Honest question: other than the fact “gig economy” is a completely shit term of art, why do people crap on these jobs? Are we supposed to believe people would be better off without access to these sources of income? How are they different from jobs like bartending or serving?
-
-
-
the argument was never that these were "the shit jobs of tomorrow, marginally better than the shit jobs of yesterday" but that we were seeing a radical, freeing change in the whole structure of the labor market.
-
Yeah that seems silly. New industries created new mediocre jobs. But they’re still “new” opportunities. I mean, is it any worse than some government-provided “new deal” style public works job? Maybe it is. I just don’t get the outrage about people having job opportunities
-
then you're not understanding the outrage the idea of the "gig economy" was that these jobs were the new normal, that fewer and fewer people would get stable jobs with benefits, that the trend toward gig employment was a permanent transformation of the market.
-
and that this was good and that workers liked it because millennials or something, and it wasn't an indicator that the labor market was insanely weak and needed more stimulus so it functioned as an argument against helping people and for continued predation of labor by ownership
-
Yeah that seems bad for sure. What I think we need to know is whether these jobs *replaced* stable full time employment or just added incremental opportunities to the labor market. And I also think lumping them all together isn’t ideal. Airbnb isn’t Uber for example >
-
My argument is that there has always been a gig economy (bartending/service industry for example) so the question is whether the new gig economy came at the expense of “real” durable job opportunities, or did the availability of “gigs” lead other employers to reduce wages
-
that is an interesting question but it's entirely separable from the discourse about the "gig economy" in the last five years
- 3 more replies
New conversation -
-
-
Bad economist lingo working at its finest, as well.
Thanks. Twitter will use this info to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
-
-
-
There also never was a reason to use average instead of median for this chart. Alas
Thanks. Twitter will use this info to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
-
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.