What about people that can not handle a normal job?

I have a chronic condition and for a year the only reason family didn’t end up on street is because of gig jobs. Most days 12-16 hours a day in bed essentially blind in horrific pain. But sometimes totally fine. Disability straight up laughed at me.

This. so much policy is designed around the idea that people should work a 9-5 at a corporation, without any consideration for the fact that this simply doesn’t support a lot of people’s needs. We need more flexibility not less.

Ironically this completely flies in the face of any motion or ‘diversity and inclusion’.

What you described is called "sick leave" in Europe and you are entitled to sick pay by law.

In Europe, any time he wanted to get this sick leave, he would need to go to a doctor every single time. That means multiple visits at a doctor every week. After a few weeks or months of being only available randomly, he would get fired from most jobs anyway (which happens regularly in Europe too, there is just a few more hoops to jump through).

While I agree with the thrust of your statement, he'd probably only need to go once a week at most.

On average I was going to three doctors a week. Mostly trying to find out what the heck was going on with me. Each outing would eat up all of my energy for a couple of days. I have nothing left for work family or generally life.

At a certain point I had to stop going to the doctor so I would be able to get enough hours in keep keep the house.

Apologies - I meant in order to stay on sick leave in Europe, not for diagnosis purposes.

Are you claiming that gig/piece work isn't a "job" for an "employee"?

If you are an employee, the employer has the right to dictate your schedule and put significant more restrictions on how and when you work, which they do because it's more economically efficient for them to do so (think: time and transition costs). When your a contractor, not so much.

There are certain things that aren't in question about this. Enough income to afford decent housing and food, healthcare, etc. It's not so mysterious.

Still, there is an extreme range within those parameters.

What is 'decent housing' for instance? An apartment in the affordable part of town, shared with 3 room-mates? Your own condo? Your own house in the suburbs? A home in a gated community?

Is 'decent food' the minimum amount of recommended nutrition as defined by the USDA? Or eating out 3 nights a week? Or enjoying prime rib whenever you feel like it?

Is "decent healthcare" a checkup every year? Or a Cadillac insurance plan?

Any combination of these could be called an acceptable standard of living depending on who you ask. It's totally subjective, but the difference between them is tens of thousands of dollars a year.

Yeah, any of those would be acceptable. What would be unacceptable is when somebody has none of them.

"Enough income to afford decent housing and food, healthcare, etc."

And how do you define those? I've heard people on here complain that $200k isn't enough for a good life with a family. Yet I make less than half that and pay all the bills for my family. Clearly standard of living and cost of living can have a huge fluctuations on location and what one thinks they are entitled to under a decent life.

For example, a studio apartment in a bad school district might be decent for a single person with no kids. Yet that likely would not meet the definition of decent for a family of 4. Unless, that was a step up from wherever you were living before (maybe on the street). Some people might say they have to eat out or have steaks to have decent food. But others might just want a discount grocery story with freash fruits and veggies with off-brand staples to meet their criteria of decent.

It all depends on people's expectations and needs.

I know multiple people who have never worked a day in their lives. They get food stamps, free health care and live in a $300/month apartment subsidized by the state (aka free).

They basically make money buying and selling items occasionally, when they see a deal. That's enough for them to buy all the "luxuries" they want ($5k car, $2k laptop) every couple years.

I think there's a big difference between peoples desires/definition of acceptable and what they put in to obtain them.

Buying and selling items is in fact considered work!

Decent housing where? If I want to live in a high cost area but can't afford it then should the government make up the difference?

Yes or no. Take your pick. It's not such a hard question that there's no answer. You can make a policy on this stuff. We solve harder problems all the time.

Again though, define "decent". It will vary depending on who you ask.

There is enough space to move around in the dwelling. It is not falling apart. It is not infested with rats. There is clean running water. Come on. Stop pretending this is a hard question.

It is bad faith or sheer ignorance to think this isn't a hard question. Consider that even people spending their own money on their own housing often can't define their own parameters, which is why touring houses is a thing. Now scale this out to the population of a country and creating a single bar of "decent housing" is incredibly hard.

And then that's just talking about the structure. What about the location - if a person's entire support system is in one location but the available free housing is 75 miles away and they don't have a car, that isn't decent. This comes up all the time re the affordability of the Bay Area where locals get priced out, someone says "just move to stockton" and the resident feels it's not fair (or "decent") to have to leave where they were born and raised.

You could link location to workplace I suppose but then that would create massive downward pressure on wages since people would be willing to sacrifice pay in order to live where they prefer. This sounds like a net negative.

This question is only hard if you haven't thought about it for more than like 2 seconds.

> even people spending their own money on their own housing often can't define their own parameters

I can't believe I'm spelling this out. A person picking out their ideal home has trouble figuring out exactly what they want. Ok. We all don't ever know exactly what we want. It's the human condition. But I don't want to live in grinding poverty. I don't need to look within to figure that one out.

I don't want my home to be dilapidated, overcrowded, full of pests and toxins, or to not exist.

If you're still pretending to have a hard time with the definition of "decent," consult a dictionary.

This line of argument is absurd word chopping. "Oh my, I could never in good conscience try to lock down a subtle word like 'decent' into a singular meaning, guess drivers will have to stay earning a sub-living wage forever. Sorry! Definitions are hard!"

No.

I didn't say (and nobody in this thread except for your straw man said) that the definition is too hard to create and therefore we should just throw our hands up and walk away. Literally nobody is saying that.

What I am arguing against is your baseless assertion that defining "decent housing" is easy, and that everyone who thinks it's hard is simply being obstructionist/anti-poor/whatever.

The closest thing we might have today to an across-the-board definition of "decent housing" might be HUD's FHA standards which -- to your shock and amazement, I assume -- is much more complex than "must be decent"

This is a discussion about whether gig economy workers ought to be classed as employees by the government. The reason that is a salient question is because a lot of these workers can't make ends meet under the current structure.

The current structure treats them as serfs and says what really matters is the efficiency of the overall system, or its ability to generate a profit for its shareholders, or whatever. In short, the problem is these guys work too much in exchange for too little. Whatever theories anybody might have about the market, the role of the state in the market, etc, those are the basic facts on the ground: over-exploited workers seeking dignity where they currently lack it. The idea that they are "contractors," in the way that you or I might be contractors sometimes (I assume you are a tech worker), as experts in a technical field, is a sick joke. They don't have any power to get what they need, in that market, as individuals (they aren't even allowed to set their own prices!). If they could bargain collectively, they might. That's the context here.

When somebody enters the discussion and says, "Well, yeah, but what IS dignity, anyway, when you really think about it, man???" you'll have to forgive me if I don't believe they're doing it out of a devotion to clarifying terms but because they just want to take Uber's side in the fight. Yes, it's obscurantism.

This is a weird phenomenon that I see across discussion platforms - it's like reverse sealioning, where legitimate good-faith questions are taken as evidence of supporting the other position.

In deeply complex and high-stakes systems, the details matter a lot; I haven't thought about it too deeply but my intuition says that they're the only thing that matters. Unintended consequences (like my salary depression example above) need to be carefully considered. There is inherent inequality built into a naive system like you suggest: an apartment in SF is worth multiples of an apartment in OK, are we alright with that? (don't answer, just an example). The details and their impact are important.

For starters, there's what many developed nations have agreed the minimum is, including: 2 or more weeks of paid time off, statutory holidays, parental leave and benefits, and –most importantly– socialised healthcare.

Some –certainly not all– have taken it a step further and offer pharmacare, daycare, a livable minimum wage, and free higher education.

Still, worldwide, there's an uneven or inequitable provision of other basics, such as disability benefits, guaranteed housing, food, and internet access. All of which I would argue is even more necessary for a good quality of life for all.