Just a Bump in the Beltway: December 20, 2003 Archives. The Serf Society.

What Brooks is endorsing is government sponsorship for the race to the bottom, codifying trends in employment which have emerged in the last 20 years. This is government-sanctioned freelancing: you don't really think that the government will ever adequately fund this benefit, do you? Who is going to pay for it? You will. Here's the key: could spend on training, child care, a car, a move to a place with more jobs, or whatever else they think would benefit them. If you are unemployed, particularly if you have been for a while, and, particularly if you have children, chances are that you are going to need retraining AND childcare AND an income AND medical insurance AND may need to move. Having a choice between a bunch of inadequately funded benefits is no choice at all.

If Brooks is representing the administration correctly, this represents a final break in the social contract which has been unraveling for a while now. It treats workers as nothing more than fungible widgets and removes from employers any sense of responsibility for the people they employ and the communities in which they live. For some people, freelancing and self-employment are just great, but this is not something which works for everyone. As employment trends have changed in the last generation, the idea of home/community/work as all part of a continuum of "public commons" in which the well-being of each sphere of life enhances the well-being of the others, has been replaced by a Darwinian competition between these spheres of life. 24/7 is now a zero sum game between them.

grrr is not an adequate thing to say here.