled into a saving account getting ready.
$10 could be less than minimum wage in a few areas, but for most of the country, and my area it’s a few bucks higher.
When I was a youth almost all my peers had jobs which paid less than a "living wage" or were going to college (or, commonly, both). Just the way life works unfortunately...
One issue is that the "new" left just can't get over open borders. It is in fact a major point of friction between traditional socialists and the more modern ones. The problem with that is as the article describes:
> Young workers must accept that our fate relies on our co-operation. If I accept an unpaid internship, I have undercut my generation. I have not only devalued my labour but that of my peers too. I am complicit in the denigration of my generation.
This same issue applies, as can be easily observed in any large city, to immigrants.
Having a fair labour market is fundamentally incompatible with free movement of goods (meaning we need to heavily tax your ipad if we are to have more equality) and with the free movement of labour (meaning equality and open borders are fundamentally incompatible ).
one might say, but not if we have worldwide socialism. That is right to an extent, but that effectively means that long as there are a few exploitative states we can't have socialism and fair labour markets anywhere else.
Needless to say, there is lots of propaganda about how it's "racist" to be opposed to large scale people movement, even though the economic reason for it is obvious in any large city : to enable the economic exploitation of the weak by the powerful.
I'm just hoping that at some point we can accept that "I want closed borders to improve labour conditions" will be recognized as obviously the non-racist opinion (and open borders, since it's real effect is exploitation of "the other", recognized as the racist option)
> One issue is that the "new" left just can't get over open borders. It is in fact a major point of friction between traditional socialists and the more modern ones
(1) Internationalism over nationalism is old socialism; if anything.
(2) I've seen very few leftists (new or traditional) who supported “open borders” as a short-term policy in any modern advanced country; I've seen many who support reforms of immigration rules (e.g., in the US, aligning slotd within existig overall quotas better with demand by removing or altering per country limits as a means of reducing the incentive for illegal immigration)—or simply opposed adding additional restrictions—with those positions attacked by the nativist right as “open borders”, but very little actual support for anything like actual open borders.
I feel like you're misrepresenting things on both counts.
About (1) I would say that internationalism in the old socialism is not AT ALL about open borders. Rather it is about causing socialist revolutions within every country. The movement should cross borders, not people and certainly not goods. In fact, I believe they are against international trade except where absolutely necessary.
About (2) I can only say that I have. It has come to the point that you cannot say in leftist company even basic things like "illegal immigrants should not be allowed to remain". Talking about "immigration must be limited strictly to below the point where it destroys the labour market" is likely to get you banned. Is your experience different ?
> Talking about "immigration must be limited strictly to below the point where it destroys the labour market" is likely to get you banned. Is your experience different ?
My experience is that leftists generally have no ideological problem with efforts to restrict the overall level of immigration (I've seen several arguments that the current system of hard quotas and tossing money at enforcement aren't a cost-effective means of doing that, but that's a different issue), and, speaking of the US, in particular often favor more sharply limiting (or even abolishing) employment-based immigration (including non-immigrant programs like the H-1B.) They tend to prefer loosening existing numerical restrictions on family reunification immigration.
I've not seen any significant support for genuinely open borders, and I myself am the only even left-leaning (I won't call myself a leftist) person I've encountered who proposed any (though limited—based on fees rather than quotas) legal immigration outside of existing preference categories.
The kind of oversimplifying statements you suggest which treat immigration as a whole and the sole concern in immigration policy being the market effects on wage labor are something that I can see being unwelcome on the left, whether old or new, but not because either favors open borders.
33 comments
[ 1.1 ms ] story [ 71.7 ms ] threadWith the Internet, now I can find the best logo designer in the world, rather than within 30min driving distance. When the supply of labor goes up, prices go down.
I'm sure just the top X% of gig workers reap the most rewards in the gig economy, but it's a free market situation and if they weren't being rewarded enough they'd raise their rates or stop working. That doesn't seem to be the case though.
When labor protections go down, prices go down. Remember, the cheapest person to do most of the physical, low-skilled work you want doing is still a child.
I wonder if advertisers like seeing the word 'millenial' in the title of stories.
Yes, they certainly do.
> The Importance of Millennials to Brands
> In the U.S. alone there are about 80 million millennials, making them larger than any other demographic in the country. There are also more Millennials in the workforce than other generations, with an expected $1.4 trillion in disposable income by the year 2020.
> There hasn't been such a fixation on marketing to a specific generation since the baby boomers, and so many consumers outside of this demographic are left wondering why they're being ignored.
Source: Why Are Marketers So Obsessed With Millennials? https://outline.com/Ybsrdv [ad clutted-free link]
Don't want to do it? Then don't work like that.
Want something better? Start your own business.
It's that simple.
Cities across the world have been turning a blind eye on Uber/Lyft and their traditional taxi drivers are suffering. Cities are turning a blind eye on Airbnb/VRBO and their tax payers are suffering. This is just the beginning as delivery services are becoming gig-iffied and so are other business models.
Soon, some semblance of job security and minimum wage will be laughable qualities only attributed to state employees the same way we treat pension funds today.
Heaping obligations onto full time work relationships, for example, just encourages employers to keep anyone from getting too many hours. Needing to assemble multiple part time jobs with unpredictable schedules leaves low-income workers worse off than before.
You can’t legislate benefits into existence without also funding them. There’s this seductive idea that you can extract more from capitalists by setting high minimum standards for allowable transactions (see: “affordable housing”) and they continue to disprove it by just walking away from the transactions instead.
The existence of the gig economy shouldn’t prevent someone from choosing to be fully welfare dependent for i.e. retraining, if welfare is good enough.
If you read that and you will quickly realize that most of the changes have been to ignore large portions of the unemployed population. Essentially, if you become unemployed, you are counted starting when you are 1 month unemployed (not from the day you lose your job) and you stop being counted in the 7th-8th month of your unemployment (depending on a few factors, can be up to 12 months).
So the vast majority of drop in unemployment rate is government lying. Gig economy actually increases the unemployment rate.
Why ? Because it enables the long term unemployed to be employed for a short while, then "lose the job" for valid reasons (ie. lack of demand), and then get unemployment benefits again for 8 months. I'm convinced many unemployed have realized this, and use it. This enables them to not lose benefits and as a side effects reintroduces them to the stats. But the vast majority of the time, they're unemployed. And some periods of the year, e.g. Christmas, it's easy to pull of.
See, e.g., https://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm – particularly the second question, which addresses directly the mistake underlying your entire post.
If the spirit of the post was a critique on the Gubment's official unemployment rate, I'd say the post was on point.
Since every single claim it makes about the method in which things contribute to the official unemployment rate is false (because it is based on rules for qualifying for unemployment benefits that are irrelevant to being counted as unemployed in the unemployment rate), I can't see any reasonable way it can be described as an “on point” critique.
It’s conclusionay align with a belief that you bring with you from elsewhere, but that doesn't make it a good argument for that conclusion, irrespective of whatever merit that conclusion has separate from the actual argument offered in the post.
So this does not improve my opinion on the government's falsification at all. Especially how the numbers have changed over the years is telling (see later).
Even discounting changing the reporting, it seems extremely unfair in a number of ways, for instance how part-time work is counted (anyone who made or did something attempting to make 1$ in the past week is employed. Worked 2h babysitting ? You're employed)
(especially this affects a LARGE number of workers)
To make matters worse, anyone "temporarily unemployed" is considered employed. For instance, if you're a freelance construction worker that didn't do anything for a month, you're employed.
Anyone employed by a bankrupt business is employed, despite of course very likely neither working nor getting paid.
Furthermore they demand active job search methods only. So anyone who's passed by every employer in their town ... is not unemployed from that point forward.
This is, of course, bullshit. Reality is that anyone who wants a job but doesn't have one is unemployed. Anybody forced to work less than they want to is partially unemployed (this is a large number of people). This is not measured at all.
And the changes in methodology are the really telling part. An example:
> Up until the Clinton administration, a discouraged worker was one who was willing, able and ready to work but had given up looking because there were no jobs to be had. The Clinton administration dismissed to the non-reporting netherworld about five million discouraged workers who had been so categorized for more than a year. As of July 2004, the less-than-a-year discouraged workers total 504,000. Adding in the netherworld takes the unemployment rate up to about 12.5%.
One might wonder, was the purpose of the government's changes to increase accuracy, or was it to falsify the number ? Well one can easily distinguish between these 2 goals.
If the goal was increased accuracy, then the BLS would have been instructed to adjust it's historical time series, at least in estimation, so that comparisons would be fair.
If the goal was falsification, then numbers from the old and new methodology would be reported, with no or hidden references to the changed methodology.
The situation is that the latter is what was done [1]. The difference in methods is downplayed to an extreme degree, clearly indicating that falsification was the goal.
The Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations all changed the methodology of counting the numbers, and especially Obama, but also Clinton are guilty of claiming what are very clearly statistical artifacts from changing the methodology as accomplishments of their administrations.
[1] https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2017/u-3-unemployment-rate-was-... <- zero mention of methodology changes
This is very different than full time giggers.
In an established market, the economics of driving for Lyft turn out to be worse than minimum wage, and and continued participation is reinforced by magical thinking about hitting that jackpot - Prime Time.
However, my car payment is fixed. I didn’t buy a new car for Uber. My marginal costs are quite low at about 5 cents/mile in gas and 12 cents/mile in extra wear and tear. My insurance difference is negligible because I don’t drive that much.
So I have coats of 20 cents and make between 30 and 55 cents per mile. This is especially good for taxes as I get to deduct 53.5 cents per mile even though my costs are much lower. So I net about $10/hour after expenses and taxes. That’s not bad for an extra 10-20 hours per week whenever I feel like it.
My arithmetic is certainly different than others as there’s lots of variables, but certainly not challenged with my math.
I think different people just value their time more. But having the option to make $10 whenever I have free time is better than watching tv or whatnot.
It’s odd how many people I have to go through this math with. I guess people can’t break out the different expenses. Again, cars vary so if you have a high cost car rather than Prius it will be harder.
It can theoretically be less than minimum wage, but even so. There’s no minimum wage that lets me work between 0-20 hours a week and take off as many days as I want, whenever I want.
That’s why it’s cool for part time. But using it as your primary income is much different. But I’d rather do it than work retail.
You are missing depreciation. Those miles aren't free, in capital cost.
Your scenarios are all built into my cost model. And since I don’t realize the depreciation until I sell the car or fix a clutch/battery/whatever so far it’s just piled into a saving account getting ready.
$10 could be less than minimum wage in a few areas, but for most of the country, and my area it’s a few bucks higher.
> Young workers must accept that our fate relies on our co-operation. If I accept an unpaid internship, I have undercut my generation. I have not only devalued my labour but that of my peers too. I am complicit in the denigration of my generation.
This same issue applies, as can be easily observed in any large city, to immigrants.
Having a fair labour market is fundamentally incompatible with free movement of goods (meaning we need to heavily tax your ipad if we are to have more equality) and with the free movement of labour (meaning equality and open borders are fundamentally incompatible ).
one might say, but not if we have worldwide socialism. That is right to an extent, but that effectively means that long as there are a few exploitative states we can't have socialism and fair labour markets anywhere else.
Needless to say, there is lots of propaganda about how it's "racist" to be opposed to large scale people movement, even though the economic reason for it is obvious in any large city : to enable the economic exploitation of the weak by the powerful.
I'm just hoping that at some point we can accept that "I want closed borders to improve labour conditions" will be recognized as obviously the non-racist opinion (and open borders, since it's real effect is exploitation of "the other", recognized as the racist option)
(1) Internationalism over nationalism is old socialism; if anything.
(2) I've seen very few leftists (new or traditional) who supported “open borders” as a short-term policy in any modern advanced country; I've seen many who support reforms of immigration rules (e.g., in the US, aligning slotd within existig overall quotas better with demand by removing or altering per country limits as a means of reducing the incentive for illegal immigration)—or simply opposed adding additional restrictions—with those positions attacked by the nativist right as “open borders”, but very little actual support for anything like actual open borders.
About (1) I would say that internationalism in the old socialism is not AT ALL about open borders. Rather it is about causing socialist revolutions within every country. The movement should cross borders, not people and certainly not goods. In fact, I believe they are against international trade except where absolutely necessary.
About (2) I can only say that I have. It has come to the point that you cannot say in leftist company even basic things like "illegal immigrants should not be allowed to remain". Talking about "immigration must be limited strictly to below the point where it destroys the labour market" is likely to get you banned. Is your experience different ?
My experience is that leftists generally have no ideological problem with efforts to restrict the overall level of immigration (I've seen several arguments that the current system of hard quotas and tossing money at enforcement aren't a cost-effective means of doing that, but that's a different issue), and, speaking of the US, in particular often favor more sharply limiting (or even abolishing) employment-based immigration (including non-immigrant programs like the H-1B.) They tend to prefer loosening existing numerical restrictions on family reunification immigration.
I've not seen any significant support for genuinely open borders, and I myself am the only even left-leaning (I won't call myself a leftist) person I've encountered who proposed any (though limited—based on fees rather than quotas) legal immigration outside of existing preference categories.
The kind of oversimplifying statements you suggest which treat immigration as a whole and the sole concern in immigration policy being the market effects on wage labor are something that I can see being unwelcome on the left, whether old or new, but not because either favors open borders.