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Or it could be about protecting employee rights against exploitative corporations who flout the law for profit.

Edit: and society for that matter. See Al Capone, a murderer, being finally arrested for tax evasion as an example.




Curious, in which world has taxation ever been for the benefit of the employee?


Taxation is, broadly, spent on citizens and citizens benefit from that. I pay taxes that cover the police as well as the schooling that lowers the chance of people around me having to resort to crime.


In the context of Uber vs NJ, the drivers are already remitting taxes as contractors. The $650M demand from the state isn't a driver initiative with them demanding "Uber needs to pay more taxes.." it's the state saying "What we've collected from drivers isn't enough and we want more from Uber.."


>"What we've collected from drivers isn't enough and we want more from Uber.."

Or its fundamentally correct under the law and Uber has misclassified its drivers as independent contracts whereas they should properly be classified as employees.

After all Uber did disclose this was significant risk in their S-1, and further that such a reclassification could be an existential threat to the business.

It sounds conspiratorial, but now that they have gone public (and investors have cashed out and dumped the bag) the money that was roadblocking these moves by government (note the article makes it clear NJ has been pursuing these taxes for 4 years) has dried up and governments will begin to act. Its no surprise to anyone in the know, just follow the money (in this case the shorts)


I wonder how many pre-IPO investors are making money on the way down with those shorts.

The "sharing economy" is a scam of epic proportions.


You are assuming that the Uber drivers are actually paying their unemployment insurance and disability insurance taxes. Chances are they are not doing so, because independent contractors typically don’t pay into those system and are not eligible to receive benefits.


There are a lot of externalities to Uber operations that are currently being paid by the society, the state is simply collecting some compensation from Uber.


In the world where ex-emoloyees collect unemployment insurance benefits when SuperMegaCorp lays them off.


Health care, roads, education, police, unemployment benifit, child care... where do you think taxes go that DOESNT benifit the employee?


Aren't tariffs (import taxes) supposed to benefit employees?


Tariffs cause the price of imported goods to rise, which is bad for everyone, except this tiny minority of employees of the respective industry that get to keep their jobs and salaries.


Only in parts of the world where inequality is high.


We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21539377.


Yea but even if some cases are net beneficial, part of the whole "rule of law" thing is to avoid that.


[flagged]


So I get it. The comment is being sarcastic. But the value is pretty low, right? It's just "I agree with you and here's a poor rendition of arguments opposing so that we can make fun of them". I get it's useful because stuff like that is great in-group signaling and builds bonds but perhaps it's not really that useful when discussing?


What a pointless comment. It's just a bunch of sarcasm with no information. I was doing part time delivery while freelancing a couple years ago. Please post something substantive not this junk.




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