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It's easy for middle and upper income individuals with disposable income to advocate for these kinds of laws. If you're using Uber to get home from the bar late

It's easy for middle and upper income individuals with disposable income to advocate for these kinds of laws. If you're using Uber to get home from the bar late at night once a week, an extra 25% is no big deal. But if you're on the lower income scale and you need Uber to help you get between your second and third job (because you can't afford a car and public transit is unreliable) or you need it to get to a doctor's appointment, this kind of change is a big deal. What will also likely happen is that ridership decreases at the margins. People won't cut it out completely, they'll just use it proportionally less. Drivers might make a little more, but fewer drivers will be able to make any money at all.

toomuchtodo 6y ago
This is not an excuse for one cohort of poverty to subjugate the other by way of Silicon Valley. If public transportation is not reliable, make it reliable. If people aren't paid enough, improve wage and labor requirements. Many countries provide for their workers' transportation without Uber, so why can't we? For example: > But if you're on the lower income scale and you need Uber to help you get between your second and third job (because you can't afford a car and public transit is unreliable) or you need it to get to a doctor's appointment, this kind of change is a big deal. If this is the problem we're solving for (getting you between multiple distant jobs that you desperately need to make ends meet), and have determined that Uber is the only or best solution, we have already failed. The solution to poverty is not serfdom.
- baron816 6y ago
  If society decides that everyone should have minimum standard of living despite their skill level or net contributions, then it should be society as a whole that bares that burden, not just the enterprises that employ low/no skill labor or their consumers. A minimum wage is nothing more than a tool in our arsenal to fight poverty. I (and many economists) argue that it is one of our worst tools. A negative income tax is much better. It won't distort labor markets or risk driving up unemployment. And it's fairer in that the burden is shared collectively rather than just by some industries. Goldman Sachs doesn't get hurt by a minimum wage, but small business owners, such as those running a convenience store, do.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - DeonPenny 6y ago
    Minimum wage by ruins a lot of poor young people ability to gain skills. And everytime its raise poor people especially poor young boys with no skills take the brunt of the pain.
    - fhsm 6y ago
      All of this was familiar to me except the sex effect. Why are males disproportionately impacted?
      - alisonkisk 6y ago
        Women can be supported by men in exchange for cohabitation, without minimum wage concerns.
      - blix 6y ago
        One argument I've heard is that women tend to do better at men at picking up 'soft skills,' i.e. interacting with other people, while men tend to be better at physical labor. New low-skill jobs tend to focus on soft skills, while jobs requiring physical labor are disappearing. It's unclear how much of this shift is driven by the minimum wage, but certianly it incentivizes automation/outsourcing/illegal labor, which tend to disproportionately affect physical jobs. This leaves poor, uneducated men pretty vulnerable. I don't have any sources on hand, but there was a nice feature in the Economist about this a year or two ago.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - DeonPenny 6y ago
        I heard its cause 1 boys do worse in school because they more disagreeable so learning on the job becomes more important. And 2 men do 80% of the trade jobs which on the job training or being comfortable in job environment before hand is a lot more important. But yeh boys unemployement jumps when minimum wage is increase typically. And increases criminal behavior based on some studies. https://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/teenjobless.png?x88519 https://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/teenjobless.p...
- DeonPenny 6y ago
  We dont have public transporation cause we are half as dense and it would be a huge money pit. We know other countries do this to and its ruins they local budgets like spain. The solution for this problem is also not forcing businesses and people into idea that in the real world makes little of no since. Cause with this 25% hike many of those driver will lose their jobs when less people take uber. I know since uber pools been taken away I personally hardly ever uber unless its 100% necessary.
- curryst 6y ago
  > If public transportation is not reliable, make it reliable. Because people who don't use it don't want to pay for it. There is a lot of opposition to public transport that doesn't pay for itself. There is also the horrible feedback loop of "only poor people take public transportation" stigma, making it more difficult to break even.
  - mullingitover 6y ago
    > There is also the horrible feedback loop of "only poor people take public transportation" stigma, making it more difficult to break even. At least in LA, the problem isn't "poor people ride public transportation." It's straight up "I don't feel safe." I tried using the Metro and didn't buy a car for nearly a year after I moved here, but there were incidents I experienced that made me abandon it. It had nothing to do with poor people. "A survey of riders showed that women feel less safe than men during all stages of their transit trips — especially at night. For example, just 13% of women surveyed said they felt safe waiting for a train or bus after dark, compared to 30% of men." [1] When 87% of women and 70% of men don't feel safe on public transportation that's a real problem and it's no surprise that people abandon it as soon as the possibly can. [1] https://laist.com/2019/10/03/los-angeles-la-metro-women-public-transportation-travel-report.php https://laist.com/2019/10/03/los-angeles-la-metro-women-publ...
    - oblio 6y ago
      It's not a law of physics that public transport is unsafe. Why isn't it being made safe? It's not rocket science.
      - njarboe 6y ago
        I would say making people feel safe when using public transport in the US is harder than building a rocket at this point in history. And building rockets is still very hard.
  - gugagore 6y ago
    It is worth being more precise than "there is a lot of opposition". That opposition corresponds to a political ideology that public entities like mass transportation and USPS [1] should break even to begin with. It's not a requirement that these public services break even. In fact, (controversially) it's the opposite. [2] [1] https://about.usps.com/newsroom/national-releases/2019/1114-usps-reports-fiscal-year-2019-results.htm https://about.usps.com/newsroom/national-releases/2019/1114-... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deficit_spending https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deficit_spending
- MuffinFlavored 6y ago
  > If public transportation is not reliable, make it reliable. If government spending is inefficient and Americans don't feel well represented by their elected officials, then fix it. Oh wait... it isn't that easy...
- lend000 6y ago
  By your logic, the problem is not that people are willingly signing up to drive for Uber, but that the government has failed to foster an economic environment in which "poverty" is an option that plenty of drivers will willingly choose. There is already a minimum wage that people can go out and try to find a job for, but mysteriously, there have always been plenty of Uber drivers! Is it perhaps that by creating a minimum wage law, there are fewer jobs available? Or maybe they just like the convenience of working for Uber, even if they aren't guaranteed to make minimum wage after expenses. Or would you go so far as to suggest that these people are too stupid to know they are being voluntarily oppressed, but because you know what's best for them, you would help legislate them out of a job? (Make no mistake: higher prices will result in fewer Uber rides.) The real minimum wage is zero. Just add a UBI and get rid of all the other market distorting AOC-economics. The resounding success of the gig-economy (in terms of labor supply specifically) is a side effect of a minimum wage that is too high, crowding people out of full time jobs. In the meantime, adding these minimum wage laws to Uber will just result in more people making nothing and fewer people having convenient transport.
- underseacables 6y ago
  It’s not our responsibility to make up for your lack of income. Poverty sucks, but punishing the masses so you can feel good about “fair share” creates resentment and abandon.
  - vincnetas 6y ago
    Im poor. Can i skip on regulations that require me to have car that does not polute insane amounts, or for example insurance? By your idea, yes. Because im poor and just let me use anything i can to get by. Now we have multimilion company that says, "we are servicing the poor, so we shoul be allowed to skip on these expenses too" do you see where this is going?
    - TeMPOraL 6y ago
      In fact, we're talking about the company that did skip on insurance without even saying it, or asking for permission. It's Uber - one of the more sociopathic companies in recent history (all well documented). Not some charity.
  - harimau777 6y ago
    It is society's responsibility to make up for its member's lack of income. That's what society is: people coming together in order to provide for the mutual good.
- darawk 6y ago
  > This is not an excuse for one cohort of poverty to subjugate the other by way of Silicon Valley. If public transportation is not reliable, make it reliable. If people aren't paid enough, improve wage and labor requirements. Many countries provide for their workers' transportation without Uber, so why can't we? Offering someone money for doing something is not 'subjugation'.
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    It is, if the alternative for that person is to starve, and the very existence of that offer at scale perpetuates this situation.
  - harimau777 6y ago
    Suppose that the following are true: - Someone is not able to make enough money to have a reasonable quality of life despite contributing to society. - Society's rules do not provide an alternative (for example, because natural resources and land have already been claimed or because someone doesn't have access to capital). It would not make sense for someone to willingly go along with a system that does not allow them to live a decent life. Therefore they must be going along with the system due to some form of coercion. A situation where someone is forced via threat to go along with a system that does not meet their needs is subjugation.
    - darawk 6y ago
      Ya, I know that argument. But it's not an accurate description of the world in which we actually live. There's tons of places, even in developed countries like the US where its extremely cheap to buy fertile land that you could live off of if you were so inclined. People choose not to do this because they like to live in urban megacities. They like to live with all the comforts and benefits that the system has provided them with. They want all the benefits of capitalism without the costs.
      - harimau777 6y ago
        Most people don't have the training or resources to setup or run a profitable farm. In addition, in many cases the land is highly remote; in which case someone living on it isn't really part of society anymore.
hshshs2 6y ago
people shouldn’t be working multiple jobs out of necessity, you’re optimizing for the wrong problem
thatfrenchguy 6y ago
Lower income folks don't take uber though.
adrr 6y ago
People in poverty don't use ride sharing services. http://news.gallup.com/poll/237965/snapshot-uses-ride-sharing-services.aspx#:~:text=Forty-five%20percent%20of%20adults,likely%20to%20use%20the%20services http://news.gallup.com/poll/237965/snapshot-uses-ride-sharin....
- vecter 6y ago
  Maybe "poverty" isn't the right word or metric, but according to that poll, 25% of people who make under $24k/year use ridesharing and 48% of people who make under $60k/year use ridesharing. Granted, $50-60k annual salary might be middle-class in some parts of the country, but it's pretty clear that a huge fraction of the lower-income population in the United States do use ridesharing.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > Granted, $50-60k annual salary might be middle-class in some parts of the country Median individual income is around $35K, median household income is a but above $60K. $50-$60K isn't typical of middle class in any sane class schema, but it's definitely above middle income for an individual, and nearly at it for a household, not “lower income”.
  - throwaway201103 6y ago
    Uber can be cheaper than owning a car if you only need a car occasionally. If you're using it daily, it almost certainly is more expensive.
    - martinald 6y ago
      Depends on cost of parking. Parking can be outrageously expensive downtown in many cities, to the point it is cheaper to take Uber in.
alisonkisk 6y ago
They don't need a 3rd job under Seattle minimum wage law.
thehappypm 6y ago
Yeah, you sound like a shill if you’re claiming that a significant portion of the Uber customer base uses Uber to get between their second and third jobs. That’s gotta be .01% of Uber rides.
arcticbull 6y ago
> But if you're on the lower income scale and you need Uber to help you get between your second and third job (because you can't afford a car and public transit is unreliable) or you need it to get to a doctor's appointment, this kind of change is a big deal. Sure but this is a prisoner's dilemma situation. This price increase allows drivers to earn a living wage which in turn decreases the number of people at the lower end of today's income scale. Fewer people will have the problems you're describing in the first place. Do this over and over, and ultimately, nobody's left at the bottom. On the other hand, if you reject all attempts to bring people out of poverty because there's currently people in poverty, well, you're never going to achieve a single thing. This increase in wages also yields an increase in tax revenue, which can be spent to improve things like public transit, further ameliorating the situation moving forward. Keep in mind this is a 25% increase in what many view as a luxury good, but the minimum wage is going up by... 25%. So, for everyone at the bottom, it's a net zero change. On the other hand their buying power in other areas of their lives actually goes up. So who is being hurt? I guess the folks in the donut hole?
- kortilla 6y ago
  > This price increase allows drivers to earn a living wage which in turn decreases the number of people at the lower end of today's income scale. Fewer people will have the problems you're describing in the first place. >Do this over and over, and ultimately, nobody's left at the bottom. You made huge unfounded leaps here. There’s no reason to believe a magic money tap will just pay for the increased costs. It’s just as likely to kill jobs. There’s a reason setting minimum wage to $100k a year doesn’t work.
  - arcticbull 6y ago
    There's no magic money here. Companies that don't pay subsistence wages leave employees to collect public benefits to make up the difference. The businesses are being indirectly subsidized by the taxpayer. All setting a minimum wage at a subsistence pay does is stop the companies from mooching off the taxpayer. > It’s just as likely to kill jobs. And that's fine, there's no reason that all jobs have to be done by humans. This is why wholesale reform needs to take place as well, including basic income. Not leaning into robotization of low-skilled jobs amounts to turning America into a renaissance faire as a make-work project.
Waterluvian 6y ago
The idea of someone with three jobs using Uber is ridiculous and wild. He's public transit truly been destroyed like that in many American cities?
- holler 6y ago
  I think convenience is a big factor. With Uber you can press a few buttons in the app, be swiftly picked up, taken to your destination, and continue on with minimal fuss. With public transit you must figure out the best route, wait for the next scheduled pick up, usually make multiple stops between your pickup and destination, and likely arrive much later than if you took an Uber.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - oblio 6y ago
    A lot of public transport networks these days have apps, including navigation support.
- nine_k 6y ago
  The problem is that America has few cities, in the European sense. Many of the newly-grown cities are just endless suburbs around a small downtown. In a dense city like NYC, public transportation is the obvious choice. In a semi-dense city like Seattle, public transportation is a viable choice. In a nebulous agglomeration like LA, public transportation is hard to rely on.
  - tomjakubowski 6y ago
    People took 278 million trips on an LA Metro bus in 2019, which is more ridership than on any bus or rail system in the United States outside of NYC. We also have the most light rail ridership in the country. (but who cares about that?) Our public transit gets a really bad rap. It is certainly not as good as NYC or Chicago or, probably, Seattle, but maybe you could use Houston as an example in the future.
malvim 6y ago
> But if you're on the lower income scale and you need Uber to help you get between your second and third job (because you can't afford a car and public transit is unreliable) or you need it to get to a doctor's appointment, this kind of change is a big deal. Well, in this line of thinking, you should just tell people to quit their third job and go drive an Uber, I hear they'll be paying more as a minimum wage... There's no excuse to keep people in poverty because other people are poor.
- sparrish 6y ago
  I guess you missed the part where the you don't have a car.
  - tmpz22 6y ago
    Uber provides financing for new cars, which I believe becomes a sort of entrapment as they then have to work long hours for uber to keep up with the car payments. You ever notice how so many uber drivers have brand new expensive cars?
    - toast0 6y ago
      It's been a while since I saw the terms for Uber leases, but I thought they were easy to end, amd no mileage limits. So, you shouldn't end up entraped; if it's not worth while, give the car back once you find a better job (which could be not having one, depending on the real costs and income) If the terms are more onerous than I remember, maybe you can get stuck.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
astrea 6y ago
Assuming that your narrative is factual, is it Uber's obligation to subsidize the government's infrastructure failings?
- neuromanser 6y ago
  (Not the parent poster.) I believe this question needs to be answered first: is society obligated to subsidize Uber? I believe the answer is "no". Uber is not owed any profit. A life-sustaining income does not have to be in the form of food stamps. A law prescribing life-sustaining wages is a government's infrastructure.
  - throwaway201103 6y ago
    Uber doesn't owe society its existence or jobs either. If they shut down, who's paying the life-sustaining wages?
    - oblio 6y ago
      Didn't society exist before Uber? I'm not sure. Also, did Uber build the roads, bridges, parking lots? Did it research the internet? I also heard GPS was researched in a secret Uber lab...
  - astrea 6y ago
    They aren't obligated to subsidize Uber. However, they are within their right to set their own prices.
balls187 6y ago
Public transportation options in Seattle (and greater metro area) are quite reliable.
smogcutter 6y ago
The proposal that people struggling to get between their second and third jobs are doing so by regularly taking cabs is an absurdity.
onetimemanytime 6y ago
I am sure the same arguments were made back then for burger prices, Walmart stuff and so on. The reality is that Seattle apparently has set a $16+ an hour being as the minimum hourly salary and that means no one should work for less. End of story. Working for Uber [or insert other corp here] and still needing to apply for food stamps, free healthcare and rent assistance costs taxpayers too.
justicezyx 6y ago
> public transit is unreliable I read the Power Broker [1] about Robert Moses' obsession of disallowing public transit in the public lands that under his control. That results miserable comutting for New Yorkers nowadays. Bob mastered the political system in a way that he can do obviously irrational things under public eyes, and without any fallout at the time, until the book was published much later after Bob actually has died. I haven't researched extensively in US public transit, but I am inclined to believe that the public transit were handicapped intentionally through the market operators, in collaboration of the political apparatus. I could not see any obvious evidence of this particular event being positive or negative. But, I am more sure that the political system in US is crippled to the point that it's not capable of producing long-term positive policy any more. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Power-Broker-Robert-Moses-Fall/dp/0394720245 https://www.amazon.com/Power-Broker-Robert-Moses-Fall/dp/039...
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
jandrewrogers 6y ago
FWIW, I know a person in Seattle who just acquired a (used) car because of this. Not because they wanted to, it is expensive for them and they don’t have much money, but because the alternative no longer made financial sense. They had been using Uber/Lyft previously to live their life.
koluna 6y ago
This is the most Silicon Valley response ever to the new law. Yeah, poor people are struggling with 3 jobs, but Uber is the problem. Maybe let’s address public transportation and the underlying reasons for 3 jobs instead of having a Silicon Valley VC darling try to squeeze more profits.
megablast 6y ago
It is insane to Suggest people working 3 jobs are using Uber.
beowulfey 6y ago
Bicycle transit is free and works great within 5-10 miles. That’s about the same distance I would use an Uber for. Can’t recommend it enough.
- Broken_Hippo 6y ago
  If you live in a place designed for it and with weather good enough for it. Most jobs I've had did not have a secure place to store a bicycle while I was at work. Oh, and the roads: Some places, I couldn't take a direct route because bikes weren't allowed on those roads (I lived a couple miles outside of town). The country roads that were available to me took longer. Not to mention that I had to share the road with cars (laws) and the cars didn't have my safety in mind. And then you get into hygiene and weather. Few places had somewhere I could dry off in the rain: I didn't know studded bike tires (for snow) existed until I moved to Norway. Few places really and truly accepted a sweaty employee showing up for work either - and again, no place to freshen up. Sometimes I would be lucky to have room to store snow/rain shoes.
rualca 6y ago
> But if you're on the lower income scale and you need $<insert_expense> this kind of change is a big deal. The problem is not in value-added services costing money. The problem is widespread poverty in the US, which bars the majority of its citizens from having a decent quality of life.

toomuchtodo 6y ago

This is not an excuse for one cohort of poverty to subjugate the other by way of Silicon Valley. If public transportation is not reliable, make it reliable. If people aren't paid enough, improve wage and labor requirements. Many countries provide for their workers' transportation without Uber, so why can't we? For example: > But if you're on the lower income scale and you need Uber to help you get between your second and third job (because you can't afford a car and public transit is unreliable) or you need it to get to a doctor's appointment, this kind of change is a big deal. If this is the problem we're solving for (getting you between multiple distant jobs that you desperately need to make ends meet), and have determined that Uber is the only or best solution, we have already failed. The solution to poverty is not serfdom.

baron816 6y ago
If society decides that everyone should have minimum standard of living despite their skill level or net contributions, then it should be society as a whole that bares that burden, not just the enterprises that employ low/no skill labor or their consumers. A minimum wage is nothing more than a tool in our arsenal to fight poverty. I (and many economists) argue that it is one of our worst tools. A negative income tax is much better. It won't distort labor markets or risk driving up unemployment. And it's fairer in that the burden is shared collectively rather than just by some industries. Goldman Sachs doesn't get hurt by a minimum wage, but small business owners, such as those running a convenience store, do.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- DeonPenny 6y ago
  Minimum wage by ruins a lot of poor young people ability to gain skills. And everytime its raise poor people especially poor young boys with no skills take the brunt of the pain.
  - fhsm 6y ago
    All of this was familiar to me except the sex effect. Why are males disproportionately impacted?
    - alisonkisk 6y ago
      Women can be supported by men in exchange for cohabitation, without minimum wage concerns.
    - blix 6y ago
      One argument I've heard is that women tend to do better at men at picking up 'soft skills,' i.e. interacting with other people, while men tend to be better at physical labor. New low-skill jobs tend to focus on soft skills, while jobs requiring physical labor are disappearing. It's unclear how much of this shift is driven by the minimum wage, but certianly it incentivizes automation/outsourcing/illegal labor, which tend to disproportionately affect physical jobs. This leaves poor, uneducated men pretty vulnerable. I don't have any sources on hand, but there was a nice feature in the Economist about this a year or two ago.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - DeonPenny 6y ago
      I heard its cause 1 boys do worse in school because they more disagreeable so learning on the job becomes more important. And 2 men do 80% of the trade jobs which on the job training or being comfortable in job environment before hand is a lot more important. But yeh boys unemployement jumps when minimum wage is increase typically. And increases criminal behavior based on some studies. https://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/teenjobless.png?x88519 https://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/teenjobless.p...
DeonPenny 6y ago
We dont have public transporation cause we are half as dense and it would be a huge money pit. We know other countries do this to and its ruins they local budgets like spain. The solution for this problem is also not forcing businesses and people into idea that in the real world makes little of no since. Cause with this 25% hike many of those driver will lose their jobs when less people take uber. I know since uber pools been taken away I personally hardly ever uber unless its 100% necessary.
curryst 6y ago
> If public transportation is not reliable, make it reliable. Because people who don't use it don't want to pay for it. There is a lot of opposition to public transport that doesn't pay for itself. There is also the horrible feedback loop of "only poor people take public transportation" stigma, making it more difficult to break even.
- mullingitover 6y ago
  > There is also the horrible feedback loop of "only poor people take public transportation" stigma, making it more difficult to break even. At least in LA, the problem isn't "poor people ride public transportation." It's straight up "I don't feel safe." I tried using the Metro and didn't buy a car for nearly a year after I moved here, but there were incidents I experienced that made me abandon it. It had nothing to do with poor people. "A survey of riders showed that women feel less safe than men during all stages of their transit trips — especially at night. For example, just 13% of women surveyed said they felt safe waiting for a train or bus after dark, compared to 30% of men." [1] When 87% of women and 70% of men don't feel safe on public transportation that's a real problem and it's no surprise that people abandon it as soon as the possibly can. [1] https://laist.com/2019/10/03/los-angeles-la-metro-women-public-transportation-travel-report.php https://laist.com/2019/10/03/los-angeles-la-metro-women-publ...
  - oblio 6y ago
    It's not a law of physics that public transport is unsafe. Why isn't it being made safe? It's not rocket science.
    - njarboe 6y ago
      I would say making people feel safe when using public transport in the US is harder than building a rocket at this point in history. And building rockets is still very hard.
- gugagore 6y ago
  It is worth being more precise than "there is a lot of opposition". That opposition corresponds to a political ideology that public entities like mass transportation and USPS [1] should break even to begin with. It's not a requirement that these public services break even. In fact, (controversially) it's the opposite. [2] [1] https://about.usps.com/newsroom/national-releases/2019/1114-usps-reports-fiscal-year-2019-results.htm https://about.usps.com/newsroom/national-releases/2019/1114-... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deficit_spending https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deficit_spending
MuffinFlavored 6y ago
> If public transportation is not reliable, make it reliable. If government spending is inefficient and Americans don't feel well represented by their elected officials, then fix it. Oh wait... it isn't that easy...
lend000 6y ago
By your logic, the problem is not that people are willingly signing up to drive for Uber, but that the government has failed to foster an economic environment in which "poverty" is an option that plenty of drivers will willingly choose. There is already a minimum wage that people can go out and try to find a job for, but mysteriously, there have always been plenty of Uber drivers! Is it perhaps that by creating a minimum wage law, there are fewer jobs available? Or maybe they just like the convenience of working for Uber, even if they aren't guaranteed to make minimum wage after expenses. Or would you go so far as to suggest that these people are too stupid to know they are being voluntarily oppressed, but because you know what's best for them, you would help legislate them out of a job? (Make no mistake: higher prices will result in fewer Uber rides.) The real minimum wage is zero. Just add a UBI and get rid of all the other market distorting AOC-economics. The resounding success of the gig-economy (in terms of labor supply specifically) is a side effect of a minimum wage that is too high, crowding people out of full time jobs. In the meantime, adding these minimum wage laws to Uber will just result in more people making nothing and fewer people having convenient transport.
underseacables 6y ago
It’s not our responsibility to make up for your lack of income. Poverty sucks, but punishing the masses so you can feel good about “fair share” creates resentment and abandon.
- vincnetas 6y ago
  Im poor. Can i skip on regulations that require me to have car that does not polute insane amounts, or for example insurance? By your idea, yes. Because im poor and just let me use anything i can to get by. Now we have multimilion company that says, "we are servicing the poor, so we shoul be allowed to skip on these expenses too" do you see where this is going?
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    In fact, we're talking about the company that did skip on insurance without even saying it, or asking for permission. It's Uber - one of the more sociopathic companies in recent history (all well documented). Not some charity.
- harimau777 6y ago
  It is society's responsibility to make up for its member's lack of income. That's what society is: people coming together in order to provide for the mutual good.
darawk 6y ago
> This is not an excuse for one cohort of poverty to subjugate the other by way of Silicon Valley. If public transportation is not reliable, make it reliable. If people aren't paid enough, improve wage and labor requirements. Many countries provide for their workers' transportation without Uber, so why can't we? Offering someone money for doing something is not 'subjugation'.
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  It is, if the alternative for that person is to starve, and the very existence of that offer at scale perpetuates this situation.
- harimau777 6y ago
  Suppose that the following are true: - Someone is not able to make enough money to have a reasonable quality of life despite contributing to society. - Society's rules do not provide an alternative (for example, because natural resources and land have already been claimed or because someone doesn't have access to capital). It would not make sense for someone to willingly go along with a system that does not allow them to live a decent life. Therefore they must be going along with the system due to some form of coercion. A situation where someone is forced via threat to go along with a system that does not meet their needs is subjugation.
  - darawk 6y ago
    Ya, I know that argument. But it's not an accurate description of the world in which we actually live. There's tons of places, even in developed countries like the US where its extremely cheap to buy fertile land that you could live off of if you were so inclined. People choose not to do this because they like to live in urban megacities. They like to live with all the comforts and benefits that the system has provided them with. They want all the benefits of capitalism without the costs.
    - harimau777 6y ago
      Most people don't have the training or resources to setup or run a profitable farm. In addition, in many cases the land is highly remote; in which case someone living on it isn't really part of society anymore.

hshshs2 6y ago

people shouldn’t be working multiple jobs out of necessity, you’re optimizing for the wrong problem

thatfrenchguy 6y ago

Lower income folks don't take uber though.

adrr 6y ago

People in poverty don't use ride sharing services. http://news.gallup.com/poll/237965/snapshot-uses-ride-sharing-services.aspx#:~:text=Forty-five%20percent%20of%20adults,likely%20to%20use%20the%20services http://news.gallup.com/poll/237965/snapshot-uses-ride-sharin....

vecter 6y ago
Maybe "poverty" isn't the right word or metric, but according to that poll, 25% of people who make under $24k/year use ridesharing and 48% of people who make under $60k/year use ridesharing. Granted, $50-60k annual salary might be middle-class in some parts of the country, but it's pretty clear that a huge fraction of the lower-income population in the United States do use ridesharing.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > Granted, $50-60k annual salary might be middle-class in some parts of the country Median individual income is around $35K, median household income is a but above $60K. $50-$60K isn't typical of middle class in any sane class schema, but it's definitely above middle income for an individual, and nearly at it for a household, not “lower income”.
- throwaway201103 6y ago
  Uber can be cheaper than owning a car if you only need a car occasionally. If you're using it daily, it almost certainly is more expensive.
  - martinald 6y ago
    Depends on cost of parking. Parking can be outrageously expensive downtown in many cities, to the point it is cheaper to take Uber in.

alisonkisk 6y ago

They don't need a 3rd job under Seattle minimum wage law.

thehappypm 6y ago

Yeah, you sound like a shill if you’re claiming that a significant portion of the Uber customer base uses Uber to get between their second and third jobs. That’s gotta be .01% of Uber rides.

arcticbull 6y ago

> But if you're on the lower income scale and you need Uber to help you get between your second and third job (because you can't afford a car and public transit is unreliable) or you need it to get to a doctor's appointment, this kind of change is a big deal. Sure but this is a prisoner's dilemma situation. This price increase allows drivers to earn a living wage which in turn decreases the number of people at the lower end of today's income scale. Fewer people will have the problems you're describing in the first place. Do this over and over, and ultimately, nobody's left at the bottom. On the other hand, if you reject all attempts to bring people out of poverty because there's currently people in poverty, well, you're never going to achieve a single thing. This increase in wages also yields an increase in tax revenue, which can be spent to improve things like public transit, further ameliorating the situation moving forward. Keep in mind this is a 25% increase in what many view as a luxury good, but the minimum wage is going up by... 25%. So, for everyone at the bottom, it's a net zero change. On the other hand their buying power in other areas of their lives actually goes up. So who is being hurt? I guess the folks in the donut hole?

kortilla 6y ago
> This price increase allows drivers to earn a living wage which in turn decreases the number of people at the lower end of today's income scale. Fewer people will have the problems you're describing in the first place. >Do this over and over, and ultimately, nobody's left at the bottom. You made huge unfounded leaps here. There’s no reason to believe a magic money tap will just pay for the increased costs. It’s just as likely to kill jobs. There’s a reason setting minimum wage to $100k a year doesn’t work.
- arcticbull 6y ago
  There's no magic money here. Companies that don't pay subsistence wages leave employees to collect public benefits to make up the difference. The businesses are being indirectly subsidized by the taxpayer. All setting a minimum wage at a subsistence pay does is stop the companies from mooching off the taxpayer. > It’s just as likely to kill jobs. And that's fine, there's no reason that all jobs have to be done by humans. This is why wholesale reform needs to take place as well, including basic income. Not leaning into robotization of low-skilled jobs amounts to turning America into a renaissance faire as a make-work project.

Waterluvian 6y ago

The idea of someone with three jobs using Uber is ridiculous and wild. He's public transit truly been destroyed like that in many American cities?

holler 6y ago
I think convenience is a big factor. With Uber you can press a few buttons in the app, be swiftly picked up, taken to your destination, and continue on with minimal fuss. With public transit you must figure out the best route, wait for the next scheduled pick up, usually make multiple stops between your pickup and destination, and likely arrive much later than if you took an Uber.
- deleted 6y ago
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- oblio 6y ago
  A lot of public transport networks these days have apps, including navigation support.
nine_k 6y ago
The problem is that America has few cities, in the European sense. Many of the newly-grown cities are just endless suburbs around a small downtown. In a dense city like NYC, public transportation is the obvious choice. In a semi-dense city like Seattle, public transportation is a viable choice. In a nebulous agglomeration like LA, public transportation is hard to rely on.
- tomjakubowski 6y ago
  People took 278 million trips on an LA Metro bus in 2019, which is more ridership than on any bus or rail system in the United States outside of NYC. We also have the most light rail ridership in the country. (but who cares about that?) Our public transit gets a really bad rap. It is certainly not as good as NYC or Chicago or, probably, Seattle, but maybe you could use Houston as an example in the future.

malvim 6y ago

> But if you're on the lower income scale and you need Uber to help you get between your second and third job (because you can't afford a car and public transit is unreliable) or you need it to get to a doctor's appointment, this kind of change is a big deal. Well, in this line of thinking, you should just tell people to quit their third job and go drive an Uber, I hear they'll be paying more as a minimum wage... There's no excuse to keep people in poverty because other people are poor.

sparrish 6y ago
I guess you missed the part where the you don't have a car.
- tmpz22 6y ago
  Uber provides financing for new cars, which I believe becomes a sort of entrapment as they then have to work long hours for uber to keep up with the car payments. You ever notice how so many uber drivers have brand new expensive cars?
  - toast0 6y ago
    It's been a while since I saw the terms for Uber leases, but I thought they were easy to end, amd no mileage limits. So, you shouldn't end up entraped; if it's not worth while, give the car back once you find a better job (which could be not having one, depending on the real costs and income) If the terms are more onerous than I remember, maybe you can get stuck.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]

astrea 6y ago

Assuming that your narrative is factual, is it Uber's obligation to subsidize the government's infrastructure failings?

neuromanser 6y ago
(Not the parent poster.) I believe this question needs to be answered first: is society obligated to subsidize Uber? I believe the answer is "no". Uber is not owed any profit. A life-sustaining income does not have to be in the form of food stamps. A law prescribing life-sustaining wages is a government's infrastructure.
- throwaway201103 6y ago
  Uber doesn't owe society its existence or jobs either. If they shut down, who's paying the life-sustaining wages?
  - oblio 6y ago
    Didn't society exist before Uber? I'm not sure. Also, did Uber build the roads, bridges, parking lots? Did it research the internet? I also heard GPS was researched in a secret Uber lab...
- astrea 6y ago
  They aren't obligated to subsidize Uber. However, they are within their right to set their own prices.

balls187 6y ago

Public transportation options in Seattle (and greater metro area) are quite reliable.

smogcutter 6y ago

The proposal that people struggling to get between their second and third jobs are doing so by regularly taking cabs is an absurdity.

onetimemanytime 6y ago

I am sure the same arguments were made back then for burger prices, Walmart stuff and so on. The reality is that Seattle apparently has set a $16+ an hour being as the minimum hourly salary and that means no one should work for less. End of story. Working for Uber [or insert other corp here] and still needing to apply for food stamps, free healthcare and rent assistance costs taxpayers too.

justicezyx 6y ago

> public transit is unreliable I read the Power Broker [1] about Robert Moses' obsession of disallowing public transit in the public lands that under his control. That results miserable comutting for New Yorkers nowadays. Bob mastered the political system in a way that he can do obviously irrational things under public eyes, and without any fallout at the time, until the book was published much later after Bob actually has died. I haven't researched extensively in US public transit, but I am inclined to believe that the public transit were handicapped intentionally through the market operators, in collaboration of the political apparatus. I could not see any obvious evidence of this particular event being positive or negative. But, I am more sure that the political system in US is crippled to the point that it's not capable of producing long-term positive policy any more. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Power-Broker-Robert-Moses-Fall/dp/0394720245 https://www.amazon.com/Power-Broker-Robert-Moses-Fall/dp/039...

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jandrewrogers 6y ago

FWIW, I know a person in Seattle who just acquired a (used) car because of this. Not because they wanted to, it is expensive for them and they don’t have much money, but because the alternative no longer made financial sense. They had been using Uber/Lyft previously to live their life.

koluna 6y ago

This is the most Silicon Valley response ever to the new law. Yeah, poor people are struggling with 3 jobs, but Uber is the problem. Maybe let’s address public transportation and the underlying reasons for 3 jobs instead of having a Silicon Valley VC darling try to squeeze more profits.

megablast 6y ago

It is insane to Suggest people working 3 jobs are using Uber.

beowulfey 6y ago

Bicycle transit is free and works great within 5-10 miles. That’s about the same distance I would use an Uber for. Can’t recommend it enough.

Broken_Hippo 6y ago
If you live in a place designed for it and with weather good enough for it. Most jobs I've had did not have a secure place to store a bicycle while I was at work. Oh, and the roads: Some places, I couldn't take a direct route because bikes weren't allowed on those roads (I lived a couple miles outside of town). The country roads that were available to me took longer. Not to mention that I had to share the road with cars (laws) and the cars didn't have my safety in mind. And then you get into hygiene and weather. Few places had somewhere I could dry off in the rain: I didn't know studded bike tires (for snow) existed until I moved to Norway. Few places really and truly accepted a sweaty employee showing up for work either - and again, no place to freshen up. Sometimes I would be lucky to have room to store snow/rain shoes.

rualca 6y ago

> But if you're on the lower income scale and you need $<insert_expense> this kind of change is a big deal. The problem is not in value-added services costing money. The problem is widespread poverty in the US, which bars the majority of its citizens from having a decent quality of life.