Axios

Uber announced today that it had launched in-app tipping across the U.S., a significant move to placate its huge workforce of drivers. The tipping feature was already in use in a number of U.S. cities.

To celebrate launch day, Uber also stated that it'd be matching all tips on rides taken today as a way "to thank our drivers for going the extra mile."

Why it matters: This was a feature that many drivers — considered independent contractors by Uber — have considered long overdue as a way to capitalize on good service, especially considering that, per TechCrunch, Uber's main rival, Lyft, has generated more than $250 million in in-app tips for its drivers since its launch in 2012.

A quarter of all financial services professionals are worried automation is going to negatively impact their job security, according to a LinkedIn survey.

Context: It's already happening. The Department of Labor projects employment for bank tellers will decline 8% from 2014 to 2024, for example.

The most worried finance professional: Retail bankers, with 34% saying automation was a significant concern.

Hedge your bets: 29% of financial advisors and wealth managers said the biggest threat to fintech is "reduced interaction" and less "feedback from human-client relationships."

Stephen Ketchum, principal of the hedge fund Sound Point Capital tells the FT that shorting traditional American retail stocks could ultimately be a better bet than shorting the subprime mortgage market.

Retail bears point to the S&P 500 retail index as proof. It has risen more than 10% this year, but only because Amazon stock now accounts for one-third of the gauge — other retail stocks have been flat since 2015.

Why it matters: Retail square footage will continue decline in the coming months, as retailers respond to consumer demand for online shopping. That's bad news for legacy retail firms, mall owners, and other commercial landlords. What's still up for debate, however, is what the larger economic and employment impact will be. Goldman Sachs estimates that ecommerce companies only require 0.9 employees per $1m of sales compared with 3.5 for bricks-and-mortar retailers, but other analysts argue that these estimates mistakenly don't count workers in ecommerce warehouses and fulfillment centers as retail employees.

One of the non-negotiable legal and cultural axioms across California is the right to change jobs — feelings and friendships can suffer, but tech workers especially can be loyal to a company one day, and working for its rival across town the next. Among the winners are workers, whose pay usually rises the most when switching jobs.

But not in Idaho, which has the strictest law in the U.S. hobbling such job promiscuity, per The New York Times. The law, signed last year, bolsters the enforceability of the "non-compete clause," language often inserted into the fine print of employment contracts — from tech workers to hair dressers — to make it harder for people to leave to a rival company.

Why it matters: Employers say such restrictions help protect their efforts to build their businesses. Worker advocates, however, say that they unfairly hold down wages and infringe on a basic freedom — the right to work where you want. The debate over non-competes comes amid a growing trend in which Americans are much less likely to move around for work — not from where they live, and not where they work.

If you ask almost anyone whether the world of retail has utterly changed, they'd probably say, "heck, yes." Since 2007, the share of e-commerce sales has nearly tripled, while several iconic brick-and-mortar stores, like Circuit City and Sports Authority, have disappeared from the landscape. Others, like Sears and Macy's, are conducting massive layoffs.

Economists especially look at retail and see a stagnant industry that has failed to adopt new technologies and become more efficient. In fact, according to an analysis by McKinsey, between 2005 and 2015 there has been no growth whatsoever in retail productivity. And while e-commerce does thrive on technological advances, it has failed, unlike previous waves of innovation, to enrich the nations where it's used.

The U.S. is in the third-longest economic expansion in post-war history. There are more jobs, but wages have been a sore spot: since the financial crash, the typical American's earnings have barely grown when you account for inflation. To track this dynamic over time, I worked with Jed Kolko, chief economist at Indeed, who analyzed U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data and projections on which this animated chart relies. Sector by sector, the chart follows employment and wages since 2006, just before the crash.

For four decades, the U.S. and the West at large have seen a stark and almost-uniform trend: the number of jobs has grown and the unemployment rate dropped, but average incomes have not. The bulk of the economic fruits in the U.S. and much of Europe has steered to the top, while relatively low-paying jobs -- now almost a quarter of Germany's working-age population, versus 15% in the mid-1990s -- have swelled.

Over the last year, this economic dynamic has spilled over into political instability on both continents. Manufacturing belts with outsized financial anxieties unexpectedly went to Donald Trump's column last year, and he was elected president; a similar phenomenon played out in the U.K. They and other countries have sought to buck the "establishment." And there is no sign that the economy in the U.S. and elsewhere is going to suddenly lift many more boats — fuel for more political chaos.

We asked five experts the following question: How do we avoid the political instability of stagnant income?

• Robert J. Gordon, economics professor, Northwestern University, author The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The political pendulum will swing back
• Darrick Hamilton, director of urban policy, the New School: The dice should not be loaded
• Edmund S. Phelps, Nobel laureate and economics professor, Columbia University: Give us grassroots innovation
• Lyman Stone, agriculture economist, USDA: Resist the taker-state
• Tobias Stone, founder, Newsquare: Inequality shatters societies