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It’s great that gig workers were included in the CARE bill. Hopefully this starts a trend of more bills including protections for gig workers. I fully support these workers striking for basic rights.

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Don't companies not pay taxes for gig workers to get unemployment?

Is there going to be any change to that?

No. Gig workers are "self employed", who traditionally do not pay unemployment insurance such that traditional employers do (as a sole proprietor; if you incorporate and pay yourself as an employee, you would then be eligible for unemployment insurance; I imagine this is very rare as a gig worker, and unsure if any platforms support such a configuration).

This legislation doesn't change that, but it likely pulls some of those gig workers out of the system, as they might collect more on unemployment than working limited gig work available. TBD if this puts supply pressures on platforms.

Personal opinion: The stimulus is generous enough it's going to cause gig platforms to bleed out, as the stimulus is directed at the workers, not at the platforms. Bird is already performing mass layoffs. [1]

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22707935

Legitimate businesses and their customers subsidizing VCs and their managers, highly paid employees, and customers.

In my experience as a business owner I was not eligible to collect unemployment insurance even though I had to pay into it. Worst of both worlds.

I think you took this question too literal. Uber et al. have not paid unemployment and other benefits for these "contractors" that are now supposed to receive exactly these benefits. It is literally a bailout for their workforce.

Which I'm happy that we are doing, these are real persons after all, but then we must necessarily dismantle them afterwards to make sure it doesn't repeat.

> It’s great that gig workers were included in the CARE bill.

This was specifically advocated for by Senator Sanders. He threatened to tighten the restrictions even further on the $500 billion bailout of corporations if this condition was not met.

https://twitter.com/RespectableLaw/status/124303461436252569...

I want to admire him for that, but then I re-read that "$500 billion bailout of corporations" part. This movie was terrible the first time I was forced to watch it...

The people who desperately need this relief are going to look past that. Compromise is inevitable.

At least some of those desperate people remember the time they were underwater on their mortgage, and then the bank took their house at the same time the bank was getting bailed out and its execs were getting big bonuses. Well, maybe they bought too big a house, and were rightly punished when real estate crashed? This time around, we'll have to be pretty heartless to blame them for getting fired because of a pandemic. When their house goes up for auction this time, somehow it will be the same people bidding for it again, using free loans from the government. I may be out ahead of this with my cynical take, but the public will catch up with me, just like they did last time. (Actually I have to give a lot of credit to Dylan Ratigan; he figured it out before I did this week.)

Bailouts don't have to go mostly to politically connected rich turds. Somehow they always do...

Run for office if you want to contribute towards a fix.

Does that seem likely to be effective? I don't imagine I'm a better, more politically appealing, or more capable person than e.g. Tulsi Gabbard. She has a great story, and she has been right about everything, every time there has been a political question. Yet she is demonized by the war media and even many Democrats. As long as Gabbard and good people like her are frustrated in their efforts to end our stupid wars and use the trillions saved thereby to help regular people, I doubt my running for anything would contribute anything.

Besides, the fix for the corrupt broken system does not exist in the corrupt broken system.

Is there a source for this that isn't random twitter accounts?

Looking at the Senate record[0] I can't see anything about the Senator and there doesn't seem to be any news coverage of his involvement in the bill other than the fact that he missed procedural votes for the initial draft.

[0] https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/354...

I’m sure a lot of negotiations are not done on the record—that’s how it works—but here’s a clip of Sanders advocating: https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4863928/user-clip-corona-viru...

The negotiations were certainly not on the record, but we know who was at the table from reporting and where many provisions came from.

* Senators Hoeven and Stabenow secured the $9.5 billion and other aid for the agricultural industry.

* Senators Thune and Warner pushed for the new tax benefit for employers helping employees pay off student loans.

* Senator Shelby got a cap on funds being used for dredging work on harbors removed.

* Senator Leahy ensured every state got a minimum of $1.5 billion in funds so small states weren't left out.

* Senator Booker got the Bureau of Prisons to making videoconferencing free for inmates.

Obviously Secretary Mnuchin and Senator Schumer did most of the heavy lifting.

I can't find anything about Senator Sanders, and that clip is from after the unemployment provisions were already in the bill. The Senator didn't mention anywhere in that speech that he pushed for the inclusion of the unemployment provisions. He actually said "this isn't the bill I would have written," which I personally would have followed up on with an explanation of what I did to make the bill better if I had worked on it.

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