Do you have any sense of historical perspective at all? The idea of labor regulation didn't just appear out of thin air; it arose in response to widespread exploitation. And the idea of a "moderate Libertarian candidate" strikes me as an oxymoron.
You don't even have to look towards history - just to other parts of the world. There was a story here just a couple days ago about a Mexican woman who lost both her hands working in a TV factory. Yeah...
Actually, we just have to look down the street - there is a huge amount of labor abuse in the nail salon industry. - http://nyti.ms/1KOuiMq the NY Attorney General is starting to crack down.
I absolutely do. The fact that a rule mad sense 100 or 200 years ago does not automatically validate it today. History is great, but we should not justify things based purely on the past. Yes, we should consider historical context and evaluate it in today's reality.
The issue here is this business of "independent contractors". Why should the government, today, have a say on the nature of my relationship with my employer? Why? It's not like Uber is the only company where people can get work.
I'll tell you why the government would rather everyone be an employee. Taxes. When someone is an employee they become desensitized to taxation. You never see the money. It evaporates before it hits your bank account. And most people have absolutely no clue how of much money they are handing to their overlords every week. Go ahead, ask around. No clue.
However, in sharp contrast to that, an independent contractor is keenly aware of just how much of what they earn is going to government.
I maintain that if people had to go to the bank once a month to pay taxes rather than having them automatically deducted from their checks we'd riots in every city within two months. Employees are desensitized to the theft taxes have become.
In addition to this, independent contractors have far more opportunities for tax reduction through deductions. Politicians want your money and they don't want this at all.
Take it to an extreme, if next month everyone started to receive 100% of their paycheck and they had to send a check to the state and the feds every month people would wake the fuck up and demand lower taxes and a reduction in spending.
> Why should the government, today, have a say on the nature of my relationship with my employer?
Because we, as a society, have decided to give the "little guy" some small amount of power. We have decided this tradeoff benefits society as a whole in a number of ways. We have decided that the most blatant forms of exploitation shouldn't be allowed. The reason "today" is different is because of regulations not in spite of them.
Taxes have nothing to do with it. Your rant about income taxes is just ridiculous on so many levels, plus income taxes are hardly the only kind of taxes that people pay. My town has property taxes (many thousands of dollars) due in one lump sum at the end of the year. Remember, US federal income tax is younger than the US.
It's all about the benefits and protections employees have that contractors don't. The government doesn't give two shits how many independent contractors are out there, the important part is employers not misclassifying people as independent contractors in order to skirt those protections.
Please, do move to a place where government doesn't regulate working conditions. Work there for a couple years and then get back to me.
You can call me a troll all you want and yet reality doesn't change.
I have over 35 years in business as an entrepreneur and have made (and lost) more money than most people can dream about making. I know a thing or two about how shit works in the real world. I know how it worked during low and high tax "seasons" and I know what decisions real business people are forced to make due to government meddling.
I am speaking out of real context having started and run companies with my own cash, having succeeded, failed, gone bankrupt and risen-up again and having created tons of jobs in my community. I am not some asshole simply spouting off based on ideology. I live this shit. I am spouting off the reality every business person in this nation faces.
I am here to tell you that if you don't understand why it is that our government has become the enemy of growth and progress in this nation you really need to gain a better understanding of how the world works. Start a cookie baking operation with your own money and see what you learn after five or ten years.
Call me a troll. Down vote my comments. Call me a jerk and an asshole. Do as you wish. None of that is going to change the reality of what is going on around us. Not one bit.
The government isn't hitting Uber over the head to "protect the little guy". That's pure bullshit. They are protecting the unions that are threatened by Uber. They are actively using anything they can to stop Uber because it threatens their own political gain. Can't you see that? These politicians couldn't give a shit about the little guy.
This isn't about having zero regulations either. Healthy controls are important, necessary and reasonable.
This is about government consuming OUR money efficiently, not growing beyond a reasonable size, not spending without accountability, working with us, not against us, not becoming the enemy of growth and progress. Government does not have the right to meddle in every aspect of our lives.
The tax code is some 70,000 pages. I've been in business for 35 years and I can safely say I can't even begin to comprehend all of it. It is humanly impossible. Can you? Please explain why we need 70,000 pages of convoluted rules to pay for the running of our government and services? The only people who benefit from such a monster are the super-rich who can afford to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars per year for accountants to figure out how to pay less taxes. The rest of us get screwed.
You seem to be so brainwashed by this idea that we need government for everything that you just can't see it the other way. There are few possibilities here:
- You are a unionized worker and, of course, will be pro-government all the way because you benefit from politicians pandering to you. In this case you don't realize what damage you are doing to our country in the long term.
- You are unemployed and supported by some government program. I'm sorry that is that case. I hope you find work soon and make that money available to support others that might have hit hard times. This is important. We as a society must help people during hard times.
- You are a college student or just out of college and have been fed a steady dose of left wing liberal ideology that you swallowed hook-line-and-sinker. Not much I can say to you other than, you've been indoctrinated and I hope you will, at some point in your life, see that the emperor has no clothes. From my experience most liberal ideologs suddently see reality when they start a business and start to experience the consequences of some of the ideology they used to support. I have many ex-liberal friends.
- You are a government worker. Enough said.
- You are and have always been an employee. You've never been an entrepreneur at scale. No, publishing an app in the app store does not expose you to the realities of how government meddles with business. There are a lot of little businesses (graphic design, consulting, freelance software dev, etc.) that can escape the nasty experience afforded to manufacturers, food processors and a whole layer of businesses deeply "touched" by government. There's nothing wrong with being an employee or having operated a small business outside some of the nasty stuff government can do to businesses. Nothing wrong at all. That said, if that is your case, you have to be honest enough with yourself to understand that you simply do not have the context necessary to understand the issues and even begin to discuss them. Arguing about something you don't understand would definitely make you a certified troll. It's like me arguing about open heart surgery with a practicing cardilogist because I read a few articles about it.
As one of my favorite sayings goes: A man holding a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way (Mark Twain).
There are other angles here, but in my experience someone who doesn't agree with the idea that government has gotten out of hand simply isn't exposed to the realities some of us see every day. Nothing wrong with that. Congratulations, But don't pretend you know what's going on because you don't.
What circumstance is so different today than 100 years ago that makes you think employee exploitation is no longer something the government needs to prevent?
Today, in the US, employee exploitation is nonexistent. It's that simple.
We are very connected now. How long would a company last today if they exploited their employees? Not long at all. They'd have trouble recruiting for sure. It'd be all over the web.
Social forces are far more powerful than any legislation.
The extreme case being murder.
Is it illegal to kill? Yes.
Do you go to prison for a long, long time? Yes.
Are there laws covering this from all angles? Yes.
Does government enforce them? Yes.
Do people still commit murder? Yup.
And here's the most important question:
Is the main reason for which people DO NOT commit murder the fact that there are laws prohibiting it (or laying out severe consequences IANAL)?
Nope.
I would be very surprised if any murder had been prevented as a result of someone intellectually reaching the conclusion that the consequences would be severe.
Yes, this is an extreme case. It simply illustrates the fact that laws don't prevent behavior. They punish it after the fact.
Do you speed on the highway? Why? The law says you are not allowed to. Why do you do it?
If you come right down to it laws and rules don't really do very well in the protection department. Look at the commandments and rules of behavior of the various religions. If you are a believer there is no higher power and yet they are broken all the time.
Laws don't protect anyone, they punish after the fact. Decent, moral and ethical people protect and enhance society.
Making the assumption that workers are protected by laws alone simply isn't sensible. Yet, nobody is proposing an environment devoid of any regulation. That's silly. The only idea here is that regulation needs to be sensible. That's all.
We all know people who are absolutely miserable at work. They have all the protections afforded to them through labor law and they are still miserable. And they don't leave. They stay. I've seen it multiple times. They are free to do as they wish and do nothing. Is the employer to blame? Of course not. And government can do nothing to make the employee happy.
I probably couldn't list everything that has changed in the last 100 years in the US in this regard. However, it is clear that exploitation is pretty much gone. I'd challenge anyone to name a reputable company that is actively engaged in exploiting it's employees in the US today.
I am sure someone is going to bring up some sleazy sweat shops in the garment district. Even there the employees have the ability to get the heck out and find work elsewhere. They can't, you say? They are undocumented immigrants? Well, that's not a labor law problem, is it then? That's an immigration problem. If people were not able to work without proof of citizenship or legal work status the sweat shops would not be able to enslave poor immigrants.
Yet you don't see those laws being passed, do you? Why? Almost anyone would agree it would be sensible. Why don't politicians pass these laws? Simple. They need the votes of those who want to see their relatives able to enter the US illegally. Here's a case of politicians hiding behind a "cause" for political gain while doing major damage to the very people they are supposed to want to help. They don't care about those poor immigrants that end-up working in sweat shops. They could not care less. They have their votes. Maim and move on.
So, on the one hand we have the government messing with Uber on the technicality of whether someone is a contractor or employee (which they should have zero involvement in) while, on the other hand, we have government utterly ignoring the situation of illegal immigration leading to exploitation due to the lack of job mobility. And, BTW, it is often culturally isolated immigrants who exploit other immigrants. Anyone who has assimilated into our culture, morals, ethics and social conventions would not do that unless they were criminals.
Ironically the lack of job mobility of illegal immigrants actually proves the value of a free market. They, through the failure of our government to address the issue, live within a framework that prevents them from participating in the free market for jobs. They are devoid of the job mobility enjoyed by legal workers (citizens or not). People in the free market can leave bad job situations or not take the job in the first place based on company reputation, yet the unfortunate situation of the illegal immigrants is that our government, through inaction, pretty much sets them up for abuse.
Interesting the twists and turns things can take when you look at them from multiple angles.
It's really hard to have a sensible discussion if you are going to ignore what I am saying. I addressed EXACTLY the case you highlight in my comment. EXACTLY. Here's a quote from the article you linked to:
"On a morning last May, Jing Ren, a 20-year-old who had recently arrived from China, stood among them for the first time, headed to a job at a salon in a Long Island strip mall. Her hair neat and glasses perpetually askew, she clutched her lunch and a packet of nail tools that manicurists must bring from job to job."
As I said, this is an IMMIGRATION problem, not a labor law problem. The labor laws are already there to cover this. They are simply not being enforced. However, I'd be willing to bet all of these people are illegal immigrants being abused by their own kind. In other words, exactly what I said in my comment.
Exploitation by reputable companies does not exist in this country. Only sweatshops, generally ethnic, are likely to take advantage of and abuse illegal immigrants, which, again, is a failure in immigration law. In other words, here is a picture perfect case of our government actively harming people for not taking measures to ensure that immigration happens in an orderly manner and will full protection for those who join our ranks.
Why do "reputable companies" have compliance departments if no one obeys the law for the sake of obeying the law or avoiding punishment? Think a little harder.
