CEO of Uber: Gig Workers Deserve Better
It seems odd that our public discourse has settled on the following set themes:- Every person deserves a baseline quality of life and benefits- The person's employer is tasked with the above responsibility- If a corporation pays their workers less than the above baseline, they are bad. We should shame them, and pass laws to ensure that they pay their workers better- If a corporation decides not to hire someone at all, and operates with a smaller workforce by tweaking their business model, that is perfectly acceptable and even laudableCombine all of the above, and you end up with a world where corporations go above-and-beyond to reduce their headcount, and entrepreneurs specifically avoid labor-intensive business models. Firms like DE Shaw are publicly lauded for making lots of money with a tiny elite workforce, while spinoffs like Amazon are publicly shamed for actually employing hundreds of thousands of middle class workers. All this only worsens the situation for those in the lower-middle-class in the long-term, because now they have fewer work opportunities, and less demand for their labor.Clearly every person deserves a baseline quality of life and benefits. But instead of heaping this responsibility on the subset of corporations that hire low-skill workers, this responsibility really should lie with everyone. Tax billionaires, tax the upper-middle-class, tax profitable corporations, and use the money to strengthen the social safety net for low-skill workers. That would eliminate this entire mess.