<story><title>CEO of Uber: Gig Workers Deserve Better</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/10/opinion/uber-ceo-dara-khosrowshahi-gig-workers-deserve-better.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>griffinkelly</author><text>From a startup perspective, I&amp;#x27;ve always thought it interesting that more people in Europe&amp;#x2F;rest of the world don&amp;#x27;t take chances to create companies because of the great safety net there--at least its not as highly publicized. For whatever reason, the US is still the place to be and everyone wants to come to the US to start a company--my current company included (We have Canadian founders).&lt;p&gt;I quit my job and thanks to the insurance changes in the US a few years ago, I was able to stay on my parents health insurance for a meaningful amount of time. It allowed me to take the chance of starting my own company. Unsure if I would have done the same, had circumstances been different.</text></item><item><author>bo1024</author><text>This reply comes from completely internalizing the perspective the above post describes. It only makes sense if you accept that the employer is supposed to completely care for their employees. But if you view it as society’s job, then everything changes. For one thing, small mom n pop stores can compete with Walmart a lot easier if healthcare is provided by the state. Also employees can quit if they’re not treated well, etc.</text></item><item><author>jschwartzi</author><text>I don’t want to subsidize Walmart with my taxes. That’s exactly what you’re proposing, and in fact what happens. Companies underpay their workers, who end up needing government assistance. In the end my taxes go to supporting a company that I would never shop at.</text></item><item><author>whack</author><text>It seems odd that our public discourse has settled on the following set themes:&lt;p&gt;- Every person deserves a baseline quality of life and benefits&lt;p&gt;- The person&amp;#x27;s employer is tasked with the above responsibility&lt;p&gt;- 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&lt;p&gt;- 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 laudable&lt;p&gt;Combine 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.&lt;p&gt;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 &lt;i&gt;everyone&lt;/i&gt;. 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.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>fractionalhare</author><text>Others are responding in a way that explains your premise, but I actually reject the premise. Specifically, I do not think this is true:&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt; From a startup perspective, I&amp;#x27;ve always thought it interesting that more people in Europe&amp;#x2F;rest of the world don&amp;#x27;t take chances to create companies because of the great safety net there -- at least its not as highly publicized.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;There are &lt;i&gt;a lot&lt;/i&gt; of startups in Europe; particularly France, UK, Germany, Switzerland and Scandanavia, and they are well publicized locally. I hypothesize they don&amp;#x27;t get surfaced to the attention of Americans for a few reasons:&lt;p&gt;1. Essentially no country in Europe provides businesses with as many freedoms as America does. American businesses have more autonomy, and a lot of basic facts about American life primarily exist within the framework of a business (e.g. healthcare). This makes it a less attractive environment for investors, so these startups don&amp;#x27;t get international attention as easily.&lt;p&gt;2. Partly as a result of #1, and also because of a reduced cost of living (and thereby labor) in much of Europe, startups in Europe typically don&amp;#x27;t pay as well as those in America.&lt;p&gt;This is to say that Europe has lots of entrepreneurialism, it just exists in a less recognizable way compred to America due to cultural, political and economic differences.</text></comment>
<story><title>CEO of Uber: Gig Workers Deserve Better</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/10/opinion/uber-ceo-dara-khosrowshahi-gig-workers-deserve-better.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>griffinkelly</author><text>From a startup perspective, I&amp;#x27;ve always thought it interesting that more people in Europe&amp;#x2F;rest of the world don&amp;#x27;t take chances to create companies because of the great safety net there--at least its not as highly publicized. For whatever reason, the US is still the place to be and everyone wants to come to the US to start a company--my current company included (We have Canadian founders).&lt;p&gt;I quit my job and thanks to the insurance changes in the US a few years ago, I was able to stay on my parents health insurance for a meaningful amount of time. It allowed me to take the chance of starting my own company. Unsure if I would have done the same, had circumstances been different.</text></item><item><author>bo1024</author><text>This reply comes from completely internalizing the perspective the above post describes. It only makes sense if you accept that the employer is supposed to completely care for their employees. But if you view it as society’s job, then everything changes. For one thing, small mom n pop stores can compete with Walmart a lot easier if healthcare is provided by the state. Also employees can quit if they’re not treated well, etc.</text></item><item><author>jschwartzi</author><text>I don’t want to subsidize Walmart with my taxes. That’s exactly what you’re proposing, and in fact what happens. Companies underpay their workers, who end up needing government assistance. In the end my taxes go to supporting a company that I would never shop at.</text></item><item><author>whack</author><text>It seems odd that our public discourse has settled on the following set themes:&lt;p&gt;- Every person deserves a baseline quality of life and benefits&lt;p&gt;- The person&amp;#x27;s employer is tasked with the above responsibility&lt;p&gt;- 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&lt;p&gt;- 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 laudable&lt;p&gt;Combine 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.&lt;p&gt;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 &lt;i&gt;everyone&lt;/i&gt;. 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.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>whywhywhywhy</author><text>It’s only a safety net to you. If you have free healthcare your entire life you don’t think of it as a safety net it’s just something you expect.&lt;p&gt;And the sort of worries Americans have about healthcare stopping you from starting a business we just move those worries elsewhere to rent or whatever.</text></comment>