4 ms·

This is a very good point; if you drive your car to work then you pay gas and depreciation just like an Uber driver, except you don't get to tax-deduct it.

camgunz 9y ago
Definitely, but "I commute to/from work" is a lot different than "I drive for 10 hours a day, every day".
- prepend 9y ago
  It’s certainly different, but I think it should be in the comparison. I drive 10 hours a week, not per day. But there’s a cost. To say “you make $10/hour” and an Uber driver makes $8.55 after expenses and taxes is not very useful because the Uber driver has more cash in pocket. I think this is useful for an academic paper to compare apples to oranges. And the author directly compared this to minimum wage which seems like an amateur mistake for a researcher from MIT. Unless they have a policy angle they are promoting and are not a fair broker of info.
  - theptip 9y ago
    Agreed - if it was an apples-to-apples comparison we wouldn't need an academic paper.
tyingq 9y ago
You also pay self employment taxes. W2 and 1099 income aren't directly comparable. Oh, and health insurance as a contractor is WAY higher than as an employee. That has to eat into their wages a lot.
- tyingq 9y ago
  Downvote mysteries again. What of my comment isn't accurate? Edit: Lol. Downvote on this one too with no reply. "You're wrong and here's why" adds value for everyone. "You're wrong" is close to useless.
  - pessimizer 9y ago
    You didn't say "You're wrong," you started mentioning other things which might be significant expenses also. I personally upvoted because I was giving the benefit of the doubt. In the response, you proved me wrong; you were mentioning other things not because you thought they were comparable, but as a way to discount the thing you were replying to. You weren't actually interested in whether the costs you mentioned were comparable to the cost of a commute, you just wanted to silence the comparison for some reason. I'm assuming it was based on the law of averages, aka there's some things here and some things there, it probably all washes out in the end, but I think it's better to actually add everything up than to assume. Useful?
    - tyingq 9y ago
      Yes, thanks, though I was equating the unexplained anonymous downvotes as “you’re (I’m) wrong”...not my comment. Just adding some common misses when people equate 1099 rates with w2. I wasn’t arguing your comment, just embellishing. I rarely assume parent is downvoting, I don’t think HN allows that.

camgunz 9y ago

Definitely, but "I commute to/from work" is a lot different than "I drive for 10 hours a day, every day".

prepend 9y ago
It’s certainly different, but I think it should be in the comparison. I drive 10 hours a week, not per day. But there’s a cost. To say “you make $10/hour” and an Uber driver makes $8.55 after expenses and taxes is not very useful because the Uber driver has more cash in pocket. I think this is useful for an academic paper to compare apples to oranges. And the author directly compared this to minimum wage which seems like an amateur mistake for a researcher from MIT. Unless they have a policy angle they are promoting and are not a fair broker of info.
- theptip 9y ago
  Agreed - if it was an apples-to-apples comparison we wouldn't need an academic paper.

tyingq 9y ago

You also pay self employment taxes. W2 and 1099 income aren't directly comparable. Oh, and health insurance as a contractor is WAY higher than as an employee. That has to eat into their wages a lot.

tyingq 9y ago
Downvote mysteries again. What of my comment isn't accurate? Edit: Lol. Downvote on this one too with no reply. "You're wrong and here's why" adds value for everyone. "You're wrong" is close to useless.
- pessimizer 9y ago
  You didn't say "You're wrong," you started mentioning other things which might be significant expenses also. I personally upvoted because I was giving the benefit of the doubt. In the response, you proved me wrong; you were mentioning other things not because you thought they were comparable, but as a way to discount the thing you were replying to. You weren't actually interested in whether the costs you mentioned were comparable to the cost of a commute, you just wanted to silence the comparison for some reason. I'm assuming it was based on the law of averages, aka there's some things here and some things there, it probably all washes out in the end, but I think it's better to actually add everything up than to assume. Useful?
  - tyingq 9y ago
    Yes, thanks, though I was equating the unexplained anonymous downvotes as “you’re (I’m) wrong”...not my comment. Just adding some common misses when people equate 1099 rates with w2. I wasn’t arguing your comment, just embellishing. I rarely assume parent is downvoting, I don’t think HN allows that.