> This appeal to employment is disconcerting, as ride sharing apps are doing their workers no favors by paying them so poorly (including the lack of benefits).

Except that they do, because they provide a level of flexibility not available at most other jobs.

If you're a college student and you have two hours and fifteen minutes between classes, you can drive for two hours and fifteen minutes. If you're a school bus driver who drives kids to school in the morning and drives them back in the afternoon but has nothing to do in the meantime, you can get in your own car and drive passengers at that time and make some extra money. If you have a part time job working three days a week with an inconsistent schedule set by your employer, you can drive another two days a week, even if it's a different two days every week.

There is value in that, or why is anybody doing it rather than working at Walmart or Starbucks where that isn't available?

But if you make the drivers employees then the company has no reason not to schedule their hours inflexibly, because the flexibility was only needed to attract workers at the lower level of compensation.

In practice what you're doing is disallowing employers from offering employees terms of employment that provide the employee with working conditions of greater non-monetary value than ordinary jobs in exchange for less money. There is no reason to think that this is never advantageous for the employee, and the workers who don't find those terms advantageous remain free to work for any other employer.

> When talking about jobs, especially in the US where so many benefits are tied to employment, a job with pay so low and no benefits should not be considered a good thing.

Then do something about all the benefits tied to employment. All of that exists only as a direct result of government policy.

> In practice what you're doing is disallowing employers from offering employees terms of employment that provide the employee with working conditions of greater non-monetary value than ordinary jobs in exchange for less money. There is no reason to think that this is never advantageous for the employee, and the workers who don't find those terms advantageous remain free to work for any other employer.

That is true, but it's an ecosystem thing. Sure, it might be of benefit of some... but to others it's the only game in town. When people describe fast food jobs as for students saving for their first car so they don't have to provide a living wage... that doesn't help single parents who are using it as their sole income. It's better to inconvenience the students seeking a car, to help the single parents. Those at the bottom have nothing but the flex jobs available to them.

80%+ of Uber and Lyft drivers have other jobs and drive in their free time to make extra money. In those cases it seems like flexibility is much more important than a floor on earnings (which will prevent them from being able to drive during times when earnings are less than that). Currently those drivers are showing up because it's the best possible opportunity for them to make extra money.

The 20% of drivers who are full time will benefit, but the 80% of drivers who are part time will be worse off. I'm not convinced that the government should be telling those 80% of people that flexibility is no longer viable. Being able to make some money in their free time (and they're indicating they're willing to do that) seems better than not being able to.

Although it may be true that 80% of drivers are working part time, it is still reasonable to assume that a disproportionate number of miles driven, and therefore wages paid, are being done by the full time drivers.

As an extension, there is a utilitarian argument that says a full time driver will benefit substantially more from the minimum wage than a part time driver will suffer.

Regardless, I think appealing to the proportion of drivers is misplaced. It would be unsurprising to me if more than 80% of trips were completed by full time drivers.

I disagree. If the intent is to help the 20% of drivers who don't have another job (unclear if they're all full time or not but they seem to be the group that you're most concerned with), then it would be better to see regulation that targets them specifically.

Making it unviable for 80% or more of the drivers to benefit the 20% is a tradeoff that one doesn't have to make. There's nothing in the rulebook for creating regulation that says you have to be so heavy handed. All it shows us is that these are lazy regulators who didn't bother to write decent regulations.

Then you'd be encouraging migration from every other industry into Uber/Lyft because, as you say, no other job offers the same flexibility. So why would I work anywhere else if my minimum is the same? Mostly benefits & inertia of life inhibiting trying new things will prevent some of it but there will still be meaningful migration. The de facto wage would probably raise a bit as competition for workers ripples & Uber/Lyft would start implementing caps on how many drivers there can be (because a lot more will still value the flexibility highly) to better control their prices since the demand pricing has a legal floor above the market rate.

This is all obviously assuming there's about a stable mix of minimum wage jobs available in the market to people who need them. Remember that this job needs a new car every few years so there's a bit of capital investment required to maintain this job. There are financing options available but now suddenly this minimum wage work is further costing you even more to pay the financing. Then you're left trying to address that.

Every legal change to the market can have unintended consequences and infinite imagined ones in advance. Some times it's better to just stick to simple tweaks/changes that have a pretty well trodden path of study by economists. It is also important for cities to explore different things too though so that we can collect the data but which city really wants to do that with its citizens, especially how hard it is to pass helpful reforms for which the market response is well-studied and the law easy to explain to people.

Maybe this depends on the locale, but in Houston 90% of the uber drivers that have driven me worked for Uber because of the flexibility.

It was a guy who just started an insurance company with his wife and they were taking turns ubering when they could to help pay the bills until their company got off the ground.

It was a wife who was saving up for a kitchen remodel she wanted.

Several people who were retired.

Several people with waxing/waning medical issues.

In my experience there weren't a lot of people who were using uber/lyft for their long-term income, which make sense because the pay isn't very high, there aren't any promotions, and many of the individuals who would be interested in a that type of job don't have a nice enough car or have other issues that prevent them from driving for Uber.

How often is the other job driving for the other company? (only half joking...)

IMO the first 8 hours of someone's time is worth a living wage, and any time beyond that is worth even more. Because time is the only non renewable resource; it's literally a person's life. So to hire someone at less than a living wage to do any task is equivalent to saying their life is worth less than the job you're hiring them to do. Which is dehumanizing at best, and approaches slavery at worst.

It's better for someone who needs money to get $0 than to get what they're willing to work for? They don't get a choice in what they find dehumanizing or what they're willing to do?

80% of the drivers have jobs elsewhere. So presumably this is to make extra money for things like a vacation, a new TV, or being able to go out for dinner a few more times. Those all seem to be good and worthwhile for people who want a flexible earning opportunity. I guess I don't understand why a government would tell those people they can't do what they're currently doing because they don't think the current process meets an arbitrary cutoff.

If someone is willing to work extra hours, I contend that fact won't change regardless of whether they're allowed to work for less than they're worth. If they can't find any work to do, then they'll make some. That's how we got to where we are today. But from a government/society's POV, there's no difference between a citizen not making enough money to survive (aka a "living wage") and making $0. Both are roads to failure.

A free market without consideration for the value of a citizen is a race to the bottom. It's a responsibility of a society to ensure its fellow citizens aren't killing themselves.

Also, the "doesn't the person get a say in what's dehumanizing" argument is just so fucked up. I guarantee you it was used 200 years ago by plantations lobbying against emancipation. It conveniently benefits the person already in power while slowly exploiting and destroying their victim.

> A free market without consideration for the value of a citizen is a race to the bottom.

This doesn't explain while the vast majority of free market jobs pay far more than minimum wage.

The minimum wage is an example of "consideration for the value of a citizen". If you remove the minimum wage, what do you expect will happen? Nothing? Wages will go up? Then why do we have it?

No, wages go down: https://usafacts.org/articles/minimum-wage-america-how-many-...

Pure unchecked free market capitalism is nothing if not efficient. Where a company can't win by innovation (most companies), they'll gladly win by extracting and selling the wellbeing of their workers. Eventually the worker dies, and they get another. And the whole time they say "don't tell these people what's dehumanizing, let them make that decision for themselves!"

> If you remove the minimum wage, what do you expect will happen?

Some people who were previously unemployed will make $7 instead of $0. Some people who were previously making $7.25 may make $7 too. But then everyone will pay lower prices for things. On net that turns into an overall gain.

> No, wages go down: https://usafacts.org/articles/minimum-wage-america-how-many-...

I don't see anything in that link that actually says that. And if all you're saying is that some people who used to make $0 start making $7 which then brings down the average, how is that actually bad? $7 is more than $0, it's just an artifact of not including in the unemployed/underemployed in the average.

Meanwhile eliminating price controls can increase wages by increasing competition for labor. Right now Alice makes $8/hour but loses the equivalent of $2/hour to commuting expenses. You let an employer across the street from Alice pay her $6/hour and she takes that job instead, ends up with the same amount of spending money because she doesn't have to pay to commute anymore, doesn't have to waste an hour a day sitting in traffic, and her former employer has to pay $8.50/hour to get someone to replace her (or to convince Alice to stay given that she now has another alternative).

> from a government/society's POV, there's no difference between a citizen not making enough money to survive (aka a "living wage") and making $0.

From a free citizen's who wants to eat point of view, there's a huge difference between making $50 one evening when you have free time and making $0.

Why do you think that every job has to be suitable for single parent breadwinners? Couldn't our society function better if there were different kinds of jobs available, including for low skilled teenagers?

Because there is nothing that a low-skill teenager can't do that a low-skill breadwinner can. That's the point. We need to lift the floor so that even low-skill people can support themselves and their families. Otherwise people with supports having their living subsidized will outcompete people without those supports. Just look at the controversy about having to be well-born to be able to afford zero-income internships that are the gateway into some industries.

> Otherwise people with supports having their living subsidized will outcompete people without those supports.

And this sounds like some form of UBI.

If everyone had some income floor as a starting point, the government could be far less involved in micromanaging employment relationships, and low income people would be in a better position to turn down jobs offering very low wages.

I don't see how that would work. If a teenager or college student gets the UBI they can still outcompete the breadwinner, unless the UBI is enough to provide... but why wouldn't they just stay home and raise their kids or provide care to their elderly parents etc?

They absolutely could do that, which is the point. UBI gives you the freedom to make the best decision regarding how to use your time. If UBI is enough to cover you, then spending time at home raising kids and taking care of your family may be the best use of your time, which is a win for both your family and society.

Both of those things provide value to society as a whole. Raising children that will grow up and be part of society has value. Taking care of those that have difficulty caring for themselves has value. Both those things have additional value in having people doing it that are emotionally connected, and not strangers doing it for a paycheck to have their basic needs met. Allowing people to be able to do those tasks and still meet their basic needs is good for everyone. It also takes pressure off the job market, where basically every single person needs a job. Companies could more freely automate low paying low skill jobs without having to worry about what happens to those people that would be “put out of work”.

> Because there is nothing that a low-skill teenager can't do that a low-skill breadwinner can.

that's not really true. I remember it being surprisingly difficult to get my first minimum wage job as a teenager. the managers at grocery stores and even gas stations would ask if I had any prior work experience and never call me back. most employers would prefer an older and more experienced person if they could get them for the same price. I ended up getting a job at a restaurant, but that was only because the owner was a creepy manchild who wanted paid teenage friends to relive his highschool glory days with.

Pretty much all lucrative career paths have pretty well paid internships. Anecdotally, I've never met someone who's taken an unpaid internship. Of course this sample sized is bias as I work in finance and most of the people I know do as well (some tech as well).

What kinds of industries have no pay internships?

Basically everything in the humanities, museums, etc.

Although those jobs tend to be low-paying and insecure as well.

Or they're real lottery jobs that may effectively require volunteer/low-wage dues paying.

But, in any case, internships that don't pay or pay minimally tend to indicate a field that you probably won't earn a lot in anyway.

There are probably exceptions with some summer jobs where the pay may not be a lot but it looks good on a resume in a field that does pay good salaries.

Kids going into medical school will often volunteer in research labs or shadow doctors for free during undergrad. Schools won't consider kids who haven't done this.

There are also paid ways to do this as well like being a medical scribe.

Also if you're poor there much bigger barriers to being a doctor than an volunteering. Like the decade of unpaid schooling. Or remove the need for an undergrad degree for doctor's like the rest of the world.

It is very different from continent to continent and country to country, but the not paid internships I know are for positions that prepare you for tough to get jobs or where the training the intern receives is far more valuable than the work the intern does. Some internships are closer to free schooling in a company with the option to get hired after 3 months. There are bad companies that use internship as cheap or unpaid labor, but that's the abuse of the system, it does not means it is always bad.

I believe film and media. I guess those are only well-paid for a few. A search for "unpaid internships" brought up PR. I'm guessing it would appear more often in industries where networking is much more important and job mobility is lower than in STEM.

It's important to talk about what we're talking about. Uber/Lyft do a bit of sleight of hand by talking about the "median driver's median hourly wage" when they ought to be talking about the "median hourly wage." If there are jobs available for low-skilled teenagers that's fine, but that's a misrepresentation.

In fact, in most cases, low-skilled teenagers, even if they are a majority of workers in a role, still make up a minority of hours worked. Similarly, people putting in 0-20 hours make up 2/3rds of the drivers but something like 25% of the actual hours worked. So they're not really what we should be looking at when looking at what Uber/Lyft's business actually looks like.

80% of Uber/Lyft drivers have other jobs. The vast majority of drivers will be worse off with a floor on earnings that makes many earning periods no longer viable. Those are people who have decided to trade their free time for money and if there were better alternatives they wouldn't be driving for Lyft/Uber. Ignoring them because they drive less hours per week doesn't give us a reason why we should ignore their economic interests. If the goal of the law is to make sure that the 20% of full time drivers are better off, they're probably better off by making regulations around that specifically rather than sacrificing 80% of the drivers who have other jobs (that clearly aren't making ends meet on their own - because they're driving extra hours for ride share companies on top of their existing jobs).

The goal is simply that all hours worked are for minimum wage. Under Seattle law, paying someone less than minimum wage is theft. Nobody is ignoring anyone's economic interests. They are simply attempting to stop wage theft.

I'm not sure I've seen a formal definition of wage theft. Certainly I can start a poorly performing business in Seattle and lose money or could make less than minimum wage. It doesn't feel like anyone is stealing money from me there.

Some work produces less than minimum wage value. Minimum wage was initially created to price minorities out of the market. Cutting off earning opportunities that people would do (and they're currently doing it) but that fall below that arbitrary earning floor only restricts total earning opportunities. That so many people seem to be willing to drive for ride share companies tells us it's currently better than any other alternatives and that they're willing to accept their current payments.

Doesn't matter what minimum wage was used for if we agree that it works for us today.

Wouldn't my business make more money for my shareholders if most of the labor was framed as meant for low skilled teenagers working random short shifts?

You still need to convince someone to take the job. Why is someone who doesn't need that level of flexibility and wants an ordinary full time job going to choose that over Walmart?

And if there is an actual reason, why take that option away from someone who is choosing it on purpose?

> Why is someone who doesn't need that level of flexibility and wants an ordinary full time job going to choose that over Walmart?

Why are you assuming there are always other jobs available? In the case when there is, I can see your point. But when there are not it's no longer a choice. Sometimes it's better to just things off of the table to make the whole system better. And yeah it does suck for people in unique circumstances. It's really a balancing act that requires nuance and compromise.

> Why are you assuming there are always other jobs available? In the case when there is, I can see your point. But when there are not it's no longer a choice. Sometimes it's better to just things off of the table to make the whole system better. And yeah it does suck for people in unique circumstances. It's really a balancing act that requires nuance and compromise.

If there aren't other jobs available, you haven't made the whole system better.

I'm not convinced that a higher level of "no job at all" is a better overall fit for society than "some people drive Uber" given that Uber isn't a particularly exploitive thing in terms of destroying the body or inflexible hours or other problems of the past.

It seems like we're trading off a useful form of semi-employment for a greater need for direct redistribution, and I'd rather my redistribution be partially-Uber-shaped and provide at least some features.

A world where Uber exists needs a less-high absolute redistributed benefits floor, and results in some more work getting done to people's benefit.

The problem is, we just are really bad at providing that base benefits floor, and we're trying to make Uber magically fix that for us.

If there isn't another better job available, does it really make the system better to take away what many people find to be their best option?

Even if you have a part-time job, you should be paid enough that if you were to be working that job full-time you would be able to support yourself.

If you're not being paid enough to live on 40 hours a week, you're underpaid.

> If you're not being paid enough to live on 40 hours a week, you're underpaid.

This is perhaps a core disagreement, which is wroth digging into. I'm willing to engage with this idea but the disagreement area is critical here.

First, what it means to "live on 40 hours a week" is highly variable from person to person, is it not? If you agree, shouldn't we then avoid making broad judgments based on that concept? I suggest that we leave such judgments to the employee and leave it on him to make decisions on those details.

Second, supposing that an individual decides he doesn't earn enough: isn't is better to rely on him to investigate what he can do to address the situation? There are many things that can be done to address the situation from working more hours, to changing jobs, to taking on training for a new job for example. Isn't this preferable?

> supposing that an individual decides he doesn't earn enough

All forms of safety nets require the consideration of a reasonable floor. I mean if someone feels public transport is beneath them, well tough, but have a warm safe place to sleep with a locked door and fridge seems reasonable. Of course, in time the floor will rise.

> isn't is better to rely on him to investigate what he can do to address the situation? There are many things that can be done to address the situation from working more hours,

People shouldn't have to spend all their time working, even if they have no worthwhile skills. Just because someone has no economic value doesn't mean they don't have human value. They should still have a life.

> to changing jobs, to taking on training for a new job for example.

Those require money and time, not easily obtained. Also, the people who need it most are those with the least amount of access to it.

> Isn't this preferable?

This is personal question, but I say no. Even if you don't agree, then maybe you'll agree with this "The best reason to feed the barbarians at the gate is to keep them out of your gate". Law & order is a democracy, and when enough people decide that the current order doesn't benefit them, it ends.

> but have a warm safe place to sleep with a locked door and fridge seems reasonable.

Yeah, that seems reasonable to me but we also know that there's a great deal of variation on all of the details there (warm, safe, locked door, refrigerator). I see it as necessary to allow/require individuals to make the decisions on all those details. I see it as a necessary condition for people to be free.

> People shouldn't have to spend all their time working, even if they have no worthwhile skills. Just because someone has no economic value doesn't mean they don't have human value. They should still have a life.

I'm sympathetic to this outlook. It's the details of it where I get tripped up with people. One area in particular is the state where someone has no worthwhile skills. I think that while a human being has no less dignity when he has no worthwhile skills, that is an unsustainable state that needs work. Similarly, I question the implicit assumption that there is a connection between someone's economic value and intrinsic worth as a human being. Perhaps what we disagree on what is it looks like for a society to place minimum acceptable value on such life.

> Those require money and time, not easily obtained. Also, the people who need it most are those with the least amount of access to it.

I don't dispute that money and time are required, and that it may not be easy. However I still maintain the responsibility lies in those individuals/workers.

> This is personal question, but I say no. Even if you don't agree, then maybe you'll agree with this "The best reason to feed the barbarians at the gate is to keep them out of your gate". Law & order is a democracy, and when enough people decide that the current order doesn't benefit them, it ends.

There is a version of the statement I could agree with, but in your specific statement of barbarians at the gate, it's also a possibility to not feed them. It really depends and since it's a hypothetical I don't want to engage with it too much. But I do agree that you can't expect to build up a huge class of miserable people and expect stability forever. The question to me is, how can we best serve them? I adamantly prefer to teach and raise them up, difficult as that may be, then to place demands/restrictions on employers.

Then again a few taxi drivers I have talked to in the US admitted starting to drive for ride sharing companies after finishing their maximum allowed shift of 12 hours...

Also I've heard multiple reports that in most of the gig economy markets casual workers are de-prioritized, so that only those who put in at least 40 hours a week stay in the game...

Seattle has the authority to change the conditions of employment - how much less Uber pays in exchange for the flexibility. Uber/Lyft has a right to stop operating there if they don't like it.

Why would Uber/Lyft fight so hard to stay with unfavorable conditions?

Some amount of ride sharing works under arbitrarily unreasonable conditions. Making $1 is better than making $0. But it's not as good, for multiple parties, as the alternative where they make a million dollars, more drivers have work, more passengers can afford rides and the existing passengers (many of which are also lower income people) pay less for them.

Exactly. The only question here is can Uber/Lyft operate in an npv positive manner under these new regulations? If so, then they will and the regs hurt their margins in order to serve workers and that’s fine. If not, they’ll leave, and these people won’t have driving as a source of income.

They could continue to operate but with less drivers, fewer hours worked, and fewer total dollars being paid out to their employees. Thus hurting the employees, anyone who relies on ubers, and the companies while benefiting a subset of drivers who will make more money per hour.

Precisely. They could do that, they only will do that if the returns from doing so exceed their cost of capital.

> If you're a college student and you have two hours and fifteen minutes between classes, you can drive for two hours and fifteen minutes.

Can you though? You wait for 10 minutes to get your first ride which takes

And then you also have to stop in time to make sure you are on time for your next class.

> "In practice what you're doing is disallowing employers from offering employees terms of employment that provide the employee with working conditions of greater non-monetary value than ordinary jobs in exchange for less money."

the other side of that problem is that the wages are dictated by one party (with basically no external price signals impinging on them) rather than being free to respond to demand. it has the same anti-competitive issues that any price-fixing scheme has. plus, there are other sociopolitical forces depressing wages in a decidedly tilted labor market. fix those imbalances and then we'd have much more support for a freely self-adjusting labor market for driving.

> But if you make the drivers employees then the company has no reason not to schedule their hours inflexibly, because the flexibility was only needed to attract workers at the lower level of compensation.

What if there were another purpose to the flexibility, to apply that 'two hours and fifteen minutes' of time the college student had to capturing the market value of shuttling people around campus and nearby, rather than stationing some 40-hour/week employee near campus, hoping to have them utilized all 40 hours?

That makes a lot of sense: allow the market to do its thing and efficiently allocate scarce resources.

But it raises the question: why doesn't Uber operate like a normal marketplace where buyers/sellers submit bids/offers at prices of their own choosing?

By preventing buyers/sellers from participating in price discovery, Uber makes itself look a lot more like a classic employer/vendor than an online marketplace.

Because it adds friction to what both drivers and riders want to be an easy, smooth transaction. Sidecar tried this approach and had their lunch eaten by Uber and Lyft.

Fair enough, people seem to prefer stores to flea markets where haggling is permitted.

But stores bear product liability for dangerous products, vicarious liability for employee misconduct, and are bound by employment/labor law.

You can't claim to be a flea market when you are really a store.

What if you can have actual employees and offer flexible times? That can be done.

That college student can sign up for short shifts, after all. You can allow folks to self-schedule. I*m pretty sure Uber already rates folks, in part, by their availability to drive.

> What if you can have actual employees and offer flexible times?

Sort of. If you have actual employees you need to pay for benefits. Someone who only works a few hours a day may not bring in enough revenue to cover the cost of their benefits, so the employer may need to require longer, less flexible hours in order to make it worth hiring someone in the first place.

So, that's an optimization problem around cost of benefits versus amount of revenue, right? The company can view it from the aggregate perspective; they might lose money on some low-hour employees, but still capture the revenue, enhance their market share and convenience, and make it up on revenue versus cost aggregated over all employees.

>There is no reason to think that this is never advantageous for the employee, and the workers who don't find those terms advantageous remain free to work for any other employer.

Your use of "never" is a red-herring. You have to quantify what it means. If 100% of uber drivers prefer higher pay over flexibility, what would be your argument? In other words, your argument completely hinges on a significant chunk of employees feeling like they are not being exploited. Without data, it won't stand on its own.

>There is value in that, or why is anybody doing it rather than working at Walmart or Starbucks where that isn't available?

Because those jobs are soul crushing, if you've ever worked at one of those. Just because Uber is offering "better" working conditions doesn't mean the drivers are happy about the pay. Also, if your standard of ethics is "whatever the employee voluntarily accepts" then why have a minimum wage at all?

One of the strongest appeals to me of a sustenance level of UBI is that we could then abolish the destructive minimum wage laws that shut some people out of the workforce, preventing them from the pride that is inherent in a solid effort at a job and bettering their lives on their own.

Right now, if you can only create $7/hr of economic value, no employer can legally employ you for a regular job in a way that's profitable for them.

>Right now, if you can only create $7/hr of economic value, no employer can legally employ you for a regular job in a way that's profitable for them.

Sure, but its just a shifting of costs. Either the employer pays them the extra $ or the government taxes everyone and makes up the difference. It comes out of the economy in either case.

I think UBI is a great idea, but so is minimum wage, and so is welfare, etc, etc. They're are all great ideas intended to help people in tough conditions.

I find it useful to point out the faulty core of a person's argument when they're making a bad point that will hurt people, so that others who come across it don't give it undue deference.

> The city's researchers found that drivers made an average of about $9.73 per hour.

Why cut the quote off in the middle of the sentence?

> The city's researchers found that drivers made an average of about $9.73 per hour, while the ride-hailing companies' researcher put the number at $23.25.

I assume that the city's researchers looked at take-home divided by time available to drive and the companies probably only counted the time the drivers were actively engaged. It's why they only want to have to pay a wage when a driver is engaged: they can make them clock out in between rides.

They both said they did what you note. But they have different data sets.

The companies included tips and not any delta associated with insurance.

Oddly the companies would not share their data set with the city but did share it with Cornell. Just on that count alone I tend to look more favorable to the city’s numbers.

> The companies included tips and not any delta associated with insurance.

Tips are not part of wages. You should make whatever wage you are going to make and then get tips on top of that.

Morally you might be right, but that’s not the legal definition.

Your tips are counted as part of your wages. In some cases companies can pay wages below minimum wage as long as the sum of wages and tips adds up to minimum wage.

> Your tips are counted as part of your wages

No, they aren't.

> In some cases companies can pay wages below minimum wage as long as the sum of wages and tips adds up to minimum wage

Both federally and in many states wage and hour laws, there is a lower tipped minimum wage that can be paid so long as the sum of tips and actual wages is at least the the level that would be the minimum wage for a nontipped position, but the fact that there is still a minimum for the actual wage and that the wage is summed with tips to compare against a separate target makes very clear that “wages” and “tips” are separate buckets, the former does not include the latter.

Now, there are other things (like income taxes) that operate on the sum not one of the individual buckets, but that's a different issue.

If you want to debate semantics, that’s one thing, but arbitrarily excluding wages from someone’s earnings to make a point is still disingenuous.

The US DOL has a very clear definition of what constitutes a tipped worker and the association compensation requirements: https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/wages/wagestips

> but arbitrarily excluding wages from someone’s earnings

No one's excluding wages from earnings, or tips from earnings; what is excluded is tips from wages, just as is done when setting a separate tipped minimum wage (that only is a minimum for wages, not wages plus tips), like the federal $2.13 and many state wage and hour laws for tipped employees, or when setting a minimum wage and not counting tips against it (as is the case in a number of US states and territories, including Washington, California, and others.)

Actually IIRC last time I looked it was more like city researchers usually subtract depreciation on the vehicle from the earnings, which can be quite substantial (IRS rates are roughly a quarter per mile). Uber doesn't subtract that, so the rate per hour varies wildly.

It seems like they're paying them just right if drivers are still driving for them.

If the goal was a desperate work force then we succeeded decades ago.

By measuring sufficiency of pay against the population of drivers you're not measuring anything useful. Intellectually indolent comments like this are overtly harmful to the people desperate enough to work for nearly half their cities minimum wage.

How many of the drivers are desperate? What would you prefer to measure?

Is it fair to assume that anyone working for less than a cities livable wage is desperate until proven otherwise?*

I'd prefer to interview everyone and get hard data about what people need and want. What they're sacrificing, what they have too much of, how their talents are being wasted etc. That's impossible though, so I took a shortcut*.

If you have to pay rent to keep social services from taking your child from you, any money towards that is better than nothing at all.

You have to have realistic choice to be able to deny such things. Desperate and hungry people don't have realistic choices.

Sure, that's pretty bad and certainly one extreme. What percentage of drivers are in this situation?

A sizable percentage of Americans live 1-2 paychecks away from being homeless. AS in, I've seen numbers of up to 59%.

I have no clue where to find that information about drivers in particular - if you do, you could look it up. But if you assume that they represent at least the general population, you could count on a sizable portion of drivers needing it.

It might not even be housing: If you can't pay your water bill, the water company will shut you off and threaten to report you to social services if it isn't on very quickly (and then take longer than that to turn it on). Kids can get taken for electricity or a number of things.

Yeah i'm not understanding why thousands and thousands of people in these cities are doing it for $9.73 when they could get a job at starbucks and instantly make much more.

But they are doing it. So things like flexibility must be important. If it was a small number of people we could expect that they might be making some kind of irrational decision. If it's thousands and thousands of people then it's likely an indication that it's the best possible option for people in that situation.

This is my assumption as well.

Because their manager at starbucks cuts their hours to 38 a week to keep from paying full time benefits. Plus who has been hiring in the past 3 months?

This is where government policy meets business reality. The reality is, ridesharing is a low margin business. Have you seen Uber's earnings reports? It's questionable whether the business model can ever be sustainable.

So with higher wages, you're just accelerating Uber's drive into insolvency. Their only option is to cut workers and increase ride prices.

But you can only do the latter so much before you lose users to the point where Uber just becomes a private taxi service for the wealthy in which case you might as well not use a rideshare model and just hire professional chauffeurs.

If a business model requires the exploitation of its workers to remain profitable, is that a business worth having? If forcing businesses to pay their laborers a wage sufficient to have a bare minimum standard of living before paying shareholders for their speculative investment, is that a bad thing?

Therein lies the harsh business reality. Every product and service you use, somewhere along its production (including basic materials), distribution or marketing has workers earning poverty level wages. And many can only function as a business with low wage workers or automation.

Are these business worth having? If we hope to maintain our quality of life, I believe yes.

And because the choice for these workers is low wages or no wages, then answer is probably yes for them as well.

The only other option for higher wages would be for these businesses to be state-sponsored, which is at least worth consideration.

> many can only function as a business with low wage workers or automation.

If this were true, they would not have extra money to give to shareholders. The idea that a corporation is allowed to pay poverty wages while still claiming profit for speculative investors is the problem. That isn't a harsh reality, that is legally sanctioned exploitation. Does every business do this? Of course not, but looking at corporate profits over the last 20 years, it is clear this is the norm.

> The only other option for higher wages would be for these businesses to be state-sponsored, which is at least worth consideration.

Completely untrue. The money is already there. It is just being given to speculators, not workers. Weird how average wages have gone down in the last 40 years but CEO pay has gone up almost a 1,000%.

But are they exploited?

If drivers really lost money working with Uber or if it was so little money compared to minimal wages, nobody would be driving!

If it were true that people doing job= no exploitation, then we wouldn’t need labor laws. Paying people below poverty wages, and people doing the job because they need the money is exploitation. It is taking advantage of the asymmetry of the power in a relationship between a rich company and a poor employee to set terms that that are exploitative of the employee.

But in this case, it's claimed that any fast food joint job pays better than Uber. I don't see how the platform could keep a steady number of drivers if that was true.

And, to he honest, I really don't like the condescending attitude some politicians have toward Uber drivers. They seem to assume they can't do the math to figure out if they are profitable or not.

Uber is still not making profits. So where is this money coming from?

You can't raise prices and expect the same level of demand from consumers. So once demand goes down, the # of drivers needed will go down.

So you raise prices by restricting supply of drivers. It's not that complicated. Uber is not keeping prices low as part of some scheme to rip off drivers and hoard profits in some bank vault like a cartoon villain - they're what the supply / demand of the market dictate.

If you disagree, I'm happy to look at concrete data to change my mind.

Perhaps if you cannot pay your employees minimum wage - regardless of the sort of work they are doing, perhaps you shouldn't be in business. I don't care if Uber is making money or not.

If there is need for more adequate public transportation and taxis, perhaps we should work on that issue. If the system is robust enough, merely having a personal driver (uber/lyft/taxi/limo) should be a luxury and a choice.

This has nothing to do with data, but principle.

And it isn't like Uber has been a good player in all of this: I truly don't agree with their attitude towards laws, and do truly believe they are in business because they exploit people and eschew their responsibility as employers both by offering gig-only employment and refusing to classify drivers as employees: Their business obviously relies on the drivers.

That sounds nice on principle but I'm not sure I liked the world where Taxis were a monopoly and did things like "not pick you up if you weren't in the city" and "not pick you up if you were nonwhite."

So, I'm hoping there is a universe where drivers get paid more (maybe even set their own prices, that makes them more like business owners and the apps more like payment providers) and rideshare can exist.

Posted it in an other thread [0] but do we really want to go back to the medallion system? Pre-Uber, either the driver rented the car to a middleman who rented the medallion from a rich owner, or said owner was selling and financing (most banks won't touch these medallions!) a medallion at a ridiculous interest rate to a driver that planned to use it as his retirement savings (an extremely volatile asset and not very liquid).

The more I spoke to cab drivers the more it seemed their industry was a pyramid scheme aimed at helping established rent-seeker take advantage of often poor new immigrants. Uber brought a breeze of fresh air: Someone could simply buy a car, calculate the depreciation and it's value on the market (since unlike medallions cars are relatively liquid assets!) do rideshare and calculate their profits or loss. They can get out of the game at anytime, and they know exactly how much they are going to get for the car they have should they sell it.

Also, the argument on Uber/Lyft drivers not being contractors since they can't set their own rates and decide which ride they take strikes me as weird since medallion drivers were contractors, had to charge the price set by the city and could only pick-up customers in the (arbitrary) zones covered by their medallions.

And I'm not even touching the usual pain points and often discriminatory practices of medallion drivers (refusing card payments, refusing rides to non-white passengers and to non-white neighborhoods...).

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24225648

> Perhaps if you cannot pay your employees minimum wage - regardless of the sort of work they are doing, perhaps you shouldn't be in business. I don't care if Uber is making money or not.

So instead of hiring 1000’s of workers who _voluntarily_ chose to work there for those wages, (not just drivers)...principles say they should ALL be out of work?

Absurd.

> When talking about jobs, especially in the US where so many benefits are tied to employment, a job with pay so low and no benefits should not be considered a good thing.

The alternative is no job at all, for many drivers.

People adapt, consumers too. If Uber or Lyft were to vanish from the face of the earth tomorrow due to regulations, some other business would probably pick up where they left, serving the demand - because after all, there is demand for ride-hailing services.

Question is, how much are consumers willing to pay?

Perhaps a robust safety net is in order so folks don't have to be exploited in order to afford food. Or better laws.

Yeah but that's a separate conversation from whether this new regulation is a good one in the real world, where the safety net is not very good.

Seattle minimum wage is $16.39 an hour for companies with more than 500 employees. Otherwise it's essentially $15.75/hour.

edit: either i misread your post or you edited it right as i posted this

Why do you think you know better than the workers involved who is doing them favors or no favors? Those workers choose to drive for Uber or Lyft because it was better than any other alternative available to them. Seattle is doing harm with this legislation.

This is a dead end line of thinking. It ignores that these people might not be able to choose any alternative. If you are faced with starvation and homelessness, you might 'choose' to take an incredibly poorly paid job because it enables you to barely scratch by.

That's hardly a 'choice', it's the companies realizing they have a worker pool they can exploit that will take pennies on the dollar.

Seattle is saying, "No, if you are providing work in this city, you will abide by minimum wage standards like any other employer."

I agree with your point: Some are choosing to drive for Uber/Lift because they don't have any better alternative. Where I disagree is the solution.

If you raise the price of cigarettes, people buy fewer cigarettes. If you raise the price of gasoline, people buy less gasoline. If you raise the price of labor, people (both companies and individuals) buy less labor. If the price of Uber/Lyft increases, the number of rides will decrease. That means that drivers will be forced to work fewer hours or to find another job. But if (as you say) this is the only alternative they have to homelessness, then they'll become homeless.

another alternative is that Uber reduces compensation for some other parts of the company and budges and raises driver compensation and sucks it up.

It's not like there's reason to believe that the ride-sharing market is extremely competitive, in many regions it's mostly Uber + Lyft.

> If you raise the price of labor, people (both companies and individuals) buy less labor.

If people are making more money, they are spending more money

So you imagine that Uber and Lyft drivers will spend their extra money on Uber and Lyft rides so the number of rides won't go down and it will be a perpetual motion machine?

This is the same reason companies used Groupon with their terrible economics or people take cash advances on their credit cards: you need the money today even if it is incredibly expensive and sub optimal. Does the GP also think we don't need laws for CC companies because the high levels of consumer debt show people obviously want 20%+ interest rates?

Your assumption that Uber/Lyft is the only choice (i.e. hardly a choice) is not true. There tons of other jobs you can do beside Uber/Lyft.

Have you seen the unemployment rate lately? We are in one of the worst recessions in living memory. It's not like those Uber drivers can just quit and go work somewhere else.

Yes, it's terrible, which is why interfering with people and businesses who have come to a voluntary agreement to work together is especially harmful now.

It's actually your line of thinking which leads to a dead end - the dead end of unemployment.

I imagine the same argument was made by coal barons who were forced to stop paying in company scrip.

And the industrialists who were forced to stop employing children in their factories.

And the owners who were forced to grant weekends and 8 hour workdays.

We have a long history of protecting workers from exploitation in this country. The weekend, prohibitions on child labor, OSHA standards, PPE, minimum wages, payment in US dollars, anti-discrimination laws, coverage for accidents on site, leaves for illness, etc. etc. etc.

If you think poor workers should make more money, then the government should give it to them. The last thing we should do is make it harder for them to retain a job, or penalize those that have provided the best job they have on offer. Preventing the low skilled from working stunts their career permanently.

It’s due to voters wanting to help people without paying for it.

Goal: help people by increasing the amount of money they have

Politician A: I’m going to help people by increasing taxes and increasing cash given to people

Politician B: I’m going to help people by forcing business to increase pay and therefore keep taxes low.

Voters will choose politician B.

Same thing with higher education:

Politician A: I will help students by funding universities and keeping tuition low, but have to raise taxes.

Politician B: I will help students by increasing the amount of debt they can load up on and I will cut taxes by reducing funding for universities.

Politician B gets elected again.

The replies to this comment forget that the demand is there regardless and that if margins are so thin, the cost can be passed on to those who take ubers/lyfts - disproportionately those who make more money.

If you doubled the price of Uber/Lyft rides, I suspect the demand is cut by more than 50%.

I find Uber (and Lyft) more convenient than taxis, but also compelling because they're not as absurdly expensive as taxis.

Unless the typical uber ride is an hour long, the price would not be doubled. And I see no reason that demand would go down in a way that is worth the trade-off of exploitation and forcing people to go on without living wages.