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Comment by FlyingSideKick | Hacker News Reader

Even with this revision the hourly wage is well below the $15.00 minimum wage here in Seattle. I wonder if after expenses Instacart and Amazon delivery drivers make any more than the typical Uber driver? I think contractors across all income levels need better protections. Laws should be enacted to guarantee after vehicle expenses that if one drives an Uber for an hour one makes at least a minimum wage.

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If there are $15/hr jobs, why do you believe so many people are willing to accept half that to drive for Uber? I wonder what their total pay is after tips.

Since nobody seems to have any idea how much these things actually pay after costs (see: this correction and the original study), it's plausible that people would expect this to pay more than it does.

Also, it's really difficult to define the one, right way of correcting for vehicle expenses. Some people would even work for free if it just gave them access to a high status car (live off savings while pretending to have "made it", as proven by the car). Others would be fine with any old beater, or a bike.

I think word would get around after a while.

I think it just did.

I wonder how much reach that study has among Uber drivers and potential Uber drivers.

The study might matter to us and regulators, but the thing that matters to drivers is how much they as an individual make. They had that information already, and knowing the average income doesn't help them figure out how much money they're making.

That can be confusing for drivers for some months as they may not realize the increased maintenance cost for a little while. But eventually they'll figure it out.

The evidence I can observe is consistent with the hypothesis that Uber and Lyft are paying sufficiently to motivate drivers.

I would like to think that while it might be difficult to calculate my exact hourly income, I could tell the difference between $8/hr and $15/hr.

You think these people making $15/hr don't watch their actual take-home after expenses carefully?

The difficult thing to calculate in the short term is wear and tear on the vehicle. Average Joe is potentially only counting fuel and not total costs per mile.

Do you talk to Uber drivers?

No, but I worked at a pizza place for several years. Everyone was vaguely aware of the fact that they were using up car value delivering pizzas, but only a couple of older full time "career" drivers seemed to actually calculate it out so they knew what they were getting.

Greater flexibility in hours and reduced scrutiny of immigration status are two reasons I can think of someone may knowingly prefer a lower than minimum wage job driving for Uber than making minimum wage at, say, a fast food restaurant.

This is one I hadn't considered being such a big deal. Some people/cultures have a hard time coping with strict start and stop times of traditional jobs. You can literally work any random time as an Uber driver.

What are you even questioning? Do you think everyone knows how little it pays BEFORE the report came out?

Maybe you didn't know how much the average Uber driver makes, but any individual Uber driver would know about how much they themselves are making.

Uber doesn't tell you "you'll make 15$/h".

They tell you "this drive will make you / made you 27.98$"

It makes it a lot harder or less likely for the users to compare to an actual wage, especially since the uber jobs are basically provided on a as-needed basis.

Uber costs are different in different areas. I suspect the areas with higher minimum wage also tend to correlates with higher rates for Uber due to a higher median income, enabling a higher optimal price on the price:demand curve. A random website and some very nonscientific sampling (internet forum stats at their finest!) seems to provide some confirmation of this hypothesis:

http://uberestimate.com/prices/Seattle/ - $1.35 base, $0.24/minute, $1.35/mile, $1.95 service fee, $5.45 minimum fare

http://uberestimate.com/prices/Miami/ - $0.95 base, $0.13/minute, $0.91/mile, $2.20 service fee, $5.50 minimum fare

Do you believe that Uber and Lyft would exist if they had to pay what the government has determined to be an eqyivalent minimum wage? Hell, we can't even agree on how much these drivers are actually earning, according to articles like OP, why do people feel that having the government step in and set some arbitrary legal price target is superior to relying on individuals to decide for themselves whether the work is worthwhile?

Do you feel that all of these drivers are unknowingly losing money and that they would be better off without the extra income that they willingly generate?

It doesn't matter if they could exist. The point is that the minimum wage is there so the _employees_ can exist and make a living.

If a company's business model relies on paying people shit wages, the blame lies totally on the company to fix it.

But this is an excellent example of a case where forcing minimum wage equivalent on ride sharing would result in a net loss of jobs, is it not? Where is the money going to come from? I use ride sharing because it is cheap and convenient, but it is something I can gladly go back to living without.

Meanwhile, on the "market" supply side, you have individual people rationally choosing to drive, and you are advocating to essentially take that agency away from them, by artificially setting a price floor.

But as we all have seen, the ride sharing market as it stands right now is artificial.

Even though people are getting paid a pittance, the actual fares are severely subsidized by VC money, so what you're paying for isn't sustainable.

The other shoe will drop soon. And drivers STILL won't get paid much. So it's not like this business model is that strong as it is.

And if the shoe drops, drivers quit, or the whole system goes belly up for lack of profitability, and the market has solved the problem, without any artificial meddling which otherwise guarantees a less than optimal result.

I don't understand the problem. Especially in this business model. This isn't some sweatshop where people are required to grind all day and have no way out. These are people who generally earn extra cash in their spare time with a vehicle they would have anyway. I just don't see why they need any kind of special protection from a nanny state.

If you feel that ride sharing is not profitable, don't start driving. Let everyone else drive if they want, for whatever rate they deem is sufficient compensation.

For most of us that read this site, we are lucky that the minimum wage debate is largely an intellectual exercise. We can throw economic and free market theory into the debate until the cows come home. But to me, this is a bigger issue of what is the base standard of living we want for members of our society. I don't think it's crazy to ask businesses to pay their employees a fair wage in this age of historic profits. And as we've seen time and again, raising the minimum wage to something like $15 has had no negative economic impact (like in Seattle).

And even with the very low rates that Uber pays its drivers, they're still rushing to build an automated fleet. So this argument that a minimum wage will make these jobs go away, just doesn't hold water, because those motivations are _already_ there, and the trend is _already_ going in that direction.

You're also right that Uber isn't a sweatshop, nor is anyone being forced to drive for them. But to throw your hands up and just say "oh well, it's just how it happened, that's just how the market is", as if this wasn't a carefully planned way for Uber to skirt employment and labor laws, and ignore all the malice and greed involved, simply doesn't faithfully represent the actual situation.

By the way, I say all this knowing that my consumer behavior is hypocritical: I use Lyft every now and then, and I still shop at Amazon.

I'm not sure if this is your intention or not, but your comment reads as if to indicate that you believe so strongly that markets are efficient that you are unwilling to consider data that suggests an inefficiency exists.

Whether or not an inefficiency exists, setting a price floor is guaranteed to create one.

We understand that artificial price controls are generally bad for economic goods, why do we treat labor differently? The fact that human suffering is involved does not magically override market forces.

First of all, the minimum wage is popular with the crow. So it's a good tool to win votes. Second, a high minimum wage drives out low skilled workers. So high skilled workers have less competition. Third, companies who already pay more than the minimum wage generally favor raising it to their level because it would drive out competitors that cannot afford to pay that much.

Because maybe we shouldn't treat human beings solely as economic goods? Sure, the market exists, but it's not like some giant metaphysical thing with laws that bind us the way that the laws of physics bind us. It's okay to do the thing that's more "inefficient" if it better promotes human welfare

>if it better promotes human welfare

But this assumption does not match our understanding of the effects of market manipulation. Well meaning minimum wage laws, just like price floors, can create ineficiencies that are net detrimental to to society.

Imagine an extreme scenario where implementing a minimum wage gives a raise to 50% of the population, while 50% are laid off. I feel like this side is too often neglected in the minimum wage debate.

I would argue that it is better to have 50% of the population on unemployment payments rather than having them employed under below-human-dignity wages. The later looks better on the statistics because those people are working.

The extreme scenario you propose is in my eyes an acceptable result of a minimum wage system, because implementing a minimum wage says "nobody should work and earn less than X$/h". For people unable to find work under these conditions we have social safety nets (well, the US doesn't but other countries do)

I wonder if the hourly would increase for larger cities because of more individuals hailing. Though certainly increased expense from fixing the car because of city driving.

I wish Uber would release the numbers for review but that won't happen.

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