To be clear, this article is advocating forcing people in poverty into gig economy jobs where there have been issues of low pay, terrible working conditions, and few if any employee protections. As a civilized country we should not demand that people give up their basic rights to earn a living.
(the latter is particularly odious; having been told by a court that it owed people £130m in back-dated benefits, the government retroactively changed the law to avoid paying them. This is almost certainly a human rights violation but that litigation has not finished yet).
Yeah, making people work for free at for-profit businesses is not a valid precondition for welfare. I didn't see that in this article though.
There has to be a social safety net, but I think it's a valid goal to encourage welfare recipients to work if they are able. One thing we should definitely do is reform the "vertical cliff" of payments, where once you make above a certain threshold, you stop receiving all benefits. That's a definite disincentive to get a better job past a certain point.
The article talks about work requirements, but does not specify a minimum wage or minimum effective wage. Is someone who is signed up for one of these task apps but only given one hour work a week "working"?
Not to mention that the flood of workers forced into this position will necessarily bid down the hourly rates.
Of course it will bid down hourly rates. That will increase demand for such services, thereby allowing more people to enter the workforce [1]. Unemployed workers get jobs, consumers get more services - a win for everyone!
[1] It's interesting how the gig economy can reduce sticky wages, making inflationary stimulus unnecessary.
This is an extreme misrepresentation of the article. Anyone who doesn't want to work is free to stop telling the welfare office they want work but can't find it.
I vehemently dislike when people say "no one is forced to do anything" in situations where, say, you will lose your food stamps if you do not do something. That is a force, the force of starvation.
We don't live in a society in which there is enough paying jobs to employ all able bodied people. We also don't live in a society in which every apparently able bodied person has the emotional/intellectual/motivational capacity to work. I'm content to let some tax money pay for food/tv/etc. for those at the margins. I don't want those who don't want to work alongside disgruntled people who are there because they are forced to be there. I think it doesn't make sense in terms of overall societal emotional well being.
We don't live in a society in which there is enough paying jobs to employ all able bodied people.
If that's true, then these folks will find no work via the gig economy.
We also don't live in a society in which every apparently able bodied person has the emotional/intellectual/motivational capacity to work.
The article has this to say about that issue: "Work requirements, however, should not unfairly punish people who are physically or mentally unable to complete gig economy jobs. The gig economy can often provide flexible work for those previously considered unable to work, but exemptions would still be available as needed."
Did you read it?
I don't want those who don't want to work alongside disgruntled people who are there because they are forced to be there.
Welfare recipients are disgruntled people who are unpleasant to be around?
I thought they were just regular folks who were down on their luck, who wanted to work but are unable to find a job.
Forcing people to do work they don't want to often times leads to disgruntlement. It appears that you are purposefully misreading what I wrote to come up with the last rhetorical question you made. Such tactics are not conducive to proper discourse.
Great to write on paper that we will exempt those who are mentally/physically unable to work. Then we will end up with a bunch of edge cases that force a government agency to be created that will end up drawing up rules/regulations in order to arbitrate these decisions. We will employ enough people in order to process/monitor all exempt people. It would in my opinion just be better to ensure a base level of existence regardless of ability.
I've met a number of welfare recipients who don't want to work and it is a good thing that they aren't working due to their toxic personalities. Then there are people who are on welfare who are great to be around. It's a sufficiently large group that you'll find all kinds.
In regards to your first sentence. Surely you don't believe that every person who can be employed can find work. I don't think anyone really believes that it is always the case that the number of people who wants jobs is less than the available number of jobs. Even if the system proposed is enacted then some people will still not be able to find work since there aren't enough jobs for everyone. We will add another layer of bureaucracy to ensure that those who claim they can't find work really can't find work. This already exists to some extent with unemployment benefits but would need to be expanded to really make sure no one is taking advantage of the system.
I attributed to you a common left wing position on welfare recipients. It appears I misunderstood you - apparently you don't believe welfare recipients are just regular people.
If a person chooses to be toxic to those around them, why is that a behavior that should result in us giving them money?
Lets make this concrete. Consider a racist who chooses to be an asshole to every non-white person around them, and who also lives in a very diverse area such as Silicon Valley or NYC (and refuses to move to a very white area). They are also sexist to all the women who choose to work outside the home as well. Their voluntarily chosen behavior patterns leave them unemployable.
Why is this person deserving of free money taken from productive people of color who choose to pleasantly work for the benefit of others?
(I have of course chosen this person to be as offensive to left wing sensibilities as possible.)
In regards to your first sentence. Surely you don't believe that every person who can be employed can find work.
I do actually believe vastly more people could be working than currently are, because I used to live in India and I saw vastly higher labor utilization. There are a huge number of jobs that simply don't get done in the US.
E.g., I have a maid clean my flat twice a month, but I'd like it done twice a week (or daily, like most Indian professionals do). However, labor is simply too scarce in the US for that to be reasonable. Perhaps some of those welfare recipients who are "great to be around" can find me and help me out, should we implement the author's proposal.
However, if such a proposal only puts half the people on welfare back to work, that's still a good outcome.
Now you are being deliberately inflammatory. Clearly I indicated that one finds all types of personalities amongst poor people. I explicitly state this in my third paragraph. What then is your goal with your first sentence? It is evident you are not interested in an intellectually honest discussion. Your tactic belongs on an extremist political blog where the goal is to demonize and distort contrary opinions.
In your sixth paragraph you again deliberately distort what I wrote. It is not reasonable to believe that number of potential workers < number of available jobs at all times. Nowhere is it implied that more people can't be employed than currently are. There is a difference between more and all.
You are not rich enough to afford someone to clean for you as frequently as you like so you conclude labor is way too scarce? A solution you endorse is to force people to service your needs in exchange for welfare benefits. In essence to perform labor at substandard prices. Perhaps you should just make more money so that you can afford the market rate for the labor you want. Just get a better paying job or create more utility for society. As it currently stands the market doesn't think you provide enough value to justify compensating you enough to sustain the lifestyle you want.
Creating a system of forced labor does not make for a reasonable solution and would lead to the country being a worse place to live.
Clearly I indicated that one finds all types of personalities amongst poor people. I explicitly state this in my third paragraph.
I acknowledged that I misunderstood you in the very comment you replied to. I explicitly acknowledged both your belief in the existence of toxic welfare recipients (in paragraphs 2,3 and 4) and those that are "great to be around" in paragraph 8.
Apart from explicitly acknowledging and responding to your points, what else can I do to make you believe I'm not "demonize[ing] and distort[ing]" your opinions?
There is a difference between more and all.
I explicitly acknowledge and address this point in my last sentence.
You are not rich enough to afford someone to clean for you as frequently as you like so you conclude labor is way too scarce?
Scarcity is when we don't have as much of something as we want. So yes - labor is scarce.
A solution you endorse is to force people to service your needs in exchange for welfare benefits.
On the contrary, I'm proposing forcing fewer people to service the needs of others. Currently I'm forced to service welfare people's needs; but if a welfare person has a toxic personality and is unwilling to work, I'd like to end that use of force.
Also, as far as paying market rates for labor, this article (and me, in agreeing with it) is explicitly advocating that we bring wages closer to market. Again, did you read it? It proposes making information more available (by helping welfare recipients access the gig economy) and reducing subsidies that shrink the labor force (via workfare requirements).
<i>...apparently you don't believe welfare recipients are just regular people.</i>
I explicitly stated that one finds all types of people amongst welfare recipients as it is a sufficiently large set of people. The statement that I apparently don't believe welfare recipients are regular people is inflammatory. The wording you used seeks to paint me as someone who doesn't think poor people are "regular folks". (Using the colloquial definition of this phrase.)
Yes labor is scare in the strict meaning of the phrase. Labor is way too scarce? Hardly can this be concluded because you can't afford to pay people enough to do the work you want.
> If that's true, then these folks will find no work via the gig economy.
Exactly. So why "rethink the entire safety net, affecting nearly every federal entitlement program, so that it is oriented around the gig economy"?
The gig economy isn't going to change the fundamental problem that there is not enough work, there won't ever again be enough work, and we can't centre our measurement of human worth around work. If we just keep pretending that's not the case we'll either end up with bullshit jobs that create no worth and are subsidized by the companies offering them (at best just a more convoluted form of benefits, paid by corporations directly); or with even more working poor that have a job and still depend on government benefits. Or both.
I think it has to do with the whole 'explicitly focuses on renting out 2nd homes' deal. To me, it makes more sense to allow people to rent out properties that they own rather than units that they themselves are renting. I'm fine with someone renting their summer cottage on a lake in Vermont - less fine with someone explicitly renting scarce property in SF for the sole purpose of flipping on Airbnb.
Buzzfeed is having a pretty rough time transitioning to an actual journalist enterprise though. They've had a few editors lately fired for outright plagiarizing a majority of their listicles, including ripping directly from Yahoo answers of all places. To combat this they've also recently culled a significant number of old listicles from their 'media-lab' era. I forget the exact number but I want to say it was on the order of 4,000+ articles that were disappeared? I get that they're trying to improve their image but at the same time quote-unquote "actual journalists" wouldn't white-wash their past and would explicitly own up to the mistakes they've made.
tl;dr Original content is the new aggregation growth-hack but can't replace a lack of ethics.
When your livelihood is based entirely on your security clearance and your ability to keep working in the security industry you make it a very big point to not talk about this stuff outside of work. I had a friend who went to work for a 3-letter agency and started consistently avoiding bars/drinking because he was afraid he'd say something. This is exactly why whistleblowing is a problem in the intelligence community - they'll sue you to oblivion and/or imprison you for saying anything at all.
You just answered your own question. It is generally accepted that Facebook and Google derive a large source of their revenue from advertisement, which is in such high demand at these companies precisely because they control so much of your personal data.
It isn't so much of a leap of reasoning to think that a company willing to sell some information about you isn't willing to go further than you'd like them to. Again, it's not that we're worried about them 'leaking' it - we're worried about how they're going to sell and make money off of it.
Is it just me or are a lot of the comments on this post getting greyed out? I thought that was only for flagged/sufficiently downvoted comments? What the heck is going on here..
Stuff like this is great. It's like watching kids who grew up in the Twitter/FB age rediscover anonymous internet forums and imageboards like 4chan. People like anonymous services because you literally don't need to filter what you are saying. That can lead to a whole lot of bad, but some really, really great nuggets of truth and goodness coming out - it feels like tapping into the collective subconscious of the internet.
Anybody else think the header on this page is too big? If you scroll to the bottom and take the footer into account the content is almost restricted to 1/3 of the window.
Yeah, it's the browser toolbar 2.0. I have a bookmarklet to delete page elements and half the time I use it on these. The other half is on blog posts that have a huge picture of the author right along side. I can't read with someone staring at me.
Fixed headers/footers make it impossible to navigate content using the keyboard. Pressing spacebar/page down doesn't take into account the missing real estate and you miss a few lines of content every time.
I really dislike page that uses fixed position header like that. It wastes a lot of spaces. If they want to go back quickly, add a pretty "back to top" on the side...
It's just a response people have built up, and they don't really think about it. When I started my current job, I had absolutely no javascript experience at all. My team lead is great, and I learned a ton from him, but he definitely said a lot of stuff like this without thinking. He always helped me figure it out, but responses like this always made me think twice before going to ask for help.
I think it's just a side-effect of being in an insulated position and knowing a ton more about the subject than most people you work with.
