This doesn't really work when Uber has something like 3 million drivers worldwide. Distributing the CEO's entire salary among drivers would yield them only a handful of coins worth of extra income per person per year. There's simply no way to translate exec pay into meaningful comp for drivers at this sort of scale.
I do, however, believe it's possible for the government to establish better social services (e.g. universal healthcare at similar tax rates exists just north of the border) if only the US govt adjusted its spending priorities.
Executive pay, etc was what I was referring to as "fat". But what fraction of Uber's expenses do you think executive pay makes up? This is an oft-stated refrain, but anytime anyone runs the numbers, it quickly becomes apparent that those aren't large enough to make any difference across the huge number of employees involved.
I'm totally onboard with the social reforms you mention, but these are outside the purview of Uber/Lyft and this attempt to force them to treat these people as employees.
Nope, there's lots more options than that. Cut executive pay. Tax high earners more and provide social services like healthcare and public transit, to reduce cost and demand on these services. And yes, prices would likely go up, because they're no longer being subsidized by gov't welfare.
> It's very possible that this market only exists at the size that it does at a price that doesn't support what people in the US think of as "a wage they can live off of"
Then the market is exploiting labor and is being subsidized by the welfare system (else the workers couldn't live, by definition). If we're going to subsidize unprofitable activities, we should do that as a society, not by funneling cash to Uber's owners.