Yes, I worked retail for 3 years and several of my friends have driven for lyft.

And given that some of those lyft driver friends are software engineers, I'd say their basic math skills are pretty solid.

Even in retail, my coworkers could balance their accounts. They may not be calculating out Roth IRA rollovers but it's extremely insulting to assume someone can't do math because they work in an industry you don't care for.

Nor amongst my friend group, some of who still work in retail, have I ever heard of someone being fired for not being weirdly chipper. "Don't be a dick to customers" is about the most anyone of us have been told.

Have you worked in retail? How many lyft drivers do you know outside of your rides?

I worked in retail for years, and have also worked in call centers, gas stations, things like that. I will say the quality of employees varies widely, there's a lot of really smart folks in these jobs (sounds like yourself included).

I think it's easy for smart people to get trapped in these bad jobs due to individual circumstances or mental issues (speaking for myself).

I'm sure there's a big variety of ways people get treated, but in general, no you don't get fired for not being chipper that's an exxaggeration (except at some places I'm sure, maybe Disney or Hooters?) I don't take lyft but I do know one driver, they ended up having car issues, having to quit driving, and it was basically a big waste of money for them.

IMO it is a stronger line of argument to just assume the gig workers have the same amount of financial literacy as the rest of us (I mean have worked in retail jobs, and I’ve worked with engineers, and the retail workers seem to have a pretty good gut feel for financial problems that engineers never bump into!). Whether or not it is technically true, assuming we’re all equally educated circumvents the bad-faith “how dare you assume these people aren’t able to evaluate their own financial positions” attacks.

Minimum wage solves a collective action problem. You don’t have to be financially illiterate to have been fucked over by a collective action problem.

I believe the financial literacy problem is more widespread than retail workers, it actually affects a huge portion of all workers (and non-workers).

Just look at the average credit card debt, etc. The average person has terrible credit because they do not pay their bills, they are not reliable or trustworthy financially, not because they are bad people, but because they are incapable of managing risk appropriately. Of course, there are legit reasons to have bad credit (medical bills etc) but most americans are not that.

If most people you know are financially literate, I think you may be in a bubble. I was too, until I had my first few bad jobs.

> Minimum wage solves a collective action problem. You don’t have to be financially illiterate to have been fucked over by a collective action problem.

Also true and kinda obviates the need for this discussion at all. This crap should not be legal, full stop.

> Just look at the average credit card debt, etc. The average person has terrible credit because they do not pay their bills, they are not reliable or trustworthy financially...because they are incapable of managing risk appropriately

I agree with you that most financial mistakes come from not understanding risk.

I don't think it is necessary for every end consumer to deeply understand risk and at no point in human history have we asked them to. Risk is really, really hard and even very intelligent and capable people whose jobs are to professionally analyze risk fuck it up.

Historically finances have been simple enough that small rules (eg save 10% of your paycheck) were sufficient to help a consumer offset risk. These rules no longer are. Why?

There's a lot of small factors for one. A big one being subscriptions/payment plans/other unescapable recurring costs. Another one is relatively complex financial instruments (payday loans) being available to consumers and marketed in confusing and predatory ways. (This isn't an exhaustive list at all)

> This crap should not be legal, full stop.

We are taking an extremely desired and powerful tool away from the average consumer. A tool they like and use! We have to at least understand the value prop and ideally replace it if we are to ban it.