It has never been easier to find little jobs for little payments. If you are being paid through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk to tag people’s photos or being hired to put up shelves via TaskRabbit, who needs a real job? For enthusiasts, these micro-jobs mean sticking two fingers up to the Man and rejecting wage-slavery in favour of freedom. For pessimists, they are precarious ways to earn a living that offer no pension or health insurance. Welcome to the “gig economy”, a phrase that evokes both the romantic ideals and the grinding poverty of life as a journeyman musician.
找到挣小钱的零工从未如此简单过。如果你通过亚马逊(Amazon)的土耳其机器人(Mechanical Turk)受雇，为别人标记相片，或者通过TaskRabbit受雇搭个架子，谁还需要真正的工作？对热心者来说，这些零工意味着可以向老板说不，选择自由，不做工资的奴隶。对悲观者来说，这些是不稳定的谋生方式，没有任何养老或者医疗保险。欢迎来到“零工经济”(gig economy)，这个术语让人想起零工音乐家的浪漫理想和贫困潦倒。
The app-based gig economy is still small. Perhaps one in 200 American workers rely on it for their main source of income; nobody is really sure. Yet it seems likely to grow, and, as it grows, so will a question: does the way we link social protections to jobs make sense?
基于APP的零工经济仍然规模很小。或许200名美国工人当中只有1人把零工作为主要收入来源；没有人真正确定。然而零工经济似乎在发展，而且随着它的发展，问题随之而来：我们将社会保障和工作联系在一起的方式明智吗？
Details vary but most advanced countries have a list of goodies that must be provided by employers rather than the government or the individual. In the UK a full-time worker is entitled to 28 days of paid leave. In the US the default provider of health insurance is your employer. In many countries, employees cannot be sacked without long notice periods and a decent pension is the preserve of people with a decent job. As for freelancers, they may enjoy flexibility and independence and sometimes even a good living — but as far as social protections go, they are on their own.
虽然细节方面有所不同，但大多数发达国家都有一揽子必须由雇主（而非政府或者个人提供）的福利。在英国，一名全职工人享有28天的带薪假期。在美国，默认的医保提供者是你的雇主。在许多国家，要解雇雇员必须先提供很长的通知期，而体面的养老金是有体面工作的人的专享福利。至于自由职业者，他们可能工作灵活且独立，有时甚至还能有不错的收入，但就社会保障而言，他们不得不靠自己。