Raw deal : how the "Uber economy" and runaway capitalism are screwing American workers

Title:

Author:

Hill, Steven, 1958- author.

ISBN:

9781250071583

Personal Author:

Hill, Steven, 1958- author.

Edition:

First edition.

Physical Description:

326 pages ; 25 cm

Abstract:

"Every day, innovative entrepreneurs pioneer bold economic ideas that change the way we live and work. Companies like Google, Apple, Oracle, Facebook and Twitter aren't the only ones shaping our economic future--there's another trend emerging that will change the ways we work and live. The "sharing economy," or the "collaborative consumption economy," includes companies like TaskRabbit, Airbnb, Uber, Lyft, Zaarly, and DocVacay who are purveyors of an economic system that revolves around sharing human and physical resources. This new aspect to the economy, Steven Hill argues, is a dead end for U.S. workers, as well as for the national economy. In Raw Deal, Hill shows the "sharing economy" is a new and troubling component to what is an overall bad economy that undermines workers. Vulnerable freelancers and day laborers hire themselves out for ever smaller jobs and amounts of money, and it is only the companies who hire them who reap the big benefits. Hill argues that we must shift the support for American workers to one that is individual-based rather than workplace-based. Countering the onset of the freelance society and the new economy is the new civil rights and labor struggles of our time. This important book answers these questions and provides pragmatic solutions to adapt our economic system to its new realities, launching a new civil rights struggle capable of transforming the freelance society into a stakeholder society"-- Provided by publisher.

BISAC Subject:

Business

Subject Term:

Information technology -- Economic aspects -- United States.

New business enterprises -- United States.

Entrepreneurship -- Moral and ethical aspects -- United States.

Working class -- United States.

Labor -- United States.

Geographic Term:

United States -- Economic conditions -- 2009-

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Format	Library	Call Number	Status
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Summary

"What's going to happen to my job?"

That's what an increasing number of anxious Americans are asking themselves.

The US workforce, which has been one of the most productive and wealthiest in the world, is undergoing an alarming transformation. Increasing numbers of workers find themselves on shaky ground, turned into freelancers, temps and contractors. Even many full-time and professional jobs are experiencing this precarious shift. Within a decade, a near-majority of the 145 million employed Americans will be impacted. Add to that the steamroller of automation, robots and artificial intelligence already replacing millions of workers and projected to "obsolesce" millions more, and the jobs picture starts looking grim.

Now a weird yet historic mash-up of Silicon Valley technology and Wall Street greed is thrusting upon us the latest economic fraud: the so-called "sharing economy," with companies like Uber, Airbnb and TaskRabbit allegedly "liberating workers" to become "independent" and "their own CEOs," hiring themselves out for ever-smaller jobs and wages while the companies profit.

But this "share the crumbs" economy is just the tip of a looming iceberg that the middle class is drifting toward. Raw Deal: How the "Uber Economy" and Runaway Capitalism Are Screwing American Workers, by veteran journalist Steven Hill, is an exposé that challenges conventional thinking, and the hype celebrating this new economy, by showing why the vision of the "techno sapien" leaders and their Ayn Rand libertarianism is a dead end.

In Raw Deal , Steven Hill proposes pragmatic policy solutions to transform the US economy and its safety net and social contract, launching a new kind of deal to restore power back into the hands of American workers.

Author Notes

STEVEN HILL is a Senior Fellow with the New America Foundation and a Holtzbrinck Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin. He is a veteran journalist and author of five books, including the internationally praised Europe's Promise: Why the European Way is the Best Hope in an Insecure Age , which was selected as one of the "Top Fifteen Books of 2010" by The Globalist . His articles and media interviews have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, Financial Times, The Guardian, Le Monde, Die Zeit, Project Syndicate, Los Angeles Times, The Nation, Politico, Mother Jones, Huffington Post, Salon, Slate, BBC, C-SPAN, Fox News, NPR, PBS, Democracy Now, Austrian Public Broadcasting and many others. He lives in San Francisco, CA.

Reviews (2)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Companies such as Uber, Airbnb, and TaskRabbit promote the idea that their employees enjoy a lifestyle of flexible hours and financial freedom. But Hill's (Europe's Promise) scathing critique of this vision will give readers pause before checking their smartphones for their next vacation rental or ride to the airport, as he develops the image of a well-educated Uber driver earning less than minimum wage while her bedroom is Airbnb'd to a tourist. Unfortunately, instead of focusing on delivering a solid critique of the labor practices in the sharing, or "share the crumbs," economy, Hill throws in some extraneous material about robots replacing workers, black markets, and Keynesian economic policy. Sturm und Drang sits in for concise reasoning, as Hill decries "the mortal spiral that America is spinning around, like a marble rolling around a gravity well." In such moments of lumbering polemic, the book obfuscates its more important thesis: the need for a new kind of labor movement that can meet the innovation of the sharing economy with an equally bold vision for fair, decent, and well-paying work and a portable social safety net that will benefit freelancers, temps, and "solopreneurs" everywhere. (Oct.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Kirkus Review

San Francisco-based veteran journalist Hill (Europe's Promise: Why the European Way Is the Best Hope in an Insecure Age, 2010) examines the degenerative influences of technology businesses on the national economy.Despite the massive wealth and innovation flourishing throughout Silicon Valley, there's also a major downside, writes the author. It lies in the premise of a "sharing economy," in which participating businesses actively repurpose or outsource formerly full-time positions with project-to-project freelancers and independent contractors who earn reduced salaries with little or no benefits packages. Hill argues that this trend has irreparably damaged the American workforce, making it increasingly impermanent, disposable, and transient. The author writes of personally experiencing this trend himself after being laid off from full-time employment and then having to pay exorbitant health care premiums and payroll tax payments as a freelance writer. There's a "sheer arrogance of avarice" afoot in the country, Hill writes, and he zeroes in on a selection of popular, lucrative tech companies that have an impact on future economic forecasts. Bolstered by startling statistical data and a generous sampling of real-life profiles, the author supports his theories with examples of apps like short-term home-rental company Airbnb, ridesharing behemoth Uber, and gig-economy brokerage platforms like Upwork and TaskRabbit. They are all contributory, in their own capacities, to disruptive side effects ranging from slumping economic and employment scales to the fissuring of closely knit neighborhoods. Hill's survey of the movement's lethal underworld of drugs and crime, robotic automation, and "economic singularity" is equally alarming. Inasmuch as the author emerges as a detractor, he counters his mostly critical text with proactive solutions involving options like all-employee benefits packages, tax deductions, and labor law reform. A provocative, remedy-based perspective on the joint complexities of economic stability and ever expanding technology. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Introduction Earthquake in San Francisco	p. 1
1 Back to the Future in the 1099 Economy	p. 18
2 Airbnb and the Sharing Economy: Economic Savior or... Dead End?	p. 39
3 The Ticking Time Bomb of Uber	p. 70
4 Race to the Bottom, with Task Rabbit and Elance-Upwork	p. 101
5 Underground: The Road to Hell Is Paved with Silk	p. 124
6 Robots and Techno Sapiens Are Coming for Your Job	p. 139
7 The Specter of the Economic Singularity	p. 162
8 The New Economy Visionaries: Leaders Leading Us... Where?	p. 181
9 Labor's Dilemma	p. 200
10 Solutions I: A New Social Contract for the New Economy	p. 222
11 Solutions II: Making the New Economy Work in the Information and Innovation Age	p. 237
12 Conclusion: Maria's Life Matters! Long Live Maria Fernandes!	p. 254
Acknowledgments	p. 263
Notes	p. 265
Selected Bibliography	p. 314
Index	p. 320

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Summary

Summary

Author Notes

Reviews (2)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Kirkus Review

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