Temp. How to fire core workers and make them unhappy TEMPs

Louis Hyman, a Cornell University professor, has written a new book

He is a refreshing thinker, but monotonous like most teachers, This is why, Jenifer Szalai explains in  her New York Times review

There’s nothing like political and economic upheaval to make boredom look good. An era like the 1950s, which used to be lampooned for its stifling conformity — all those organization men in their gray flannel suits — has since been revered for its stability. To the gig-economy worker who has no idea how many hours she’ll be putting in next week (much less whether she’ll make enough to pay her rent or her health insurance), the prospect of donning a fedora, taking the commuter train into the city, sitting at a desk from 9 to 5 while her ample pension benefits accrue — well, it sounds like a fantasy now.

These are the people FICO loves, because  financing their boredom  has very low risks

Yes a fantasy today

But then those permanent, full-time employees were expensive, and temps were comparatively cheap. There could be beauty in their contingency; you didn’t have to pay them benefits or overtime, and their numbers could be quietly shed in a downturn without announcing embarrassing layoffs. Eventually, “rather than protecting the core workers, Manpower enabled them to be fired.” 

Hyman dates the beginning of this shift to the late 1960s, a time of stagnating profits. Cutting costs was easier than increasing revenues, and executives chose accordingly.

Today we are all temps. because we help corporations make more profits as sacrificial lambs on demand. There are rich temps. There are penniless temps

The solution?

Professor Hyman ending, about the gig economy, is  that apps and online platforms offer the promise of cutting out corporate bosses and rent-seeking middlemen 

Individuals can sell their labor directly to one another. The only thing we need to do is to offer them the support they need — he cites health insurance and a basic income — because “a minimum safety net enables maximum risk taking.”

This debatable, but better than what we have today

Everyone cites the basic income and health insurance because “a minimum safety net enables maximum risk taking.” 

FICO should go out of business, IMO

Louis Hyman thought is as profound as Karl Marx Communist Manifesto nearly 200 years ago. I know because I studied it in a compulsory way. Our society needs new norms to function and bring us sanity and happiness.

A self-portrait

You, me, anybody as a TEMP

If you are not a TEMP yet, do not worry: you will easily become one. It is this fear that creates a new egoism as a new humanity.