Hillary Clinton has decided to take aim at Uber and use it as an example of an industry that needs to be more closely regulated by government. It’s going to backfire, because millenials (and just about everyone else, drivers included) LOVE Uber. Hillary is trying to preserve dying unions, and in the process she is highlighting just how progressive policies screw things up rather than fix them.
Stu: Hillary Clinton, she was back at the podium on Monday giving a speech on the economy and how she’s going to make everything better. Watching her speak is sort of a form of torture not outlawed in America yet, but it should be. I watched it so you didn’t have to. You’re welcome. It was boring, but it was an example of the great mental gymnastics progressives perform in order to attack anything that threatens their leftist utopia dreamland. Watch.
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Hillary Clinton: Today’s marketplace focuses too much on the short term, like second-to-second financial trading and quarterly earnings reports, and too little on long-term investments. Meanwhile, many Americans are making extra money renting out a spare room, designing websites, selling products they design themselves at home or even driving their own car. This on-demand or so-called gig economy is creating exciting opportunities and unleashing innovation, but it’s also raising hard questions about workplace protections and what a good job will look like in the future.
She’s not very good at that job. To translate to human, what she’s saying here is that government has no control over these exciting new industries, and she wants to control them. Progressive unions have worked hard to achieve monopolies on things like the taxi industry, and they’ll be damned if some innovation is going to come around and give them competition. That’s not what they want. She knows what a good job is. You don’t.
People are flocking to companies like Airbnb to make some spare income renting out their rooms. They’re selling stuff on Etsy. They are on eBay as well. They’re of course making money driving their own cars using companies like a Lyft and Uber. People are loving these jobs. It gives people extra income and flexibility, but Hillary knows better than you. She knows better than the entire market. Her will be done, not yours. There’s more.
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Hillary Clinton: To get all incomes rising again, we need to strike a better balance. If you work hard, you ought to be paid fairly, so we do have to raise the minimum wage and implement President Obama’s new rules on overtime, and then we have to go further. I’ll crack down on bosses who exploit employees by misclassifying them as contractors or even steal their wages.
You know she means it when she does that. So, Hillary is going to one, raise the minimum wage; two, force bosses to pay overtime somehow; and the last one, I guess, was crack down on employers who misclassify employees as independent contractors.
First of all, I love the minimum wage angle here. There’s nothing like insulting the audience and telling them that they have no chance to get off minimum wage. You’re so stupid, you’re going to be stuck on it forever. You’ll never get a raise or promotion. You need to vote for Hillary so that she can go in there and debate in Congress and convince them to sign a bill raising your pay. No, that sounds much easier than just showing up and working hard like most people do.
But anyway, when Hillary of course is cracking down on employers who misclassify employees, she’s talking about Uber. Uber has been in a legal battle with the state of California over whether its drivers are employees or independent contractors. It doesn’t matter that almost every Uber driver I’ve ever talked to actually loves working for Uber. Hillary knows better than they do, of course. They’re stupid little people. She’s Hillary Clinton, and her policy looks more French than American.
French government has ordered Paris police to crack down on Uber after protests. Crack down on Uber? Nothing like government taking a solid innovation that makes everyone’s lives better and screwing it up. Now, I never doubted that Hillary wasn’t going to campaign against the free market. I knew that was happening. I just never thought she would say it in such a thinly veiled way.
If the Hillary campaign is going to plant their flag in this giant quest to crush companies like Uber, pass me the popcorn. This is going to be fun. This is the battle I want to see happen. Do you think millennials are going to be on board with this? They get Uber more than any generation. She’s 67. She’s got her own private car services and jets shuttling her around everywhere. She just doesn’t understand how awesome Uber is to the regular person.
An 18-to-35-year-old doesn’t care about unions and job protection and pensions. They care about their freedom to call a stranger at 3:00 a.m. and pick them up from the bar and get them home before they black out—or make some money maybe selling their Star Wars themed quilts. While many of them think they’re progressive, they actually love using the things that the free market provides.
I want to thank Hillary Clinton in advance for making the conservative case to millennials that they’d never buy from us. Uber is the free market in action. Hillary Clinton wants to stifle that with draconian progressive regulations. Go ahead, Hill, mess with Uber. See how that works out for you. Jeb Bush, of course, is trying to capitalize on her mistake. He said he’s going to, and I quote from a press release, “hail an Uber” during his upcoming visit to San Francisco. Someone should probably tell Jeb you’re not out there going, “Hey, Uber,” hailing it really, but hey, A for effort, Jeb.
This is a gross misstep by Hillary really, but it’s only one example of a powerful talking point that conservatives have simply failed to capitalize on. Conservative principles work. The free market works. Progressivism is the thing that screws all that good stuff up. Uber is a fantastic case study of this. Conservative candidates should be looking for more real-life examples like this. They’re just pretty much everywhere. Just ask Detroit how the opposite has gone with progressive policies. How’s that working out for them?
In the meantime, I wish government would just leave Uber alone to do its own thing. It’s a great service. It’s creating jobs, something neither Hillary nor Jeb for that matter can promise to anybody. In fact, if Uber could enter the presidential race, I would bet my children that it would win against Hillary, Bush, anybody as a third-party candidate. That’s how much America loves Uber. Uber 2016, baby! More in a second.
Featured Image: DOVER, NH - JULY 16: Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks during a town hall event at Dover City Hall July 16, 2015 in Dover, New Hampshire. Clinton spoke about how to build an economy that will boost the middle class. (Photo by Darren McCollester/Getty Images)