I have to gently disagree with part of what you said. In my life experience there are a lot of jobs that are taken by people who are not looking for what I called “family feeding” work (which I agree includes families of one), but rather for “spending money.”
Many high schoolers take jobs that fall into this category: they have parental support and don’t _need_ money, but they want to have some cash for their own entertainment.
These days I know a lot of married couples where one of the two earns a comfortable income such that the other doesn’t _need_ to work. The other person in that case often takes on volunteer work, but also often takes on “gigs” that come with very low pay but perhaps “gas money” or something like that.
I don’t think there’s anything morally wrong with that kind of “token payment” work, because it doesn’t hurt anyone.
My closing point was, to me Doordash and other gig jobs seem to basically be suitable only as “spending money” or perhaps even “token payment” jobs, and yet some people (perhaps many?) are taking them as “family feeding,” work.
So (1) it really concerns me that this is happening, because it is strong evidence that we don’t have enough “family feeding” work available and there are a lot of people really hurting as a result. To me this is the main problem we should be talking about.
And (2) I don’t really understand the outrage at gig jobs for not being “family feeding” jobs. If the work is lousy, don’t do it! That’s not something the government needs to punish - there are plenty of these sub jobs out there that aren’t hurting anyone.
Except then we’re back to (1) - lots of people are so desperate they’re taking a gig and depending on it... which is scary. So how can we create more good quality work for people so they just give door dash the finger and move on, rather than feeling trapped in that as the best work they can get.
> Many high schoolers take jobs that fall into this category: they have parental support and don’t _need_ money, but they want to have some cash for their own entertainment.
I agree those jobs exist. I had them too. The question is whether we should be setting the rules for the economy and jobs to match that use case or the "family feeding" use case.
> So how can we create more good quality work for people so they just give door dash the finger and move on, rather than feeling trapped in that as the best work they can get.
A federal jobs guarantee, universal healthcare, better and more equal public education; those things will increase the leverage that workers have to give gig employers the finger.
Many of those would let even higher paid tech workers give their employers the finger.
Many high schoolers take jobs that fall into this category: they have parental support and don’t _need_ money, but they want to have some cash for their own entertainment.
These days I know a lot of married couples where one of the two earns a comfortable income such that the other doesn’t _need_ to work. The other person in that case often takes on volunteer work, but also often takes on “gigs” that come with very low pay but perhaps “gas money” or something like that.
I don’t think there’s anything morally wrong with that kind of “token payment” work, because it doesn’t hurt anyone.
My closing point was, to me Doordash and other gig jobs seem to basically be suitable only as “spending money” or perhaps even “token payment” jobs, and yet some people (perhaps many?) are taking them as “family feeding,” work.
So (1) it really concerns me that this is happening, because it is strong evidence that we don’t have enough “family feeding” work available and there are a lot of people really hurting as a result. To me this is the main problem we should be talking about.
And (2) I don’t really understand the outrage at gig jobs for not being “family feeding” jobs. If the work is lousy, don’t do it! That’s not something the government needs to punish - there are plenty of these sub jobs out there that aren’t hurting anyone.
Except then we’re back to (1) - lots of people are so desperate they’re taking a gig and depending on it... which is scary. So how can we create more good quality work for people so they just give door dash the finger and move on, rather than feeling trapped in that as the best work they can get.
I hope that makes sense. It’s a tough topic.