Hillary Clinton Is Queen of the Sharing Economy | Economics21:
"Listening to Hillary Clinton on the campaign trail may lead one to assume she is against the sharing economy, or what she calls the “gig economy.”
As she promised in her first major economic address at the New School in New York City, the gig economy is
“raising hard questions about workplace protections and what a good job will look like in the future… I’ll crack down on bosses who exploit employees by misclassifying them as contractors or even steal their wages.”
But when it comes to her personal life, Hillary Clinton does not detest the gig economy—she loves it. The Clintons’ tax returns show that Hillary and her husband Bill are practically gig economy royalty. After leaving the White House, the Clintons
earned just one percent of their labor income from employer paychecks.
The rest
($198 million) came from a variety of
independent contractor gigs.
Since 2000, the Clintons earned about $200 million from working (as opposed to real estate or other investments).
Of that $208 million, $167 million of it (83 percent) came from work that is part of the gig economy, such as giving speeches and private consulting.
If one includes income from other non-employee work (such as book promotions and sales) this number shoots up to $198 million, or 99 percent.
People sometimes mistakenly assume that the sharing economy is nothing more than a few new business platforms such as Uber, Airbnb, Lyft, and TaskRabbit.
But this view severely understates the scale and scope of the sharing economy.
The sharing economy is, above all, about allowing workers to more easily market and provide their productive capital, which includes skills (such as writing or giving speeches) and physical resources (such as cars or living spaces).
This core concept—that of providing brains, brawn, or useful equipment on a per-job basis—
is not novel, but technological progress has made individualized, entrepreneurial work much cheaper and more efficient.
This has opened countless possibilities for mutually beneficial exchange that were unimaginable just a decade or two ago.
But
instead of celebrating the growth of these alternative earnings opportunities, Clinton criticizes the sharing economy for not being subject to the same workplace restrictions and protections that apply to formal employers and employees...."
