On August 26, Sara Horowitz writes in the Los Angeles Times:
For much of the past century, the Era of Big Work — the 40-hour workweek and its employer-provided benefits — were the foundation of our economy. That was then. Now, independent work is the new normal.
Freelancers, independent contractors and temp workers are on their way to making up the majority of the U.S. labor force. They number 42 million, or one-third of all workers in the nation. That figure is expected to rise to 40% — some 60 million people — by the end of the decade.
A number of factors both economic and cultural are causing the independent workforce to swell. Technological advances and globalization have greatly contributed to the erosion of traditional work arrangements. The private sector’s need for speed and adaptability is increasingly incompatible with maintaining a large, full-time workforce. And of course, the Great Recession has put to rest the notion that there is such a thing as a stable full-time job.
It’s true that many have been forced into this brave new world of freelance work by external factors. But many are getting into it by choice because independent work aligns with a paradigm shift in values that is happening both at work and in the marketplace.
Nearly 9 in 10 workers affiliated with Freelancers Union, a 250,000-member nonprofit, say they wouldn’t return to traditional work if they had the choice. This sentiment is especially true for millennials, who will make up 75% of the workforce by 2025 — and who work and consume differently than generations before them.
Success during the Era of Big Work meant promotions, benefits packages and pensions. Americans went to work at 9 a.m. and left at 5 p.m. — OK, let’s be honest, 6 or 7 p.m. — primarily for the material rewards that flowed from such employment: a new car, robust benefits, a three-bedroom house and two weeks of paid vacation. For the past century, in other words, remuneration defined success. For many workers, it still does.
However, among the growing ranks of independent workers, labor itself is increasingly its own reward, as is the opportunity to establish a work-life balance that was unthinkable during the Era of Big Work. Millions of freelancers are working when they want and how they want. They’re building gratifying careers but also happy lives. And they’re helping build a support system so they can live the lives they want.
Yes, the comfort of a regular paycheck is gone, but it’s replaced by other, arguably greater comforts: a flexible schedule, the sense of ownership and pride that comes with being one’s own boss, the ability to prioritize health and wellness in ways that are incompatible with traditional employment structures.
A recent survey from the freelancer hiring hub Elance-oDesk found an overwhelming 89% of freelancers prefer work flexibility to a traditional corporate career. Almost half of millennials prioritize job flexibility over pay, according to a national survey conducted last year by Millennial Branding, a research and consulting firm, and Beyond.com, a career advisory website.
As a result, the way Americans think about work is changing, and so is the way they spend money. Millennials in particular have reimagined the very idea of ownership and fueled the rise of conscious capitalism. Four out of five are more likely to put their purchasing power toward companies that support a cause they care about, according to a 2011 study by Participant Media.
Some argue that millennials don’t buy big-ticket items because they can’t afford them — for instance, the number of cars purchased by the 18-to-34 demographic fell almost 30% between 2007 and 2011. But that’s only one factor in a much larger equation.
In reality, millennials tend to value experiences more than things. Their consumption habits are driven less by what kind of job they have and more by their pursuit of ever-evolving technology, brands that align with their ideals and sustainable and social purpose purchasing.
From what we buy to how we work — and why we do either — the American economy is undergoing a change every bit as epic as the shift a century ago from an agrarian society to an industrial one. When workers left the farm for the factory, there were, undoubtedly, plenty who mourned the loss of the old way of life, while others eagerly looked to the next era with vision and enthusiasm. The same is true today.
Some view freelancing as a short-term path to return to the well-worn avenue of Big Work. Meanwhile, others are eagerly embracing collaborative consumption and various digital platforms — such as Etsy and Airbnb — that have enabled the freelance economy to proliferate.
Despite the tremendous changes in our economic landscape, Washington is all but ignoring the broader economic implications, as evidenced by the failure of the Bureau of Labor Statistics to even track independent workers, much less adapt to their economic needs.
Freelancers, on the other hand, aren’t just learning to adapt. Many are thriving in this new marketplace, creating powerful new platforms for working and living — co-ops, credit unions, community health and wellness centers — tailor-made for millennial technology and the 21st century economy.
The Era of Big Work is indeed over, and good riddance. Welcome to the Era of Meaningful Independence.
While the deterioration of job opportunities continues, the American consumer is being put into an impossible situation of being asked to consume more to drive the economy and reduce saving, and at the same time are being told they must reduce consumption dramatically in order to accumulate sufficient savings for retirement.
Of course, the whole problem would go away if we financed both retirement and wealth-creating, income-producing physical productive capital needs out of “future savings,” thereby increasing the capacity to consume and support the economy while simultaneously building financial security for every American citizen.
“Future savings” means financing future investment in capital asset formation on a self-financing, self-liquidation basis in which the investment generates dividend earnings enough to pay off insured, interest-free capital credit loans and once paid off, continues to produce income for the new owners.
This far better and productive approach would create a new way for working and non-working Americans to start their own retirement savings: MyCHA. CHA stands for Capital Homestead Account. It would be a super-IRA or asset tax shelter for citizens. The Treasury should start creating an asset-backed currency that will enable every child, woman and man to establish a CHA at their local bank to acquire a growing dividend-bearing stock portfolio comprised of newly-issued stock representative of viable American growth corporations to supplement their incomes from work and all other sources of income.
We can create new asset-backed money for investment through the existing but dormant Section 13(2) rediscount mechanism of each of the 12 regional Federal Reserve banks that would be backed by “future savings” (that is, future profits from higher levels of marketable goods, products, and services).
The CHA would function as a savings and income account that effectively would build a nest egg over time, using interest-free, insured capital credit loans. A CHA would be offered to EVERY American, whether employed or not. Of course, those employed may also have additional opportunities to acquire personal ownership in their companies using an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) trust financial mechanism.
The CHA would process an equal allocation of productive credit to EVERY citizen exclusively for purchasing full-dividend payout shares in companies needing funds for growing the economy and private sector jobs for local, national and global markets. The shares would be purchased on credit wholly backed by projected “future savings” in the form of new productive capital assets as well as the future marketable products and services produced by the newly added technology, renewable energy systems, plant, rentable space and infrastructure added to the economy. Risk of default on each stock acquisition interest-free loan would be covered by private sector capital credit risk insurance and reinsurance, but would not require citizens to reduce their funds for consumption to purchase shares. There would be no prerequisite requirement to qualify for an annual set capital credit loan other than American citizenship.
The idea is to stimulate economic growth to build a future economy that can support general affluence for EVERY citizen and provide retirement security for EVERY American.
The solution is based on the premise that what is needed is for the system to facilitate spreading the ownership of productive capital more broadly as the economy grows with full payout of dividend earnings, without taking anything away from the 1 to 10 percent who now own 50 to 90 percent of the corporate productive capital wealth assets. In doing so, the ownership pie would desirably get much bigger and their percentage of the total ownership would decrease, as ownership gets broader and broader.
This would benefit the traditionally disenfranchised poor and working and middle class, who are propertyless in terms of owning productive capital assets. It would also result is tremendous economic growth, which would benefit everyone including the already wealthy ownership class, and create opportunities for real jobs, not make-work as an expanded economy is built that can support general affluence for EVERY American citizen. Thus, as productive capital income is distributed more broadly and the demand for products and services is distributed more broadly from the earnings of capital, the result would be the sustentation of consumer demand, which will promote economic growth. That also means that over time, EVERY child, woman and man could accumulate a diversified portfolio of wealth-creating, income-producing productive capital assets to provide economic security in retirement and not be dependent on having to work during retirement or rely on government-assisted welfare.
One might ask how we failed to grasp the significance of productive capital’s input and the necessity for broad private sector individual ownership? Unfortunately, ever since the 1946 passage of the Full Employment Act, economists and politicians formulating national economic policy have beguiled us into believing that economic power is democratically distributed if we have full employment––thus the political focus on job creation and redistribution of wealth rather than on full production and broader productive capital ownership accumulation. This is manifested in the belief that labor work is the ONLY way to participate in production and earn income. Yet, the wealthy ownership class knows that this notion is idiotic.
In real productive terms, productivity gains are the result of tectonic shifts in the technologies of production, which consequently eliminates the need for human labor, destroys jobs, and devalues the worth of labor.
One should ask what form would the structural reforms take. Employment in this new enlightened age would start at the time one enters the economic world as a labor worker, to become increasingly a productive capital owner, and at some point to retire as a labor worker and continue to participate in production and to earn income as a productive capital asset owner until the day you die. As a substitute for inheritance and gift taxes, a transfer tax would be imposed on the recipients whose asset holdings exceeded $1 million. This would encourage those owning concentrations of productive capital assets (effectively the 1 to 10 percent) to spread out their monopoly-sized estates to all members of their family, friends, servants and workers who helped create their fortunes, teachers, health workers, police, other public servants, military veterans, artists, the poor and the disabled.
Other stipulations for the structural reform would entail tax policy reform to incentivize corporations to pay out all profits to their owners as taxable personal incomes to avoid paying stiff corporate income taxes and to finance their growth by issuing new full-dividend payout shares for broad-based individualized employee and citizen ownership with full-voting rights.
We need to encourage the insurance industry to expand their product lines to market Capital Credit Insurance to cover the risk of default for banks making loans to Capital Homesteaders under the proposed Capital Homestead Act. Under the provisions of the Act, risk of default on each stock acquisition loan would be covered by private sector capital credit risk insurance and reinsurance issued by a new government agency (ala the Federal Housing Administration concept), but would not require citizens to reduce their funds for consumption to purchase shares.
The end result is that ALL American citizens would become empowered as owners to meet their own consumption needs and government would become more dependent on economically independent citizens, thus reversing our country’s trend where all citizens are becoming more dependent for their economic well-being on the “state,” our only legitimate social monopoly.
Implementing the Capital Homestead Act would significantly empower ALL Americans to accumulate over time a viable, diversified ownership portfolio in our nation’s growth companies and create a truly unique, global-leading just and environmentally responsible Ownership Society that fosters personalism, creativity and innovation. Embarking on a new path to prosperity, opportunity and economic justice will expand growth of our market economy in ways that democratize future ownership opportunities, while building a future economy that can support general affluence for EVERY American.
For more on how to accomplish such structural reform, see “Financing Economic Growth With ‘FUTURE SAVINGS’: Solutions To Protect America From Economic Decline” at NationOfChange.org http://www.nationofchange.org/financing-future-economic-growth-future-savings-solutions-protect-america-economic-decline-137450624 and “The Income Solution To Slow Private Sector Job Growth” at http://www.nationofchange.org/income-solution-slow-private-sector-job-growth-1378041490.
Support the Capital Homestead Act at http://www.cesj.org/homestead/index.htm and http://www.cesj.org/homestead/summary-cha.htm
Support the Unite America Party Platform, published by The Huffington Post at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gary-reber/platform-of-the-unite-ame_b_5474077.html as well as Nation Of Change at http://www.nationofchange.org/platform-unite-america-party-1402409962 and OpEd News at http://www.opednews.com/articles/Platform-of-the-Unite-Amer-by-Gary-Reber-Party-Leadership_Party-Platforms-DNC_Party-Platforms-GOP-RNC_Party-Politics-Democratic-140630-60.html.
Also see “Shocking Picture Of What Life Will Look Like When You Can’t Afford To Retire at http://www.alternet.org/economy/shocking-picture-what-life-will-look-when-you-cant-afford-retire
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-contract-economy-20140803-story.html#page=1
