Robert Reich: The Gig Is Up

The Guardian:

“Uber just filed its first quarterly report as a publicly traded company. Although it lost $1bn, investors may still do well because the losses appear to be declining.

Uber drivers, on the other hand, aren’t doing well. According to a recent study, about half of New York’s Uber drivers are supporting families with children, yet 40% depend on Medicaid and another 18% on food stamps.

It’s similar elsewhere in the new American economy. Last week, the New York Times reported that fewer than half of Google workers are full-time employees. Most are temps and contractors receiving a fraction of the wages and benefits of full-time Googlers, with no job security.

Across America, the fastest-growing category of new jobs is gig work – contract, part-time, temp, self-employed and freelance. And a growing number of people work for staffing firms that find them gig jobs.

Estimates vary but it’s safe to say almost a quarter of American workers are now gig workers. Which helps explain why the standard economic measures – unemployment and income – look better than Americans feel.

The jobs problem today isn’t just stagnant wages. It’s also uncertain incomes. A downturn in demand, change in consumer preferences, or a personal injury or sickness, can cause future paychecks to disappear. Yet nearly 80% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck.

According to polls, about a quarter of American workers worry they won’t be earning enough in the future. That’s up from 15% a decade ago.  …”

Hail Larry Kudlow’s Goldilocks!

According to every show on FOX News except Tucker Carlson Tonight, the Blompf economy is the greatest economy in American history. We’re MAGAing, fam!

Robert Reich endorses Universal Basic Income. He also endorses raising corporate taxes to pay for universal health insurance for gig economy workers. That’s blasphemy against “our free market principles” though on the American Right as it is currently constituted under mainstream conservatism.