The Gig Economy’s False Promise

Re:The Gig Economy’s False Promise by smsm42 on Monday April 10, 2017 @02:59PM (#14081481)

Unions do kill jobs. That's simple economics - if you force an employer to pay more (and that's the reason you need a union), less jobs would be available at higher rate. If you sell something at higher price, you sell less of it. You can argue that these jobs are better and there are other benefits, but denying basic economic laws is not going to get you very far. With regulations it's more complicated - some regulations may make economic sense, especially externality-related ones , some are explicitly aimed at killing jobs - such as licensing regulations which are explicitly designed as a barrier to prevent non-licensed people from having certain jobs and thus reduce the number of people in certain occupation. It's in its explicit design, and no matter how many times you say "propaganda" it's not going to change.

> it's just a ploy by those with inherited wealth to get a bigger share of the wealth.

By blocking access to good jobs to lowest tier - people without union connections, without union seniority, without ability to complete complicated licensing requirements, etc. - you are doing exactly this. You are making harder to gain footing on the job market for people that do not have a base to complete complicated licensing requirements, that can not deliver enough productivity to be hired at the above-market rates set by unions, who may not fit the job descriptions and requirements set by unions, etc. You benefit a narrow sliver of the population (1/3 at the highest times, much less now) at the expense of everybody else.

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Re:The Gig Economy’s False Promise by waisbrot on Monday April 10, 2017 @03:28PM (#14081771)

> Unions do kill jobs. That's simple economics - if you force an employer to pay more (and that's the reason you need a union), less jobs would be available at higher rate.

Simple economics is right. In _real_ economics, things are a lot more complex and unions don't "kill jobs".

Software salaries are higher in SF and lower in Jackson, Mississippi. Do you believe there are more programmers per capita in Mississippi?

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Re:The Gig Economy’s False Promise by smsm42 on Monday April 10, 2017 @04:32PM (#14082253)

You are doing a wrong comparison. To see if factor X has an influence, you need to compare two similar situations differing only in factor X and see the outcome, not compare two outcomes from different situations both not having factor X and conclude since there's a difference factor X does not matter.

So, if a unionized company in SF with higher salaries would be consistently hiring more people than essentially similar company with no unions and lower salaries, in the same environment - that might be a counter-example or at least a beginning of one (one still needs to consider the confounders - maybe CEO of the former one is a genius and of the second one is an idiot and had run the company into the ground, and that explains hiring differences).

Of course in SF and Jackson salaries are different - those are different markets. That has nothing to do with my argument.

> things are a lot more complex and unions don't "kill jobs".

Making a claim is not proving it. I've provided an argument why I think they do. If you want to argue against it, the least you could do is providing your own counter-argument. And no, "it's complicated" does not count as one. You have to point out which part of the complication, in your opinion at least, makes the conclusion wrong.

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Re:The Gig Economy’s False Promise by smsm42 on Monday April 10, 2017 @08:22PM (#14083762)

BTW the article itself essentially admits my point:

> Since workers for most gig economy companies are considered independent contractors, not employees, they do not qualify for basic protections like overtime pay and minimum wages. This helped Uber, which started in 2009, quickly grow to 700,000 active drivers in the United States, nearly three times the number of taxi drivers and chauffeurs in the country in 2014.

In other words, Uber could overtake taxi & chauffeur industry and provide jobs to 700K people because they weren't saddled with onerous regulations and union rules. That's not my words, that's NYT's words.

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