If your outcome is students that are more capable at languages but less capable in virtually every other subject, is the result really "more capable and prepared students"? I'm not opposed to bilingualism but you're lying to yourself if you think this comes at zero cost to at least some students.

Increasing the minimum wage has the most dramatic impact on increasing the demand for goods because it impacts so many people. Increasing the maximum wage has little if any impact on broader demand for goods because it impacts so few. Unless your supply chain can keep up with the demand surge through raised wages, you will see inflation, which is our situation today.

You might naively assume the solution is to introduce price controls but the general outcome of that is the economy shifting transactions to barter-based, black markets, and non-denominated currency exchange, which causes more economic upheaval as GPD and tax revenues drop. There are many examples of this in the last 100 years, Venezuela being a recent one.

Labeling Powell/the Fed as a psychopath simply because they're turning one of the very few if not only inflation control knobs they have seems extreme.

A psychopath would have done this randomly or at an illogical time (say by raising rates at the outset of the Great Recession). Just because you don't like the outcome of a decision doesn't make the decision maker a psychopath, more so when they agree that they wish there was a better way.

The actions taken in 2007 and 2008 were largely because of how terrified decision makers were of the Great Depression (Bernanke in particular was a deep student of that era and saw lots of similarities).

The Fed’s mandate has always been to control inflation and promote employment. The goals sometimes oppose each other. There’s no evidence they have stepped aside from this mandate. Employment was so prioritized by the Fed for so long that their actions promoting it probably fueled some of this inflation, and led to them to not fighting the inflation sooner. Hardly the actions of Vladimir Putin.

This is true across all income classes, because the classes are a distribution. While I agree that those in "precarious" positions may be concentrated in the gig economy for the reasons you suggested, this argument is an insufficient rebuttal.

> The pay on DoorDash is very low, because consumers won't pay that much for food delivery.

OK, so costs go up, consumers don't participate in the market, and the gig economy collapses. Are we in a better or worse position now?

> Here's a thread on the DoorDash Reddit

Do these individuals think the picture would be more rosey if they didn't even have this work for income?

That wasn't the entire rebuttal. But people in other income classes don't have anything to do with DoorDash. People in other income classes can be taken advantage of too (I believe there's a thread about SBF buying crypto companies on the cheap as they are on the brink of collapse). Another example might be loan sharking.

> OK, so costs go up, consumers don't participate in the market, and the gig economy collapses. Are we in a better or worse position now?

I believe this is what's called a false dichotomy. But I agree with you it's better to work on DoorDash than have no work and no money at all, if that's what you're offering up as an alternative. The fact that you acknowledge that is the only other alternative is actually a point in favor of it being "taking advantage".

> Do these individuals think the picture would be more rosey if they didn't even have this work for income?

Surely not. But what's your point?

i'm interested in how this is false. if the person could have worked for higher wages before the gig economy, then surely they would not need to rely on the this economy to exist. but those who are unemployed or underemployed clearly see the flexibility as an acceptable compromise for either lack of better skills (and time/money needed to acquire them) or no work at all.

i think the people who can be taken advantage of are those who cannot improve their situation (health issues, mentally or physically impaired, undocumented immigrants, elderly who cannot easily learn new skills or commute to a farther work location), but this is not gig workers as a whole.

people have a habit of complaining that the skills they refuse to advance dont pay much (fast food workers, coal miners). it's always the employer not paying enough, not the fact that someone treats a cashier position as a career rather than a temp job. my parents delivered pizza when we moved to the US in 1991 with $500 to their name. needless to say, they didnt deliver pizza for long despite living in a motel with two kids to raise and nearly non-existent english.

But if it's not false, and it truly is their least bad option they are choosing over destitution, I would think that's a strong argument for it being "taking advantage". I guess I don't follow the logic of, essentially, "yes I admit this is a terrible job, but your alternative is nothing / starvation, so I'm not taking advantage!"

Companies like Uber, Doordash etc. are price dumping because they have unlimited investor money. Their competitors cannot compete, and go out of business. As a result you have a choice of either starving to death or working for these companies.

> it's always the employer not paying enough, not the fact that someone treats a cashier position as a career

A person working as a cashier has a right to a decent living. This has nothing to do with "career".

i think people have a right to food, clean water, shelter, and healthcare. regardless of their employment status. no one should be homeless. but 'decent' is an odd word. should a cashier have a right to 'decently' raise/feed/house 6 kids? i'm not sure. should a cashier have a right to a decent living in the most expensive city in the world? that's a tough one; all cities need cashiers. probably they should be able to afford to rent a studio apt at least, that's not a 60min commute.

Do fast food workers qualify? Garbage collectors? Store clerks? Mailmen? Taxi drivers?

There are millions of jobs that you routinely depend on in your life. But sure. "We as society don't owe them anything".

shoe repair doesnt pay what it used to a century ago, but somone can definitely start a business doing it in 2022, and then discover that it's a job that cannot sustain a family of 4. so the person will need to seek greener pastures. how is the gig or unskilled labor situation any different? if it doesnt pay enough to support dependents, then you have to do something else.

i think it's reasonable to say every job should support one person, but more than this should require more than minimum effort.

some of the jobs you listed can pay pretty well (after some time), actually. but bagging groceries at a supermarket is not one of them.

What do you mean by subsidize? You don't "subsidize jobs". You provide a living wage.

What do you mean by "this lifestyle"? It's not a "lifestyle" to have a decent life.

> how is the gig or unskilled labor situation any different

Because, as it was already pointed to you repeatedly, there might not be a choice of greener pastures. Besides this, why do you insist that a person working 8 hours in the hell that is fast food industry isn't worthy of having a decent life outside work? Who is worthy then? You? Why? Where do you draw the line?

I mean, you probably wouldn't last more than a few days in most "unskilled labor" jobs (which actually require quite a lot of skill). But sure, do tell me how you're better.

you seem to know a lot about me, and what i've been through.

If all the large tech companies conspired to halve wages by agreeing not to hire each other’s employees, and succeeded, would you consider those workers affected to have been taken advantage of?

these gig economies owe their entire existence as a direct result of being mediated as walled gardens. if uber's app vanished tomorrow, so would millions of gig jobs.

but not hiring each other's workers, yes. and in general, price fixing and anti-colluding laws should be enforced to ensure a competative market.

> There are also enough gig economy companies that if one of them was especially bad then workers could easily switch to the competitor.

And if they're all the same since they all run the exact same business in the exact same markets?

The FTC says they're going to take a look to see if there is any collusion. There's a reason those laws are on the books and real harm to workers could happen if they were colluding. It seems like these gig economy companies are spending a lot of time and effort to entice workers from other gig economy companies to join them, so maybe it's actually working correctly already.

Every person “above” these people in the economic hierarchy benefit from their dire situation, and there is very little incentive to change that structure.

“I’ll do whatever I can to help you from suffering from me being on your back, except getting off your back.”

To the parents post, litigation and firearms training are two things the NRA does well, which includes suing California over privacy issues such as this.

And on one hand, your relationship with your government is not the same as your relationship with private entities. However, at some level it doesn't matter who leaked a particular piece of information. If your favorite gun store gets hacked, and your collection is exposed along with your address, the effect is essentially the same as if it were the government of California getting hacked.

yeah, to government you are a voter, but to Equifax and Facebook you are a product,

you have as much influence over them as a barrel of wheat has over the farmer.

Is the role of government to maximize social good or individual liberty? I'd rather the latter because the examples of the former are abundant and dreadful. Anyone who thinks this isn't a race to the bottom where lawmakers trade "happiness" for votes at the cost of liberty is lying to themselves. Let's not kid ourselves, a 40 hour work week is not the same as child labor in the coal mines; such laws exist only to win votes. When will it be 20 hours a week? 16? At what point do we descend into the madness that embraced Rome where the role of government became appeasement of the populace to keep them from revolting?

Is this specific case really arbitrary though? Did you read the contract/terms & conditions that this individual was under? Was this termination random or on personal whim? Because it sounds like it's the result of an individual's actions in violation of an agreement between that individual and another entity.

>The U.S.A. seems culturally built upon a mentality that one should fear government, but never citizens, and consequently has developed an idea of “Free speech is only from the government.” whereas in most developed nations, freedom of opinion is a more active right that the government also attempts to safeguard from private citizens and schools.

Yes, that mentality is literally part of American culture. In the U.S., governments, unlike citizens, are granted a monopoly on the use of force so a natural distrust is not only appropriate but warranted. The government is under no obligation to defend your rights if you literally sign them away (although there are some rights which cannot be waived). You can say whatever you want, but there may be consequences depending on what you say and where you say it.

>> If you're saying f the school and f cheerleading and the goal of the cheer squad is to promote school spirit and pride... (she wasn't suspended, given detention, or kicked off the softball team) I know I would have been benched or cut if I talked about throwing a game or not trying my hardest and those statements made it back to the coach. It's not like they were monitoring social media for this. > Luckily I can't be let go for this either.

People, including children, must learn there are consequences for what they say, particularly in a public forum (and this was effectively so). The only recourse in cases such as this is whether the response was appropriate e.g., within terms of a contract. I personally do not believe that what was said and who it was said to would warrant expulsion, but that's just an opinion, not a contract.

Such contracts would not be enforceable of course.

Employer protections are not contractually waivable, they would be quite useless if they were.

> Yes, that mentality is literally part of American culture. In the U.S., governments, unlike citizens, are granted a monopoly on the use of force so a natural distrust is not only appropriate but warranted. The government is under no obligation to defend your rights if you literally sign them away (although there are some rights which cannot be waived). You can say whatever you want, but there may be consequences depending on what you say and where you say it.

Yet in most countries where the culture is not so, one does not for instance have a right to own firearms and self-defence in general is more curbed, so I do not believe that.

> People, including children, must learn there are consequences for what they say, particularly in a public forum (and this was effectively so). The only recourse in cases such as this is whether the response was appropriate e.g., within terms of a contract. I personally do not believe that what was said and who it was said to would warrant expulsion, but that's just an opinion, not a contract.

This is a circular reasoning; such consequences exist in the U.S.A. because the country allows employees to be terminated for it. — there are no such consequences in most developed nations.