Why the 2016 candidates ignore the sharing economy at their own peril

Before Hillary Clinton gave her big economic speech on Monday, a rumor spread through the tech journalism world: Clinton was about to attack Uber! Based on a passing mention in a Politico article previewing the speech, tech sites played up the rhetorical blitzkrieg to come. "Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton will blast contractor-fueled companies for repressing middle-class wage growth," said Techcruch. Even after she delivered the speech and there was no actual attack on Uber, articles continued to describe her anodyne remarks about the rise of the sharing economy as a "blast," a "diss," and even a declaration of war.

As it happens, Clinton raises an issue that more presidential candidates ought to talk about. We don't yet have much idea of what she would actually do about the transformations in the economy that are taking place, but we ought to press her and the other presidential candidates, Democratic and Republican, for more specifics.

For the record, here's what Clinton actually said on this topic, in its entirety:

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Seldom have I witnessed a political attack of such merciless cruelty.

But here's the point: In many ways, public policy on the workplace is organized around the way things used to be, when people hoped that they could stay with one employer for their entire career, and that employer would provide them a panoply of benefits including health insurance, paid vacations, and a pension. Today, more and more Americans are cobbling together a living from multiple sources. And even many who aren't working for a technology-based company like Uber are doing hourly work that makes scheduling their lives exceedingly difficult and doesn't come with any benefits at all.

Depending on what sort of situation you can put together, it's possible for that kind of work to offer more rewards than the traditional 9-to-5 job. But for millions, the contemporary American workplace is characterized by insecurity: insecurity that they'll have enough work this month to pay their bills, insecurity that they'll be able to put anything away for retirement, insecurity that an illness or family crisis won't send them into a financial tailspin from which they can't recover.

So what can government do? Up until now, Democrats have been offering piecemeal proposals that try to ameliorate that insecurity from one angle or another, trying to get people better wages and treatment. All Democrats want to increase the minimum wage. The Obama administration is updating the rules on overtime so more workers can be paid adequately for the extra hours they work. The Affordable Care Act finally made health insurance at least somewhat portable, so that "job lock" — in which you can't leave your job for fear that you won't be able to get covered — is a thing of the past. They're now pushing for mandatory paid sick leave. But most measures like these concern how traditional workers relate to traditional employers.

Republicans, on the other hand, generally look at the state of the workplace today and say, "What's the problem?" They oppose raising the minimum wage, objected to updating the overtime rules, don't want employers to have to offer paid sick leave, and of course find the ACA to be a Stalinist nightmare of oppression. They love to fetishize Uber because it fights with entrenched taxi unions (and because they hope it will make them seem young and hip), but don't have any particular ideas to help workers adapt to the new world.

There are ideas out there; for instance, Nick Hanauer and David Rolf recently proposed that the government create a Shared Security Account that would work something like Social Security, but provide a means to pay for things like vacations and sick leave. Critically, it wouldn't be at the whim (or under the control) of anyone's employer, but would travel with workers whether they worked for General Motors, waited tables at the local diner, or did odd jobs for TaskRabbit (I interviewed Hanauer about it here).

That's just one idea, and hopefully people will come up with others. But we deserve a debate on how as a country we can adapt to the evolution of work in ways that both maximize the benefits of the changes that are taking place and minimize the number of people getting steamrolled by them. The economy needs innovation and disruption, but it also needs thoughtful and forward-looking policymaking. That may be a lot to expect from presidential candidates. But it doesn't hurt for us to ask.