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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
This doesn't explain while the vast majority of free market jobs pay far more than minimum wage.
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!"
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 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.
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.
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.
What kinds of industries have no pay internships?
Although those jobs tend to be low-paying and insecure as well.
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.
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.
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.
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.
And if there is an actual reason, why take that option away from someone who is choosing it on purpose?
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 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?
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.
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.
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.