[kalleboo]

I'm not American so I'm curious, do contractors not have to pay into these systems themselves? I'm from a European country, and if you're self-employed and working contracts, when you do your taxes, all the social insurance stuff instead gets paid by you directly (so your total income tax is much higher as you're paying all the employment taxes that are normally hidden from you)

[bkor]

In Netherlands you can skip out on paying various things, e.g. pension, and various social insurances. E.g. to get paid if you're not working any more, work disability, long time sickness pay.

Various companies forced people to become fake contractors. They didn't pay them enough that these fake contractors actually could still have the same social benefits/security.

This resulted in the government bailing out loads of contractors. Basically the "profit for the company, losses for the government" way of working.