Raw deal
Subtitle: how the "Uber economy" and runaway capitalism are screwing American workers
By: Steven Hill
Edition: First edition.
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Trade
Published: 2015
Language: eng
Number of pages: 326
ISBN-13: 9781250071583
Subjects: Economic conditions; Working class; Entrepreneurship; New business enterprises; Information technology; Labor
Description: "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"--
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages [265]-319) and index.
Table of contents: title: Earthquake in San Francisco; title: Back to the Future in the 1099 Economy; title: Airbnb and the Sharing Economy: Economic Savior or...Dead End?; title: The Ticking Time Bomb of Uber; title: Race to the Bottom, with TaskRabbit and Elance-Upwork; title: Underground: The Road to Hell Is Paved with Silk; title: Robots and Techno Sapiens Are Coming for Your Job; title: The Specter of the Economic Singularity; title: The New Economy Visionaries: Leaders Leading Us...Where?; title: Labor's Dilemma; title: Solutions I: A New Social Contract for the New Economy; title: Solutions II: Making the New Economy Work in the Information and Innovation Age; title: Conclusion: Maria's Life Matters! Long Live Maria Fernandes!