[twblalock]

There is a floor to what people will be willing to accept -- if they can make more money from unemployment benefits than from working, they won't work.

Many Uber drivers are facing a choice between gig work and unemployment, and they chose gig work. If they had better options they would have chosen those instead, but they didn't. Clearly they prefer gig work to unemployment, and for most of them, those were the only two options.

Taking away gig work does not help gig workers. It removes the only option they had, and it forces them into unemployment. If that is the outcome they wanted, they would have chosen it already.

[newacct583]

That's not the way UI works. Benefits must be qualified for; you generally have to have had a job that you lost (gig economy jobs complicate this severely and often disqualify people). You can't just "quit" and pick up benefits. And there is a time limit in all states after which the benefits terminate.

Very, very few people at any given time have a "choice" as to whether to get unemployment or work a gig job.