Gig work and "entrepreneurship" are billed as empowering opportunities—but there are real trade-offs. If full-time jobs are really becoming rarer, we need policy change now.
I've been self-employed since 1990. The lack of affordable health care has been by far the biggest problem (I'm on Medicare now). Alone among modern economies, the US insists on tying health care to insurance, and of affordable health insurance to working for a corporation or government. I don't want health insurance. I don't want health insurance to even be a thing. Other countries do just fine without it, and they have the health outcomes and life expectancies to prove it. Our tax laws are byzantine. That's another feature, not a bug. I'd go a little further and propose a universal basic income. That would take care of most of the rest of your list.
Agreed! The fact that opting out of employment (i.e. not handing your labor over for someone else’s gain) disconnects you from the social safety net is absurd. Our governments offloaded that responsibility onto private companies with almost no oversight or requirements. We have to bring health care, income, child care, etc. into the public sphere to ensure everyone can truly enjoy the freedom of “flexibility and autonomy” in any occupation they choose.
I've been self-employed since 1990. The lack of affordable health care has been by far the biggest problem (I'm on Medicare now). Alone among modern economies, the US insists on tying health care to insurance, and of affordable health insurance to working for a corporation or government. I don't want health insurance. I don't want health insurance to even be a thing. Other countries do just fine without it, and they have the health outcomes and life expectancies to prove it. Our tax laws are byzantine. That's another feature, not a bug. I'd go a little further and propose a universal basic income. That would take care of most of the rest of your list.
I'm all for UBI—I'd rather that than anything else! But, as you said, my list would have been very short then!
Agreed! The fact that opting out of employment (i.e. not handing your labor over for someone else’s gain) disconnects you from the social safety net is absurd. Our governments offloaded that responsibility onto private companies with almost no oversight or requirements. We have to bring health care, income, child care, etc. into the public sphere to ensure everyone can truly enjoy the freedom of “flexibility and autonomy” in any occupation they choose.