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Uber sues California to block gig-worker law going into effect this week:
Ride-hailing service Uber filed a lawsuit Monday against the state of California, alleging a landmark gig-worker law set to go into effect is unconstitutional. The lawsuit seeks to block AB 5, which has the potential to upend gig economy companies such as Uber and Lyft.
The complaint, which also lists Postmates as a plaintiff, argues that the law unfairly targets workers and companies in the on-demand economy, treating them differently than traditional employees and threatening their flexibility.
In September, California became the first state to pass a law aimed at protecting gig worker rights, which forces Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, Postmates and other gig economy companies reclassify their workers as employees. Using independent contractors allows the companies to shift many costs to the workers.
The lawsuit says the law arbitrarily exempts dozens of occupations, including direct salespeople, travel agents, grant writers, commercial fishermen and construction truck drivers, among others.
"There is no rhyme or reason to these nonsensical exemptions, and some are so ill-defined or entirely undefined that it is impossible to discern what they include or exclude," says the complaint (see below), which was filed in a Los Angeles federal court.
Postmates and Uber v State of California on Scribd
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Grishnakh on Wednesday January 01 2020, @04:11AM (47 children)
It sounds like they have a good case: why should grant writers and direct salespeople not be treated as employees, but Uber/Lyft drivers should? Just because those other professions have historically been that way?
I think the fundamental problem here is that employment law in this country is completely broken, especially because "full-time" employees enjoy certain benefits that other employees generally don't, most especially health insurance. Insurance simply shouldn't be tied to employment at all; this is an artifact of laws during WWII which set limits on employee compensation. We need to get with the times and start emulating other developed nations and the way they handle healthcare and health insurance. It's not just this; full-time employees also get FICA payments, unemployment insurance payments, etc. from their employers, which part-time and "contractor" employees do not. This should all change.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 01 2020, @04:29AM (18 children)
My one associate (small engineering company) is a contract worker--he sets his own schedule, buys his own computers and works from his home. I pay him plenty enough to buy his own health insurance and put away for his own retirement. We're not the problem, I don't take advantage of any "power" that I may have over him--in fact for years he also taught a class (or two) at the local U for a backup job in case my business fell through.
(Score: 5, Touché) by MostCynical on Wednesday January 01 2020, @04:37AM (17 children)
one person doing okay is enough to show it works. Fuck the rest, it is their fault they didn't negotiate better,
Right?
</sarcasm>, but only because truth hurts..
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 01 2020, @06:03AM (1 child)
Apparently my point didn't get through? I agree that some companies are taking advantage of the independent contractor rules as written, and it is reasonable to try and close some loopholes.
At the same time, many small companies operate very well using true independent contractors (both the spirit and the letter of the law). I just hope that the pendulum doesn't swing so far that it kills all these little companies with the large increment in overhead required to have a few full employees. In my case, I would certainly have to cut the wage paid to my main contractor, so that I could afford all the benefits provided to employees...and probably cut some more as well because of the additional admin costs. I also have a very part time bookkeeper (as a contractor), rather than take them on as a part time employee, it would probably be simpler to pay my accountancy firm for that service.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 01 2020, @02:48PM
A lot of independent contractors are just doing it for pocket money and anything that can be done to stop them for working for less than the cost of providing the service is a step in the right direction. I see the same sort of thing in tutoring, where you've got people who are charging just over minimum wage, not paying taxes and training students to think that it's acceptable to pay such low wages. They'll then move on to something else and leave the students thinking they can get reasonable service without being willing to pay for it.
The independent contractor rules are an extension of business owners not being required to make enough money to live on. The rules in a sense make sense as it can take years to build a business up to the point where you're able to live on the income while investing in its growth. But, it also leaves open the possibility of illegally setting prices below the cost of providing the service by having a spouse covering living expenses and competing unfairly.
At this point, you've got companies that essentially don't hire regular employees, despite having more than enough money to do so. Rather than small businesses that are using independent contractors because they only need the service for a few hours a year.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 01 2020, @06:37AM (1 child)
I called a Uber, the driver was on meth, and pregnant, and a Trump voter. We drove over private roads, and invalid ways, and I arrived damaged and mostly fucked over, since she insisted we have sex and added a fee to the Uber charge. Now I do not know whether or not I want to call an uber again, since I may get a guy who is not pregnant, but wants the same service. Should they not have to pay me for that, rather than the other way around? Am I being screwed? Uber Drivers need a union, to stop the rampant whoring of unbridled capitalism, and khallow!
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday January 01 2020, @02:39PM
I sure hope you can answer that question for yourself.
Sounds like we know which one is going to be more fun!
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday January 01 2020, @01:57PM (12 children)
How about tens of millions of people. What does this law actually fix?
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 01 2020, @02:52PM (7 children)
This law fixes the exploitation of drivers. If you total up all the expenses of driving for these companies and subtract that from what they're paying, you're talking about making only a few dollars an hour, at best. When they started out, they didn't even have insurance, meaning that if something happened, your insurance would be the only one covering bills and even then only if they felt like it as it wasn't necessarily their responsibility.
The fact that you don't understand how the real world works, doesn't change the fact that Uber and the other "ride sharing" companies are exploiting people that don't know any better and driving down the prices of legitimate taxi drivers. These are people who often times work weird hours and are doing it for an actual living. People whine about the cost of taking a cab, but that's largely what it costs to provide the service. It's expensive to have drivers on call when they can't be working and that shows up in the rates along with things like insurance and upkeep on the vehicles.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday January 01 2020, @03:49PM (6 children)
But the drivers wanted to be exploited. Why shouldn't their choices be respected?
Given you aren't really totaling up anything, what's the point of your observation?
But let's suppose hypothetically, that you are right. We're still left with the fact that these people are choosing to be Uber drivers for that money. I'm quite comfortable with respecting that.
What's supposed to be the problem with driving down the prices of "legitimate" taxi drivers? Sounds like a good side effect of the internet-based ride hailing thing. I find it remarkable how someone can lecture me on my alleged ignorance of the real world, and then immediately come up with a poor idea like this. I think it's a profoundly bad idea to protect the taxi cartels. Uber and company wouldn't have been this successful in the first place, if taxis were providing an honest service.
Finally, this sort of law merely protects bad business models (the taxi and other equivalents of the *IAA). Sweep that ideological fog away and that's what's happening.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 01 2020, @05:58PM (5 children)
Did they really? They wanted money for providing a service, I doubt very much that they'd stop just because they were forced to accept more money for services rendered.
The point of the observation, is that the money being paid to them is significantly below minimum wage even before providing riders with perks like bottled water. There are any number of youtubers and the like that have totaled it up. The numbers I've seen come out to less than the federal minimum wage and in some areas it's less than half of the minimum when you factor in the expenses related to the car.
The problem with driving down prices, is that the service costs money to run. The prices are what they are, because Uber is engaged in illegal dumping. They're losing huge sums of money, failing to pay the drivers sufficiently well and it's artificially depressing the wages and fees that legitimate taxi companies can charge. That's not a good thing at all. This is the race to the bottom that has all but destroyed the middle class and it's just so that billionaires can pad their winnings with some extra zeros.
The Taxi industry was functioning just fine. It's expensive to have people that spend all those hours in taxis driving people around. This isn't even remotely like the *IAA and you should be ashamed of yourself for suggesting that it is. Taxi service is expensive to provide. There's one driver per car and that car is often times just sitting there empty or driving to pick somebody up. Whether there's somebody in it or not, it costs roughly the same amount to drive. The end result is that it's a relatively expensive service to run. Contrast that to Uber where they make the driver pay for most of the costs, fails to ensure the driver is making a living and yes, it's going to be cheaper.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday January 02 2020, @12:22AM (4 children)
Ok, so what other reason could there be for being an Uber driver that doesn't ultimately involve at least partially monetary reward?
So what? Sorry, but I think a better solution here is to get rid of federal minimum wage.
If Uber can keep up this "illegal dumping" forever, then that's fine with me. Funny how the "race to the bottom" involves making critical services like transportation cheaper.
And now some apologism for the taxi cartels. It was fine for the taxi industry, not so fine for the people getting robbed by the taxi industry. Apparently, Uber and company are showing that taxi service isn't as expensive to provide as you claim.
The thing missing here is that jobs aren't magic. You need to provide something of value in order to be paid by employers and customers. The more obstacles that are provided to employing people, the lower quality the jobs that will be available. Something like Uber helps a huge category of poor people and provides a considerable value to people who use those ride hailing services.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 02 2020, @07:59PM (1 child)
Oh my, abolish the federal minimum wage so we can go back to company towns and unabashed wage slavery?
You're such a fuckwit, you base your entire view of reality on baseless assumptions about some ideal version of capitalism. I pity you, though it is tempered by the damage your worldviews do unto others.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday January 03 2020, @05:53AM
Because if your government masters aren't holding your hand, you'll work for peanuts?
Which happens to be the real world, let us note. Nothing ideal about it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 02 2020, @08:14PM (1 child)
> Apparently, Uber and company are showing that taxi service isn't as expensive to provide as you claim.
From what I've read, Uber has poured (is still pouring?) their huge pile of venture capital into unsustainable fares. This is a traditional monopolist play--kill the competition by undercutting it. Once the competition has folded (as have many local taxi companies around the USA) those low rates will be ancient history. At that point there won't be any competition left to "let capitalism work its magic" and the fat cats will have the taxi market to themselves.
Thus regulation is needed to maintain some kind of "free market".
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday January 03 2020, @05:50AM
And when the unsustainable goes on long enough Uber goes out of business. Sorry, I don't buy that they'll last long enough to become a "monopoly".
Funny how "regulation" is about keeping the taxi cartels.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by VLM on Wednesday January 01 2020, @03:33PM (3 children)
There's no barrier to entry in that there's a huge supply of car owners and drivers, so in the short term everyone can / should be a taxi driver.
The medium and long term costs are huge in that you need some kind of safety check to protect the public from criminal or incompetent or uninsured unbonded drivers. You certainly can't trust an app company skimming off a commission, LOL, like expecting General Motors or maybe Budweiser to be the sole enforcer of drunk driving laws. And given an infinite supply to drivers, we "need" a minimum wage equivalent to limit supply and keep prices up because there's always too many people willing to work under desperate conditions of no car insurance no medical insurance no retirement no financial safety cushion, and bad money always pushes out good money so EVERYONE who drives a taxi has to live under those conditions as long as there's at least some willing to live under those conditions.
The reasons people will work for practically nothing and won't essentially unionize vary. First of all there's people who are really stupid and don't account for all the costs, you see them ranting about the only cost per mile of driving being gasoline, as if new cars and maintenance and repairs and insurance are free. Secondly you have people who see it as a profitable hobby; well, it pays better than painting W40K figurines even if its only pennies per hour of actual profit, and if they're lonely, its cheaper to chat people up as an uber driver than while sitting at a sports bar. Thirdly you have people who are incredibly desperate and need that heroin or meth fix and they'll quite literally destroy themselves for their next fix. Forthly you have people with bad impulse control and bad time preference psychology where they'll just chase numbers, even if those numbers don't improve their life; see MMORPG and some questionable financial industry personnel.
Finally the whole corporate structure is pretty much a startup scam waiting to collapse, which is funny when it happens to pirate apparel stores and cup cake stores and fro yo stores, but when a major mode of transportation operates in a monopoly fashion and is careening toward the ditch of suddenly shutting down in the future, thats a significant governmental public policy problem in that 10K small business taxi owners cannot spring up overnight when uber/lyft finally collapse. Really their business model is nonsense... we should be a monopoly because we're middlemen because ... um ... Its not that in the long run uber and lyft are doomed to suffer the outcome of myspace or sears; the actual governmental problem is the general public is doomed to suffer something like the outcome of amtrak and passenger trains except it affects WAY higher percentage of the general public. So what happens financially to a city when there's literally no taxi service after dotcom implosion 2.0 for a couple weeks / months? There's people who's economic and medical livelihood depend on taxi service. Like... activate the national guard infantry battalions to drive infinite number of grandmas to wallgreens for her heart meds on top of ancient M113s and newer oil leaking humvees? How many drunken college students can you fit in (on top of?) a MRAP at bar close time?
Its like arguing why we can't replace marriage with a modern web app like tinder and prostitution. I mean, who needs all this elaborate stuff when we can just click an app to acquire a similar service? Well, in the very short term, sounds like a great profit opportunity for a monopoly app provider, but in the medium to long term that leads to immense costs socially and financially.
Likewise we have zoning laws for operating hotels, chemical plants, and livestock farms, but there's always people looking out for themselves or some corporation, trying to get rid of any of that regulation so they can completely F over everyone else around them. F you I got mine, type of thinking.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday January 01 2020, @03:41PM (1 child)
And I hate to reply to a reply but this shitstorm originally came from AC asking why his hyper specialized skilled craftsman contractor should be categorized with essentially untrained unskilled manual laborer like taxi driver.
I have no idea what AC's contractor dude does at home with a computer; If its gold farming on WoW then the government probably should crack down (although gold farming is ALMOST enough of a skilled profession to be "ok"). If its doing something highly skilled like designing microwave waveguide terminations using ansys hfss software, thats so obscure and highly skilled and rare that the overall employment marketplace isn't going to collapse due to a flood of untrained labor trying to design radar antenna components. That used to pay pretty well as I recall. Or if the computer dude is hacking on java android apps under contract, I assure you thats pretty well paid right now and there is no overload of untrained personnel making apps (well... maybe there are a few too many unskilled java devs... or maybe java kills brain cells, as many honestly believe).
Anyway there's a big difference in economic behavior between a highly skilled professional craftsman industry and a grunt manual labor equivalent like unlicensed taxi driving. The economy and people in it will be just fine if AC's computer dude doesn't work for Boeing or Google, but "the system" is pretty F'd if any random moron can GTA3-style play taxi driver with no training or oversight.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by khallow on Wednesday January 01 2020, @03:55PM
Why should we care about "the system"? After all, this has been going on for years and the "F'd" has yet to happen.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Ethanol-fueled on Wednesday January 01 2020, @04:15PM
It's because they let in too many goddamn illegals, who are willing to live 5-in-a-room, and don't deport them. With mandatory E-verify, the problem would correct itself.
And if your garden-variety bulbhead-run yellow taxi services decided to actually show up when you request them, and showed up in less than an hour when you did, we wouldn't even be discussing Uber or Lyft at all. What exactly are those bulbheads doing when they're ignoring your calls? No fucking joke, lining up all their yellow cars up in some parking lot and shooting dice.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 01 2020, @05:52AM (5 children)
The problem is the laws we have written created this mess.
Want health insurance? Oh you need to be full time. Well just work people 35 a week and you do not have to offer anything.
Whole classes of employees are basically pulled out of the law that protects others.
The imbalances in law has created this 'part time gig' thing in the first place.
But if we just add more laws we can fix it! Pinky-swear!
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 01 2020, @02:56PM (4 children)
What caused this is insufficient taxes on corporations and the wealthy. The main reason for the nickling and diming of employees is that the money they don't spend on the workers gets to go to the management and owners of the company. If there were a progressively higher tax rate on such people that went up to 90% at some point, you'd magically see that the companies don't go bankrupt when they pay their workers for the work they're doing.
Adding more laws is what you're left with when the federal government refuses to tax the billionaires appropriately. It's slightly better than nothing, but it would be far more effective to start taxing their wealth up above the $10m mark and remove a bunch of the incentive to cheat the workers in the first place. There's no valid reason for anybody having more than $10m in personal assets. And the only reason for anybody to have more than that is that some businesses are just capital intensive, but that's businesses. A person has no reason to have more than that.
(Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Wednesday January 01 2020, @04:09PM (3 children)
This has been tried before, genuinely tried before, and reversed because it was a terrible idea. Even the Nordic countries don't do it anymore.
Further, what in the world are these governments doing that would justify a 90% income tax? They're clearly not protecting the rich person's assets since they're stealing it as fast as they can.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 01 2020, @06:03PM (2 children)
When we tried it in the US it gave us the greatest economic expansion the country has ever seen and one of the largest economic expansions of all time. What do you think the tax rates were like during the '50s and '60s? Here's a hint, the top rate was that high.
Secondly, I realize that you're retarded, but for god's sake, could you make it less obvious. The government isn't stealing anything, they're placing a disincentive to the ultrarich to protect against the ultrarich stealing from everybody else. Or do you honestly believe that a billionaire is several thousand times more efficient than regular workers?
Lastly, just because you choose to remain ignorant on such matters, doesn't change reality. We've had tiered taxes with much higher rates during points when the economy was doing it's best. The tax rates kick in at various income thresholds and people could avoid hitting them by planning their taxes. You make it sound like the government is just stealing from random people because they can.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 01 2020, @07:14PM
fuck you, you fucking authoritarian piece of shit. tax is theft.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday January 02 2020, @12:53AM
The obvious rebuttal - tax loopholes. For example, the US government has made huge shifts in the tax rate of the highest income bracket without changing taxes (and income taxes) collected as a fraction of GDP (see second and third graphs from here [mises.org]).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 01 2020, @06:25AM (21 children)
If it shouldnt be tied to employment, do tell what it sgould be tied to without using such deseptive words as "free". Ill probably laugh my ass off.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Wednesday January 01 2020, @12:04PM (15 children)
Well, if you are going to call it insurance how about tying it to buying insurance. Car and house insurance don't give a shit where you work so long as you make the payments.
Tying it to employment is just another way to make it difficult for employees to switch jobs:
- For the socialists out there, this is just another part of keeping the proletariat as wage slaves.
- For the capitalists out there, this reduces liquidity in the jobs market and imposes inefficiency related costs.
( Other than seeing a longtime ally improve their peoples' lives, I don't really have a dog in this fight. I live in a country which spends about half what the USA does per person, and has better outcomes, with 100% of the population covered by the healthcare system. )
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2) by SpockLogic on Wednesday January 01 2020, @01:13PM (9 children)
Better outcomes at lesser cost for 100% of the population, if only the US would aspire to that. Oh well, it's New Years Day, a man can dream ....
Overreacting is one thing, sticking your head up your ass hoping the problem goes away is another - edIII
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 01 2020, @02:26PM (8 children)
I have had some chemistry lecturers point out an interesting parallel between chemistry and finance : The equations must balance.
Every atom in a reactant that goes into a reaction comes out the other side in a product somewhere. 2H2 + O2 = 2H20
Every cent that is a cost in one place is revenue in another.
The obvious reason why your costs are 2x higher is that your cost is someone else's revenue. All the rhetoric and bullshit and verbiage from the entrenched players is just meant to obscure that fact.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 01 2020, @03:01PM (2 children)
Essentially yes, but sometimes things are more complicated. I can pay you to perform a service for me that I would be very inefficient at. That might free up 10 hours of my time to do something that I'm much better at. The net result is that I've paid you, say, $100 for several hours of work, but I've saved myself 10 hours that might net me $200, resulting in a net increase in $100.
Obviously, that extra money has to come from somewhere and as long as that money is coming from increases in productivity, there's an increase. Where things start to balance out is when people waste the money, or more to the point spend it on things not related to food, shelter, clothing, medical care and other essentials. This is why it's possible for some people to have more money week after week after week whereas others are broke no matter how much money they're making.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 01 2020, @07:36PM (1 child)
You're missing the point.
(i) You have $100. The contractor has $0. (You do the work yourself ) You still have $100 and the contractor has $0
(ii) You have $100. The contractor has $0. (You pay the contractor $100.) You now have $0 and the contractor has $100
(iii) You have $0. Your employer has $200. (You don't work the 10 hours) You still have $0 and your employer still has $200.
(iv) You have $0. Your employer has $200. (You work 10 hours @ $20ph) You now have $200 and your employer has $0.
These are four separate possible transactions. In each of the four cases things must balance. Money is not wealth, it is a marker for transactions. Absent the FED creating it, or trivial cases like someone burning banknotes, it is neither created nor destroyed.
You are conflating the before case of (ii) with the after case of (iv). Increases in productivity do not increase money, it increases when the Fed prints more.
Every time you "save money" you reduce the other party's profit by the exact same amount. This is what double-entry book-keeping is all about. For every debit there is a matching credit.
When someone says "I have a plan to save $100 billion on healthcare" what the healthcare industry hears is "I have a plan to pay the healthcare industry $100 billion less". That is why they fight it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 01 2020, @10:59PM
> This is what double-entry book-keeping is all about. For every debit there is a matching credit.
About 25 years ago my parents invited me to join the tiny engineering company that my father started when he retired. One of their issues was keeping up with the books (finances): invoicing, paying a few engineers that moonlighted as contractors, making sure all taxes and bills were paid, etc.
Naively I decided learn about Accounting--went to the library and took out a couple of text books that looked like "accounting 101". After some study, it hit me: Traditional accounting was developed by the owners/bosses to minimize embezzling and other forms of employee theft. By separating Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable into two departments, and then further splitting functions among different people, cheating the books would be much harder for one person on the accountant staff.
If the company is so small that one person can do all the work, then you'd better trust them! Not an issue in our family, we discussed finances all the time and got along great (my parents are gone now). On the flip side, a few times a year I see a local news item about a book keeper caught with hand in the till. Sometimes it's a small company, other times it's a church or other charity.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday January 01 2020, @04:03PM (4 children)
No. You costs would still be someone else's revenue, even if they were half instead of twice. The key is willingness to pay. If you don't pay, then you don't have 2x costs. In the US, it's all paid in advance with the costs split between many parties, so there's a lot more willingness to pay.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 01 2020, @05:43PM (3 children)
All you are saying is that if you halve the patient costs then you halve the revenue of the entrenched parties. Businesses are usually opposed to halving their revenue, and are often willing to take unethical or even illegal actions to avoid it. Hence the media blitz against better systems. By definition better systems will drop the revenue of the entrenched parties.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday January 02 2020, @12:29AM (2 children)
Then I have succeeded in my role as communicator.
And people on the other side of the equation are similarly resistant to doubling their costs, often willing to take unethical or even illegal actions to avoid it. The catch is that the costs are significantly disengaged from the choices. As long as deductibles apply (and there are a number of health care systems beyond private insurance that have deductibles), then there's incentives for the consumers of health care to consume less. When the cap on the deductibles hits (or there's no deductible in the first place), that no longer applies and you end up with the situation where there's no resistance from the consumer to reduce the amount they consume.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 02 2020, @03:05AM (1 child)
Most people don't like using medical services, they do it when they have no choice. Dropping the costs by half will not make twice as many people run out and double their treatments.
In fact dropping the price to zero would probably reduce the total expenditure by reducing expensive emergency room treatments, and because early interventions is usually much cheaper and more effective than waiting until someone is carried to hospital in an ambulance.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday January 02 2020, @04:09AM
Depends on the treatment. Opioids are probably something that would greatly increase in demand with a reduction in cost to the consumer.
It'd reduce the total expenditure to zero. Funny how that works.
(Score: 1, Troll) by VLM on Wednesday January 01 2020, @04:04PM (4 children)
Demographics is destiny and the USA being very large is like multiple countries, mostly racially segregated. Like for example, what percentage of your country is unproductive third world invaders? Or unemployable criminal permanent underclass? Those are big numbers in the USA... Similar issues with criminality.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 01 2020, @05:05PM
Well found one ^
I'm sure the measures to solve the problem of invsding nazi shitheads will be reasonable yet permanent. Do tell, how can we prevent more of you from showing up?
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Wednesday January 01 2020, @06:03PM (2 children)
Australia actually. And we probably have a pretty similar immigrant/cultural mix to the USA. Costs are per person per year averaged over the whole population, roughly $4000 vs $9000 last time I looked.
I would say that we have a smaller criminal underclass because we have better health and welfare systems. When people have the choice of [welfare|crime|starve] they mostly choose welfare. Remove that option and it's not a surprise that many will choose crime over starve.
And regardless of ideology, welfare is more efficient. Crime sufficient to support an individual will cost society far more than equivalent welfare.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 3, Informative) by ikanreed on Thursday January 02 2020, @01:53AM (1 child)
Bearing in mind that if it's "work, welfare, crime, or starve" most people still choose work as well.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Thursday January 02 2020, @03:13AM
I was referring to VLM's 'criminal underclass' comment, but I wish I had thought to include that. You're right of course that it should be, in decreasing preference, [work|welfare|crime|starve]
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Wednesday January 01 2020, @03:50PM (4 children)
Property tax. In practice its just a big accounting game to pretend that medical revenue comes from anything other than residential proximity.
Given the bathtub curve of medical expense vs age and the expense of emergency room care, the vast majority of hospital revenue comes from the locals.
There's a big accounting game full of profitable middlemen trying to pretend otherwise.
There are other interesting effects such that it makes prop tax "fair" in that there's lots of whining about prop tax mostly funding incompetent school districts and the only people interested in school districts are parents of schoolkids and those are "working age" so very young and very old tend to not give a F about prop tax leading to interesting funding problems. Well, funding the local emergency room off prop tax would mean very young and very old people are finally getting something worth paying prop tax for...
Also there are moral and ethical arguments for paying for medical care via prop tax. I get fire and police protection based on proximity to the stations and based on how well we pay them (our local cops are actually pretty decent people.. for cops, anyway, compared to poorer departments). Ditto the public library, I pay my taxes and get an unlicensed day care and homeless shelter ^H ^H ^H I mean I get a cool public library with many services. It only seems fair that if my ER experience is directly related to where I live relative to the local ERs, that the local ER gets funded based on my property...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 01 2020, @07:19PM (2 children)
Property tax needs to be outlawed globally. A free person would own their property and be able to pass it down to their offspring without some parasite being involved.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 01 2020, @11:08PM
> A free person would own their property...
Why not go back to the American Indian model (shared with other hunter gatherers?)--no person owns any of mother earth...
These days it makes about as much sense as your idea.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 02 2020, @03:37AM
Of course, and if I kill you and your offspring and seize the property, then it is mine by right of conquest. If you pay no taxes why should society protect you?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 02 2020, @03:32AM
I agree with a property tax, but I think it should apply to all property not just real estate. How about 1% per year for a start, we can adjust it up or down later. Maybe have a tax-free thresh-hold of $500,000 and/or exempt the primary residence to cut the paperwork.
You own a million dollars, you pay $5000. You own a billion, you pay $9,995,000
Think of it as paying what it costs to have society protect your right to own property. Enforcement is easy, undeclared property is no longer owned. Publicly auction it off and pay a 1% finder fee to whoever found it. Shouldn't require the IRS to have any more intrusive powers than they already have.