Re: <nettime> California passes Prop 22

Gary points out that "‘a significant part of the capacity of a state to raise taxes comes from the willingness of wage earners to have their earnings taxed … and the willingness of wage earners to be taxed depends to a significant extent on their level of collective solidarity’ (Erik Olin Wright, How To Be An Anti-capitalist in the 21st Century)".

The Illinois ballot included a Fair Tax measure, to change the current flat tax and allow the state legislature to impose a higher rate on the highest earners. This was a no-brainer in a situation where state finances are being wiped out by the pandemic, leading to the curtailment of public services. Interest groups staged massive ad campaigns against it. Think tanks developed the usual bullshit arguments. It doesn't help that previous Democratic legislatures were so corrupt, they voted generous retirement plans for state and city workers, and then never funded those pensions, creating an ongoing fiscal crisis. The Fair Tax failed. Now the people who voted against it will see their own taxes go up, even as employment and public health conditions deteriorate, public schools continue to collapse, neighborhoods decay, etc.

I don't know if the entire political universe can be seen in this grain of sand. Capitalism has created the perfect sandstorm, to blind everyone, each in their own special ways. Meanwhile the Desert advances.

Brian

On Fri, Nov 6, 2020 at 6:13 AM Gary Hall <mail@garyhall.info> wrote:

Yes, it's not just workers in the gig economy who lose out. It's all of us. After all, why should the public continue to pay tax if it’s privately owned firms that are increasingly providing their utilities such as indeed mass transit. Especially if many of those companies are aggressively finding ways of paying as little tax as possible themselves.

Not only does it help make them very valuable for their owners and investors, such a policy around tax has the additional benefit for platform capitalist companies of further reducing the financial resources that are available to local authorities/governments that are already crippled by cuts - thus denying the latter alternative means of raising finances to invest in things like decarbonised public transportation. Uber, Lyft, Instacart, DoorDash and co are thus able to argue that market-oriented solutions are necessary to resolve the problems left unaddressed by an (apparently) ineffective and inefficient public system. That ‘a significant part of the capacity of a state to raise taxes comes from the willingness of wage earners to have their earnings taxed … and the willingness of wage earners to be taxed depends to a significant extent on their level of collective solidarity’ (Erik Olin Wright, How To Be An Anti-capitalist in the 21st Century), only adds to the problem. The result is a downward spiral in which there is less public inclination to pay taxes in a situation where many municipalities are already facing cuts to their budgets. With less money coming in from taxation, and with less of what is spent in a given city actually staying in the local economy, public institutions and social services become more and more run down, thus further eroding levels of collective solidarity. This leaves the way open for more private companies to intervene and offer for-profit ‘solutions’, which in turn leads to less public inclination to pay taxes … and so on.

Gary

On 06/11/2020 11:26, Felix Stalder wrote:
Since we are still waiting, time to think a bit more about the platform
capitalists' victory in California.

Essentially, what it allows them to do is to offload many costs as
externalities. Most directly, onto the workers who are denied benefits
and insurance. This allows them to pursue an extremely inefficient model
(taxis as a form of mass transit). Little surprise, this is not just
economically inefficient -- low wages and no profits -- for everyone but
management and investors. There are also massive geo-system
externalities. This model is also ecologically inefficient, so much so
that even "carbon neutral" cars (paid for by low-paid drives) will not
turn things around.

Felix



https://earther.gizmodo.com/prop-22-shows-why-big-tech-is-the-climate-movement-s-ne-1845573939

<...>

Prop 22 is expected to put more cars on the road, which is particularly
concerning because a recent study [1] found that Uber and Lyft were
responsible for about half of San Francisco’s increase in congestion
between 2010 and 2016. Transportation is also the largest contributor to
U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. Allowing these companies to expand
without giving workers’ the ability to organize is a huge obstacle to
the fight for a just and carbon-free transit sector.

The climate plans rideshare and gig economy companies have put forward
are far from sufficient to meet the scale of the crisis, a crisis that
they will have a larger hand in making worse due to Prop 22. The plans
do nothing about the apps’ wasteful business models, which depend on
workers driving around aimlessly for miles while waiting to pick up
customers. A recent report [2] from Union of Concerned Scientists found
that due to this, car trips from ride-hailing services create nearly 70%
more climate pollution on average than the trips they displace.
Switching to electric vehicles would help, but like fossil fuel firms
attempts to offload the responsibility for climate action onto
consumers, the apps’ pledges put the onus on their drivers to make the
costly switch.

Climate organizers lost this fight against these gig work apps, but then
it won’t be the last one to wage. These companies are becoming some of
the most powerful in the country, and they’re using that power to lobby
for more legislation and ballot measures that protect their interests.
Measures similar to Prop 22 are already in the works in other states.

The climate movement will face an uphill battle to defeat these
measures, but in some ways, it’s well-poised to take up the challenge.
Thanks to the centrality of labor rights in the Green New Deal and some
unions’ shift toward acceptance of climate policy, the overlap between
climate and labor groups’ interests is clearer than ever.



[1] https://www.sfcta.org/projects/tncs-and-congestion
[2] https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/ride-hailing-climate-risks



On 05.11.20 08:56, Felix Stalder wrote:
While we all wait for the counting to finish (and the law cases to
start), here's the best article I could find on the major victory for
the platform capitalists in California, overturning a state-wide labor
law (AB5) which would have forced them to reclassify most gig-workers as
employees (with benefits) rather than contractors (without benefits).
This will likely affect not only the gig economy more widely, but it
also shows how power is leveraged. Not good. Felix



UBER AND LYFT HAD AN EDGE IN THE PROP 22 FIGHT: THEIR APPS
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