鈥淲hat鈥檚 going on with my job?鈥
That鈥檚 what an increasing number of anxious Americans are asking themselves.
The US workforce, which has been one of the most productive and wealthiest in the world, is undergoing an alarming transformation. Increasing numbers of workers find themselves on shaky ground, turned into freelancers, temps and contractors. Even many full-time and professional jobs are experiencing this precarious shift. Within a decade, a near-majority of the 145 million employed Americans will be impacted. Add to that the steamroller of automation, robots and artificial intelligence already replacing millions of workers and projected to 鈥渙bsolesce鈥 millions more, and the jobs picture starts looking grim.
Now a weird yet historic mash-up of Silicon Valley technology and Wall Street greed is thrusting upon us the latest economic fraud: the so-called 鈥渟haring economy,鈥 with companies like Uber, Airbnb and TaskRabbit allegedly 鈥渓iberating workers鈥 to become 鈥渋ndependent鈥 and 鈥渢heir own CEOs,鈥 hiring themselves out for ever-smaller jobs and wages while the companies profit.
But this 鈥渟hare the crumbs鈥 economy is just the tip of a looming iceberg that the middle class is drifting toward.聽Raw Deal: How the 鈥淯ber Economy鈥 and Runaway Capitalism Are Screwing American Workers,by veteran journalist Steven Hill, is an expos茅 that challenges conventional thinking, and the hype celebrating this new economy, by showing why the vision of the 鈥渢echno sapien鈥 leaders and their Ayn Rand libertarianism is a dead end.
滨苍听Raw Deal, Steven Hill proposes pragmatic policy solutions to transform the US economy and its safety net and social contract, launching a new kind of deal to restore power back into the hands of American workers