Coworking: Like it or not, it’s political

Today’s New York Times Magazine’s “The Way We Live Now” column is entitled Home-Office Politics: Why Americans who work for themselves deserve a New Deal. Much of the article validated information quoted in our own business plan: nearly a third of US workers qualify as “independent”, including the self-employed, contractors, part time workers, and temps. The time is right for coworking, that’s for sure.

The author, Matt Bai points out that workers, particularly those in the middle class, are discouraged from working remotely, even though new technology makes it easier than ever to do so. He contends that even more people would be working independently if they weren’t essentially penalized for doing so.

• The self-employed pay twice the amount of Social Security as their peers who have official employers.
• The self-employed are seriously limited in terms of insurance options (this goes for very small businesses, too). In many cases, they’re stuck getting individual insurance.
• Disability insurance is all but out of reach for the self-employed.

As long as insurance, and benefits in general, remain tied to employers, individuals will be discouraged from striking out on their own.

In other words, a system devised before the word “telecommute” ever existed helps to keep ordinary workers chained to their modular cubicles, while richer workers get to take advantage of a new, potentially liberating lifestyle.

One idea brought forth by Karen Kornbluth, Barak Obama’s policy chief in the Senate, involved replacing employee benefits with portable “family insurance”.

Imagine how the world of coworking would change if individuals were no longer penalized for striking out on their own…

The top four cities on that NYT list all have coworking spaces. Perhaps Colorado Springs does, too. If so, I haven’t heard of it.

The time is right for coworking. We really don’t have to worry about competition – there’s plenty of room for all sorts of coworking locations and all sorts of models. And we’ll all do better if the business and tax regulations support us.