New "Uber" Employment Models Make Workers Job Nomads W/No Place To Land.

[TheMastersNemesis]

The new "sharing" economy is such a fraud. Renting out your personal stuff like your tools, your home, your car, etc etc is a dead end. It makes the reality that the new business model for work is the itinerant worker, contract worker, temporary worker et al is going to be the new norm. Each day business, corporations and industry find new ways to cut permanent full time employment and make it part of the "contract" economy. Already large numbers of jobs are already in the "itinerant" category. The time is coming when very few jobs that will have the old "social contract" that existed for decades in the US.

Even though the economy is doing much better than 2007 the new employment model that employers have embraced does not bode well for long term stable employment. The new model retires older workers long before their time. It cuts benefits and "job equity". Long term employees are considered a drag on the company and are sent packing in their 40's or 50's when they have the most need for a steady and increasing income.

Reagan and his cronies over time destroyed "the social contract", long term employment, careers with 1 company, pension systems, unions, employee rights, et al. Our society will not work well when most of the work force is ALWAYS on the move from job to job to job.

[Mika]

1. Love the NLP "sharing economy".

Capitalism won't, can't, last forever. Probably huge disruptions and agony will be needed to wake us up... and maybe it won't be enough.

[TheMastersNemesis]

3. Most Workers Do Not Understand They Are Being Moved To A Contracted Work Force.

The idea of a "contracted"work force really started in earnest under Reagan. His "service economy" speech was about changing the employment model to a "contract model". Reagan was consummately evil in that his mission was to put and end to the "social contract" when it came to workers. It was to eliminated the New Deal and government as an equalizer.

He was a spokes person for an agenda that would take the work force back to 1900. Anyone who knows about that part of history knows that work was very dicey. THERE WERE NO LABOR LAWS as we have known them in recent history. There were no child labor laws, no minimum wage, no health care benefits, no work site protections, no rights, NO 40 hour work week, no sick days, et al. EVERYONE worked at the disgression of the employer.

There we really no regulations controlling business at the federal level. And the police force public and private were present to keep order in protection of the richest of society.

Today's plan is to quietly move workers into a work environment they would not accept if they knew the real agenda.

[The2ndWheel]

7. People are paid to figure out how to make you unnecessary

I'm not even talking about the CEO's or whoever makes those decisions. I'm talking about the worker who has the job of making more efficient software to get rid of your job doing whatever.

It may be good, it may be bad, that all depends on who you are. Labor laws and all that, they exist because they had to at a given time, not because they will forever.

History didn't end with free market capitalism and American democracy, and it's not ending with labor laws and social contracts either. Variables change all the time.

[Democrats_win]

2. Strategy of making work unstable is working for THEM.

For working people, it's really important to have a stable job for 30 to 50 years so people can build up a life for themselves and their children. Then eventually retire. But this is impossible in this uber world. Ironically, a lot of Trump supporters see this problem too but they just don't know that Trump and the Koch's are their mortal enemies.

[The2ndWheel]

4. It sucks when evolution doesn't go your way

Social contracts with long term employment at 1 company and pensions and unions is a recent thing. Life is more likely not going to be that way than be that way.

[Go Vols]

17. Yep ,times are changing.

My kid is a third generation Union member and he has to work 30 years to retire, where I had to work 25, and my father 20.

His vacation and annuity pay is much more,but pension will be around 3-5% less than previous generations.

[Agnosticsherbet]

5. Uber is a large corporation dedicated to profit.

They don't give a damn about workers. Why is anyone surprised? I await the time when management becomes obsolete.

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

6. Uber is a dispatch and point-of-sale system

This "employment model" is ever so slightly older.

[LisaM]

8. You can scream this from the hilltops and it won't change people who want to use Uber.

Look, I get that it's easy and cheap. TOO cheap, in my opinion (except for the surge pricing, which is really despicable). I think that the current taxi system is partially to blame - in Seattle, for example, they unnecessarily limited the number of available licenses - but I still won't use Uber It's like Postmates. Who can really enjoy something knowing that the person who delivered it to you might only have made $1 doing it?

But yeah, it's really a sharecropping economy.

[TheMastersNemesis]

10. You Miss The Point. Business Model Is About Turning ALL Workers Into Into Actors.

Too bad most workers do not get the mega trend with work. Businesses want ALL workers to have to look for work like actors. It is all about having employee free businesses and corporations. You will not be an empllyee in the old sense. This idea was spawned in the early 1980's. The Uber model is just plain bullshit.

[JanMichael]

12. The "gig" economy will only increase the mobility of children in school. Which on the whole sucks.

Study after study shows that mid-year and multiple moves and school changes have horrible effects on children.

However every-time a study comes out, like the Danish study of like EVERYONE born from 1971 to 1994, plenty of commenters poo poo the study and say how great they turned out and they went to 3 elementary schools and blah blah blah.

Well shit I went to 10, yes 10, different schools K-12. 5 elementary, 2 JH and 3 HS.

And now at almost 50 I am doing quite well (no seriously very well) however my early social development was clusterfucked by all of the moves. Certain subjects became difficult to keep up with because each school was using a different schedule in math or grammar.

Making new friends became easy however the connections were loose at best. I got ok at fighting because well the kid that just wants to be left alone gets shit constantly and one solution is to just get your ass kicked, or kick an ass, or drop out. I gave into fighting and am a smaller guy even back then.

Then there is the ability to make friends that are stable or involved in the community. You generally wind up making friends with whoever will give you the chance. That is ok to a point but often time a nice entree into crime or booze or pot or whatever.

Then a normal teen dating life gets difficult - like it isn't in a normal setting. Too many moves and decent match ups become almost impossible.

This impacts kids in high income groups just as much as low income groups. Drugs, suicide, detachment, petty and violent crime, etfuckingcetera.

So I hate the "gig" economy for many reasons and think the outcome will be even shittier for kids that get brought up in it.

[Initech]

13. Meet the next evolution of American capitalism.

No ownership of anything. No long term employment. No retirement. Health insurance costs raised 5,000%. No overtime, no paid vacation. Employers can tell you to fuck off at any time. All your money is belong to us.

[TheMastersNemesis]

14. That Is About The Size Of It.

Employers want "work at will" for all jobs as long as they have ALL the say. Work at will is pointless because employees have right to leave if they can get a better job. More often than not over time they won't be able to find a better job as they get older and the employer believes that have too much baggage. That is they were making too much money and had too many benefits.

[Initech]

15. I think we need to get a dialogue going about how much profit is too much.

Does Exxon, Verizon, or Apple need to make $45 billion per quarter? Hell no! They spend about 1/3 of it, the second third goes to the executives who already have more wealth than god, and the other third gets stored in an off shore tax haven. What are they going to do with that money? Start their own space program?

[JCMach1]

16. 60-75% of College faculty are now PTers who make roughly the equivalent of 40hrs at McDonald's

That's the reality I came back to when I moved back to the US.

[kcr]

18. Get ready to hear how awesome and convenient it is

How this is just the way it is now and you have to get use to it. And, OMG, some workers actually chose to work there! Sometimes I wonder what the point of being liberal is anymore.

[TheMastersNemesis]

20. Bullshit Uber & Companies Like It Exploit Labor. FDR Economic Bill Of Rights Best Solution.