Uber Hit with $650M Employment Tax Bill in New Jersey
news.bloomberglaw.com
news.bloomberglaw.com
this isn't about protecting the drivers, this is about protecting the taxi industry and metropolitan mass transit unions both of which were under threat of better service being offered at lower costs both to tax payers as a whole as well as customers. you don't have to like Uber to understand what this is really about. It is protecting the current gravy train the politicians rely on to stay in office.
edit:
https://www.njbia.org/get-njbias-tax-changes-for-2019/
Unemployment Insurance, New Jersey Workforce Development and Health Care Subsidy Fund Taxes
> Employee and employer state Unemployment Insurance tax rates will apply to the first $34,400 of an employee’s earnings in 2019 (up from $33,700 in 2018).
> For 2019, employees are subject to a 0.0425% (.000425) Workforce Development Partnership Fund tax rate. The employee Unemployment Insurance tax rate remains at 0.3825% (.003825) of taxable payroll.
Nationwide Walmart has 2,300,000 US employees. If they are paying an average of 150$ each nation wide on similar taxes that’s 345 million per year. However, I doubt even 20 million of that is in New Jersey.
Also it's unemployment + disability insurance they're being charged for.
So, that 119m should be this years penalties. If this thing is growing at over 22% per year and 4 years ago the already had a 54m unpaid tax bill, then I can see this snowballing fast.
And if that's the case, this statement from TFA makes no sense:
> The money that they’re not paying into the unemployment and disability systems is being picked up by the states and the taxpayers.
Because there's nothing to be "picked up" if those workers don't qualify for unemployment and job-related disability.
I get the argument about having more freedom when you're not an employee. But these people are generally getting screwed, I think.
Also, TFA notes that classification of drivers as employees would increase costs by over 20%. If that's true, someone here is getting screwed. Drivers, governments, or both.
But still, I value freedom highly. So I do get the argument that people ought to have the right to work how they want. Even if they're getting screwed.
This might surprise you, but most people are absolutely terrible when it comes to making complex financial decisions involving multiple variable factors over a period of time.
The tiny percentage of ride-share drivers who do meticulously keep track of their finances have all said the same thing: at the end of the day, when you factor in everything, you barely make any money - if everything goes well.
The only time I hear complaints that driving isn't worth it is specific trips with traffic or a long dead leg back home, but that's not their entire driving history.
Basically, I don't buy the "so many people wouldn't continue doing it if they weren't making good money" argument.
I have direct experience with hundreds of drivers including many students, retirees, elderly, disabled and my own friends. They all do it because they get paid.
There are thousands of other things they would rather do for fun or to stay busy, not sit in traffic to drive strangers around.
If ridesharing is so bad then govt should invest in proper public transport to create more choice, not try and crush a valuable service used by millions.
Where I live taxis are regulated yet provide a decent/high quality of service. And it’s true even in cities like mine where the public transportation network is crap (bus based).
Nothing has improved commercial services like competition. Nothing has ruined it like regulation. I've yet to hear how any of these externalities are solved with regulation, or how they are unique to ridesharing vs private car ownership.
I agree that there needs to be a lot more investment in mass transit but in the meantime governments shouldn't be turning a blind eye to regulating ridesharing.
If anything there are less total cars on the road since the same Uber driver can service many passengers (or same amount of cars delivering more people with less parking).
There’s plenty of reasons to have some regulation. What was missing previously wasn’t regulation, it was competition.
Payment options/scams = Uber lets you pay however you want through the app/apple pay without any need for cash, with an upfront price. Most taxis only accept cash, have unclear pricing that you only know at the end, can easily pad the meter in various ways, and may extort you if you really need a ride.
Refusing pickups = Uber drivers don't know the destination until you get in the car, and get kicked off the network if they cancel too many rides or abuse riders. Taxis are notorious for ignoring people based on looks, destination, convenience and usually won't deal with any trip they deem is not worth their time.
The difference in service and safety is magnitudes better with ridesharing vs taxis, that's why they're so popular.
"Sorry, the meter is broken"
"Sorry, the card reader is broken, cash only"
"No, don't worry, this is really the fastest way"
Also your Uber driver doesn't know your race when he accepts your ride or not. Which is probably why I find it a lot easier to get an Uber than a taxi.
Not being able to hail a cab due to racist drivers is a problem. However, in your example, the Uber driven can see your name, which is a pretty reliable proxy for your race, unless it's highly generic like John Smith or something.
Taxi drivers have to accept cash and cannot force you to pre-pay for your ride like Uber can. That at least reduces the number of drivers who would otherwise refuse to pick you up because of a perception that you wouldn't pay.
This is an excellent idea, and is consistent with also taxing any societally borne externalities caused by ride-sharing, the primary being congestion. And taxis should be held to the same regulatory standard.
Taxis are cars too by the way. How did all those taxi regulations improve externalities?
The biggest study was in SF and was inherently flawed by looking at traffic over years. It's obvious that an increasing population will generate more traffic, and Uber has allowed more people to travel than before. Serving more people isn't a bad thing, it's a natural situation that cities should plan for instead of being constantly surprised by.
Are you sure?
100% of riders, for all rides they take, would choose to use a car if they could not use ride sharing?
Absolutely none would walk, ride a bike, take a bus, take a train, choose not to go?
I have a hard time believing that it's purely a "car I have access to or a ride share," 100% of the time. So I believe some amount of rides are happening that would not have people driving.
Of the drivers for ride sharing, there is some amount of time between trips that they are simply waiting for the next customer. This is time they wouldn't be on the road if they were not driving, and time the person who is using the ride sharing wouldn't be on the road either. So, I also believe that drivers must be on the road more often than the sum of the time they've kept other people from driving.
If drivers are on the road more with ride sharing, and if less than 100% of people using the ride sharing service would choose a method of transport other than a car, I cannot see how ride sharing wouldn't strictly require an increase in traffic?
Uber will add to traffic but traffic always increases anyway. Check any city over any period of time. It's normal. Uber isn't the problem, it's the lack of capacity for a growing population and other viable transportation. For example, look at electric scooters and bikes in big cities that people are using for medium distances instead of cars. That's what happens when there's progress and competition instead of regressive regulation.
The Uber driver has to drive to pick them up. Then once they drop them off, they have to drive to the next fare. Sometimes they even circle around high traffic areas in heavy traffic in order to get to customers faster.
Basically anytime you see an uber driver without a passenger is likely extra car time on the road compared to what those passengers would have done with private cars.
You also have more and more people in every growing city supercommuting due to rising housing costs. A lot of these supercommuters are driving their own personal vehicle because they are now living in places where a personal vehicle is a necessity. Once you have your own personal vehicle for local use, it's economically advantageous to use it for commuting to work.
Given all the changes in growing cities in the past 5-10 years, you couldn't even begin to isolate the cause of congestion down to just one cause, but that's what these studies falsely claim because they don't understand the null hypothesis and that correlation does not imply causation.
I think we agree completely on this, and the best other options in cities are all mass transit, not individual cars.
> Taxis are cars too by the way. How did all those taxi regulations improve externalities?
Taxis didn't impose nearly the same congestion externalities as ride shares (or single occupancy cars) simply because there just weren't as many of them, due to the controversial medallion system. They were never a form of mass transit.
And as anyone who waited hours for a taxi before the ride share era knows, the lack of supply was the primary frustration with taxis. Ride share simply multiplies out the taxi technology of low occupancy cars, which while it solves the taxi supply problem increases the existing congestion problem wrought by low occupancy cars in general. Therefore it is not the way to achieve scalable transit in even somewhat dense environments.
But to your question, maybe congestion taxes on single passenger ride sharing pushes us toward a form of dispatchable mass transit which shares many of the conveniences of ride-share with the social benefits of mass transit i.e. a fleet of dispatchable municipal minibuses that work like a larger Uber Pool.
That would be especially helpful for last-mile connectivity for mass transit like commuter trains, whose parking lots are today overwhelmed by single occupancy cars.
Lack of alternatives is the problem. Externalities of Uber are nothing but political outrage and a distraction. If the govt put even a fraction of the effort in battling Uber into building more rail and bus lines then everything would be solved.
This has been proven by the massive surge in electric scooters and bike sharing companies, which Uber also provides. Are those externalities too? Or do people just want to get around and need ways to do so?
I agree. We should be making it more expensive to operate any low-occupancy vehicle during peak congestion hours in congested areas, not just ride-shares.
It's not just because they're Taxis they suck. There is also bad Uber drivers too.
No apps, need to communicate destination (possibly in a foreign language), primarily use cash, expensive, paper receipts, no real-time status/tracking, hard to get back lost items, etc. They might be cleaner and quieter but those are minor details.
Wrong: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/japantaxi/id481647073
Need to communicate destination.
Not with the app.
Primarily use cash
Wrong, you can pay by many means, including the IC card, this is a good option and can be used with Apple wallet, super convenient.
Expensive
Compared to what?
Paper receipts
Not when using the app, you can just say you don't want a receipt.
No real-time status tracking
Wrong, the app does this too.
Hard to get back lost items
Call taxi company, get it back? Tokyo taxi drivers usually inspect the taxi before you get out too, I notice they do this every time I get a cab.
Another benefit IMO is there are cabs driving around everywhere, you don't have to hail and wait for a cab, if it starts raining, you can just jump into a cab usually in under a minute.
no, this isn't correct and on its face looks like a straw man, so i'm pretty sure you're arguing in bad faith, but i'll try to give someone of the "market" mindset a market argument.
market zealots tell us that as things become cheaper, people do more of them. subsidizing ride sharing, evading regulations, etc. generally made ride sharing become a cheaper alternative to taxis. as a result, it suddenly became generally affordable for well off people to "ride share" around everywhere as a manner of commuting. this very likely led to more congestion than a world without ride sharing would have.
that some of these well off individuals could have done the same in private cars is not really relevant. ride sharing became so economical that bus riders, pedestrians and cyclists changed their behavior to make use of it. this isn't controversial - there's at least one study from SF that found this; i'm guessing other municipalities have found the same.
He didn't say that at all, read his post again. He says that uber takes pedestrians and cyclists and PT users and turns them into car (Uber) users.
"Uber and Lyft Admit They're Making Traffic Worse"
https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2019/08/uber-lyft-tra...
Traffic always increases over time, that's a natural thing that cities need to plan for. It's great motivation to build public transportation instead of complaining about Uber helping people get around.
Please refrain from ad hominem attacks. GP has a valid point.
> ride sharing became so economical that bus riders, pedestrians and cyclists changed their behavior to make use of it.
If that is your concern, what explains popularity of Uber in London / Paris, which have excellent public transport as well as massive customer base for that public transport? Clearly, Uber is providing good value there.
That's entirely consistent with parents point though.
If you could walk somewhere then you don't need a car, but if you need a car then you weren't a pedestrian or cyclist anyway. There are also many people who didn't have any good option at all before (like kids, disabled, elderly, etc) and it's a good thing that they can get around now.
Also the govt is not lacking for funds. The problem is poor spending and that will never get solved by giving up even more money. I'd rather have private businesses that actually produce valuable services then wait on crappy transportation delivered a decade late by the state.
>Commercial exploitation of subsidized infrastructure What makes trucking different than Uber in this scenario? Is driving my own car around not abusing the infrastructure, but hailing an Uber is? Uber doesn't make money if nobody is riding somewhere in the car, so the market forces try and make utilization as efficient as possible.
>Increased collision risk to cyclists and vulnerable road users Are Uber drivers more likely to hit people than non Uber drivers? If you control for the population utilization of the roads, does this have a measurable affect?
>Abuse of contract law by preventing independent rate setting and concealing negotiable information You have a point there, but personally I disagree that these should be required by law in the first place.
>Artificially depressed prices fueled by venture capital in order to create a monopoly and capitalize later Well its doing a pretty bad job if the goal is to create monopolies. For most tech companies, they have a reasonable amount of competitors given the chicken-and-egg situation they need to solve. Prices are artificially depressed, not going to lie, but a lot of prices are artificially depressed to make them usable by the masses, and its all the better for it.
This happens naturally. From a previous calculation I did, I estimate that a hybrid Prius allows a full-time rideshare driver to gross more than $500 each month than a typical ICE sedan. The economics of more efficient vehicles biases drivers to get more efficient vehicles with fewer externalities. This is why Priuses and other hybrid cars are the most common vehicles used by rideshare drivers.
Are you seriously suggesting that an entity could have both positive and negative effects? That's unpossible!
Typical subsidies for transit are in the $0.50+ per passenger mile range for rail, and $0.80 for bus: https://opportunityurbanism.org/2019/09/transport-costs-and-... (scroll down to the graph).
So these states are the vanguard in finding ways to collect more tax revenue any way they can. Sharing Economy companies are simply the easiest to harvest right now.
https://www.policyed.org/pension-pursuit/pension-liability-s... (PolicyEd: Interactive Map of Pension Liability by State and City)
Illinois is an outlier, and is seriously in trouble, but most other states will be fine.
My real question is what do these states do? Continue to raise taxes? Even the other states in question are losing high net worth tax payers to places like Nashville, Texas, Florida, Arizona, etc.
Do the just restructure in bankruptcy and leave all these people hanging who are relying on their pensions to live on?
Neither of these possible. I'm really at a loss at what these states should do.
Put differently: the pension liability per year is 6.675 billion. Illinois rakes in about $45 billion per year in taxes.
That's at most "awkward" to handle and at best "easy" and possibly even trivial.
And because the underfundedness compounds (if you have less capital, then you fall farther behind because your growth is on your capital being as projected), they're in real trouble.
https://www.illinoispolicy.org/illinois-241b-pension-debt-st...
It's widely acknowledged that most states' assessments of their own unfunded liabilities are borderline fabrications, because they assume unrealistic rates of return. Illinois assumes 6.75-7.25% rates of return on pension investments. The average discount rate for corporate pension plans is under 4% (and even with that low discount rate, they're 90% funded on average): https://www.pionline.com/article/20180430/PRINT/180439976/20....
Reducing expectations for existing participants is the same as defaulting on a loan, and I see no reason for why pensioners should be getting haircuts, while lenders get every penny they are owed.
1) Pensioner debt in Illinois is about $250 billion, versus $65 billion for other kinds of debt. Any debt restructuring will necessarily have to see pensioners carry most of the water.
2) Defaulting on loans makes it very difficult to access the capital markets for things current and future residents need. (Long term bonds to pay for transit projects, etc.) Cutting pension obligations doesn’t have that problem.
So make both pensioners, and lenders share the pain. Don't just dump all the problems onto one or the other. It was the lender's fault for not taking into account the possibility of default of a creditor with large outstanding financial obligations.
You cannot do this.
Say there is a discount rate of 8% and you owe $100 per year for 20 years. That's a NPV of about $980.
Then you say, $980 divided by 20 years is only $49! It's nothing. You just turned an obligation of $100 per year into $49 per year.
See, the pensions, when they say they have a shortfall of X, what they mean is that if they got X today, and invested it with their expected rate of return, in the future they would have what they need to pay out their obligations. They are not saying that their obligations are X when they are added together across time without discounting.
Second, in the case of pension funds, the discount rate is how much they think they can earn with the money. The pension industry has different assumed rates of return, but the most consistent one I've heard is 8%, which in today's world of secular low rates is insane. There is a whole world here of pension funds reaching for yield as risk free instruments drop to very low rates, and this is by far a much bigger impact on pensions than anything else and something not talked about when people cheer low interest rates. This is causing pension funds to be in shortfall all across the world.
There is also the issue that some pension plans contain provisions for health insurance, which is also hard to predict.
So I'm not saying I have the right number, but without knowing their discount rate or future obligations, you are not going to be able to get a good number.
It's a two tier system, the first government funded, and of course the Japanese government is in enormous debt, but not because of pensions. The government funded pension is like welfare, it's very small, is fixed in amount for everyone, and funded by contributions. It would be what social security is if the amount was tiny -- say $200 per month -- and fixed for everyone regardless of how much they pay in, even though everyone pays in a bit less than 1% of their salary. It is a system not dependent on positive rates of return.
The second system is the main source of pensions for people and is employer/employee funded. It is also quite austere -- you pay in 18% of your income in year 1 and that amount increases by 0.25% each year. Of course only half is deducted from your paycheck, the rest from the employer, but it is effectively taken out of the worker's paycheck.
What you get when you retire is ~0.55% of your total lifetime wages each year. This amount is fixed in nominal terms -- there is no inflation, cost of living adjustment, etc. You get this fixed amount every year. That means that by design the system is solvent because even if nothing is invested and the money earns 0%, if you work for 30 years and never get a raise, you will have paid in an average of ~22% of your lifetime wages which will fund 32 years of retirement pension after 30 years of working. But a normal person will get raises, and as they get raises over time, they earn more later in life when their percentage contribution goes up, so pensions are well funded even for a population with long lifespans and low interest rates. Then of course people have private savings in addition to pensions.
Needless to say, Americans would riot if you told them they need to increase their social security contribution from 15% to 18%, with no cap, and that this amount goes up every year, and then what they get would be only 0.55% of their lifetime earnings with no COLA. That means someone earning the median per-capita income of about 31K for 40 years of work would get $570 per month in social security benefits after paying in an average of $594 per month over 40 years. But again, our system is designed for people who die younger and work in an economy with decent rates of return.
But if we adopted a Japanese style system, social security would be permanently in the black regardless of interest rates.
So does that mean the average retired Japanese person is living on less than $1k per month?? How are they doing that? Isn't Japan pretty Urban and the cities relatively expensive to live in?
In Japan 2/3 of the average person's retirement income is pension benefits and 1/3 is savings, so Japanese augment their frugal pensions by saving a lot. Even so, 1 in 6 Japanese live in poverty, and 1 in 5 seniors live in poverty, suggesting that the low pensions play a role and that some Japanese are suffering because of this (https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/06/04/business/financ...)
In terms of Japan being expensive to live in, it depends on your lifestyle. You can certainly spend a lot of money in Japan, but the median household income in Japan is about 40K (source: http://nbakki.hatenablog.com/entry/Distribution_of_Yearly_Ho.... more salary breakdowns here: https://resources.realestate.co.jp/living/average-salary-jap...) so assuming 2 people, that's about $1700/month per person, so a pension of $1000/month is completely unsurprising.
Private consumption in Japan, as a share of GDP, is about 10% less than in the U.S. E.g. they consume about 57% of GDP and we consume about 67% of GDP. This includes consumption of fixed capital. If you back that out, the median Japanese household is just much more frugal than the median US household, and it's not all increased out of pocket healthcare spending (source: https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-6/how-do-united-states-c...). They really are more frugal and more risk averse than US households.
Thus, social security is much more than a pension program, it's actually a significant transfer that causes seniors to have lower poverty rates than working-age Americans.
We will be leaving in approx six months after having lived here for all my 48 years.
That's what a billboard said on some highway around Illinois / Indiana. :-)
https://www.nj.com/politics/2019/09/nj-is-facing-a-12b-publi...
Even by 2022 the NJ pension is in trouble. It's not hard to read about these as many journalists are covering the pension time bombs in numerous states. State's which happen to be some of the most taxed states in the country.
The states won't be bankrupted. Just a greater and greater portion of tax revenue will go towards paying for debt, which means less for investments for the future, so current and future taxpayers will take a hit to quality of life compared to better managed states (all else being equal).
If anything, it's surprising the states are being so slow to crack down on this stuff.
CA has a high income tax rate, but property taxes aren't that high - they're pretty average for the nation. And the effective property tax rate is even lower due to prop 13. You can actually search this on many property tax websites - on average the effective tax rate for property in some counties is less than half the actual property tax rate.
California has huge budget problems whenever there is an economic downturn due to its heavy reliance on income taxes (which is due to prop 13), which is heavily reliant upon the stock market. This is why certain people love to talk about how its going to "fail" whenever this happens.
Prop 13 does California wrong on so many levels. We're sacrificing our future via the additional perverse incentives it gives for NIMBYism, and unfairly overtaxing productive citizens via the income tax. The state really needs to develop a plan to sunset it.
Even though some people can or do pay cash for a home, they are not a significant population. Very often people that can pay cash will make a cash bid, prove they have it and still get a mortgage because money is cheap and the opportunity cost of trading that money for a house is generally unfavorable. A home is generally a market lagging investment when considering maintenance and taxes. Throw in interest and it's a lousy investment but you can live in it so it's rational depending on your lifestyle.
What people can afford in an area they want to live is what prices homes - taxes, mortgage rates, and price combine to generate a monthly payment that people are willing to pay. That's how the market works. In some areas the price can outpace the other 2 if wages are rising, like we've seen in SV for awhile now. But that's the exception and not the rule.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_California_Proposition_13
Not sure how you can compete with Florida though, when your state has high taxes and it's cold. If they make infomercials for both Florida and NJ or even OH... Obviously Florida would be the better choice. Warmer, less taxes, friendlier to businesses, world class cities, the top theme parks in the world, if you want to go on a cruise not that far from a port... and plus residents get discounts on theme parks even cruises. Then from my impression of places like NJ or NY people always seem in a hurry and sometimes even rude. While it seems like people from FL are more relaxed and happier.
Plus since things are less industrial and more tech or done remotely it's easy to get up and leave than before. Got a hedge fund? Relocate to FL and then fire anyone that doesn't want to move with you. Miami sounds more appealing than Wall St. to some of the change makers, plus with the wealth tax idea that's being pushed and other stuff, what's the incentive to stay when you can vote with your feet? Plus it's not like New York is it's own country, so citizens there have 49 other choices they can move to.
There was a recycling plant that had trouble getting approved in Los Angeles, even 10 years later. They relocated to Arizona and got approved in a single day. I think more people and companies should do that. Let these states lose out and fail, the states that make things better and easier will win. There CEO had much more patience than I'd have if things were moving that slow. Uhaul trucks leaving California cost more than heading back to California. So I think people are getting sick of states, and cities especially when they quit listening to people. California lessen the punishment for stealing, so more stores are being stolen from too sadly. Also they are tough on truck drivers, so some drivers rather just avoid California completely.
Well, it turns out, if they'd have done so, they'd be required to pay taxes on the income of their whole partnership from most of their clients, because most of the companies they do business with are based in Cali, even though all the rest of their lawyers are based in Texas.
Guess how they decided to proceed after receiving such advice from the state?
https://finance.zacks.com/pay-taxes-pensions-state-retired-s...
The main reason my parents moved south when they retired wasn't the weather but the fact that they couldn't retire how they wanted with the property taxes in this state.
Lobbied against and still lost by an enormous margin (70 percent of voters supported the new regulation).
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/05/nyregion/airbnb-jersey-ci...
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/06/airbnb-suffers-setback-in-je...
AirBnB aren't top competition.
why? politicians and their allies successfully portrayed the home sharing industry as the reason for rising rents when in fact it has long been because politicians and those using their connections which have been the cause. oh they hide it well but the idea is to keep their investments up and keep "those" people out. Those people being any group which they don't want to see where they live.
If you got this far, good for you. Are there bad actors in the home sharing space. Yes, however you target them more directly but the restriction of requiring owners to be on site during the rental period severely limits the rights of the good ones.
so yes there is some regulation needed but if it does not protect the little guy, and they weren't in this as they got rolled in with the rest, then it harms us all as whole.
rents won't go down until more units are built and they won't be built for the same reasons they were not being built before home sharing industries showed up at the door.
Is it “sharing” or is it “industry”? It can’t be both.
Parties all night during the week, drunk people trying to enter the wrong apartments at 3AM, arguments between loud tourists in your once quiet building, and somehow sleeping 10 people in a two bedroom apartment.
I don't blame residents for not wanting to live and work around that everyday. Most people don't want to live in flop houses.
I agree more units need to be built and development should be encouraged. Given a referendum I'd vote against allowing short term rentals not because I'm nervous they raise rents but because I don't want my building to be a hotel.
So although I generally agree with your line of thought, I disagree in this instance.
Even more interesting is the number of 'No' votes (7,416) is less than the number of signatures on the petition that forced the ordinance into a public referendum (~20,000 with ~9,000 certified).
https://results.enr.clarityelections.com/NJ/Hudson/98893/Web...
https://www.nj.com/hudson/2019/08/referendum-on-airbnb-regul...
There's no reason ride hailing companies need to violate labor laws to do business.
Edit: I'm not doxxing myself, sorry. I'm within commuting distance of NYC.
I had to cancel a trip from Fort Lee to Stony Brook when I discovered the driver had NJ plates.
They don't know where they're going until they arrive at location.
Early morning through rush hour, and evening rush hour: 2-5x more expensive than a cab, depending on surge pricing.
Holidays: 3-20x more expensive than a cab, depending on surge. I have seen multiple Uber and Lyft fares that would have cost more than the plane ticket did.
And, given that those hotels have shuttles, why would you walk? Just take the hotel's bus. (Or are you feeling that that's not cool, because you're going there not to stay there, but just to take an Uber?)
For example, walking into SLC airport is not trivial to do. It's designed to be driven to, and that only (or, now you can take the train). I mean, you can walk along the bike trail from the southeast corner of the airport, then work your way through the parking lots of the air cargo places, but I don't think there's a sidewalk from the bike trail to the terminal. And that's the best walking option at SLC.
[Edit: A bit of time in Google Maps shows a sidewalk the majority of the way in SLC, but not all of it.]
It's cheaper for the customer, but Uber drivers get screwed in the long term.
Uber started in San Francisco. You could not get a cab on the weekend for any amount of $. You could not get a cab to come to the "tough" neighborhoods. This is 100% fact. I once called 4x and was told one was coming - falsely (I did live in what was then a "bad" neighborhood). My roommate walked across the entire city.
Uber started with licensed transit vehicles - now called uber black. It was only when other folks started doing private party cars that they copied that with UberX (oddly they briefly had some moves towards pushing for enforcement against the unlicensed folks but saw that customers didn't care).
But the underlying issues - incredibly bad service (talking on phone, smoking, credit card machine "broken") and lack of availability - despite the industry being "regulated" were VERY real. That's what got them going.
The other reality - they have FORCED the taxi industry to up their game. You can almost always now pay with credit cards in a taxi, you can call a taxi with an app, you can sometimes even review your taxi driver.
Same deal in Pittsburgh, though I only called 2x on the first instance and 1x on the second. Then I stopped using taxis unless forced.
> credit card machine "broken"
This happened twice last week to me in SoCal and seems to happen about 50% of the time I use taxis.
I paid happily for uber black when it came out - whatever people think of uber costs now - original uber was NOT cheaper than a taxi as I remember - BUT you could actually get it. But I might be wrong - for me, I just wanted to be able to get something so I could avoid owning a car (most of the time bus etc works but not always).
Also, tacking on taxes to hotel bills hurts them, by making visits more expensive and thus reducing demand.
But really nice hot takes.
If you want to argue with the phrase "protect the public," that's fine. The point is that, pre-smartphones, the medallion system ensures a functioning system, a modicum of safety, no fare surprises. It was not intended to produce the _lowest possible fares_ for riders.
Deregulated taxis had cartels, increased and varying prices depending on destination and poorer customer service. Bad enough that many countries and cities found they had to regulate.
Now, whether medallions that are separate from vehicle and driver, and thus have a value in their own right are the best way to regulate is another question entirely. In the US specific case it seems emphatically not. Quite why many US cities had such poor taxi service when other countries have managed much better is beyond me.
Imagine believing this.
https://slate.com/business/2012/06/taxi-medallions-how-new-y...
>The public hasn’t fared much better. Deep-pocketed medallion owners have hijacked public policy through lobbying and legal challenges. Just last week medallion owners won a legal victory blocking Mayor Bloomberg’s plan to create a fleet of “green cabs” to serve New York’s outer boroughs, and last year medallion owners successfully stymied New York’s attempt to shift to hybrid taxis.
Just one example in the article of the great protection medallions offered.
Medallions being valued over $1 million is a pipe dream today. Today they are worth about 11% of that. https://www.crainsnewyork.com/transportation/mystery-buyer-s...
The green cabs exist.
Teslas were just approved for NYC taxi fleets. https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/tesla-model-3-taxi-cab-ne...
Taxi emissions have been reduced dramatically: "The scientists report that overall fuel efficiency of the medallion taxi fleet climbed from 15.7 to 33.1 mpg, and corresponding estimates of nitric oxide (NO) and total particulate (PMT) exhaust emissions declined by 82% and 49%, respectively." https://www.greencarcongress.com/2019/05/20190530-taxis.html
Nobody claims the medallion system was perfect, or that owners did not attempt to exploit their value. But it did provide a functioning cab network that was safe and predictable for decades. And despite holdign a lot of power, medallion owners are not immune from government regulations and competition aided by technology.
I don't even know what world you're describing right now. With issues like "the credit card machine is down" to a cab never showing up despite how many calls I made.. the last word I'd ever use to describe cabs is "predictable." Even today, post-Uber.
"For decades" -- like, from the 1940s to the 2000s.
Fares were predictable. Still are in fact, they are actually painted on the exterior of the cab itself. Maybe you've noticed?
like I said originally, "predictable." thx 4 confirming
What's the etymology?
[1]: http://tsa1.nv.gov/ActiveCertificatesDetail.asp?cCertNum=TNC...
[2]: https://ubernewsroomapi.10upcdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/...
[3]: https://www.uber.com/global/en/cities/washington-dc/
There's at least one document[4] where Rasier LLC forms a subsidieary `Raiser-CA, LLC`.
[4]: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/9kwjz5/unicorn-trank-and-... , specifically https://video-images.vice.com/_uncategorized/1500911986571-S...
That said, the company has so much regulatory risk associated with it. It has the feel that the "system" is working very hard to punish the "disrupter" in a fatal way to discourage other such disrupters.
As an anecdote, I took a Lyft to the airport with someone who had stopped driving for 6 months in order to get started with a new full time job, and had just started driving again to pick up a little more cash on the side. No full time employer would tolerate a 6 month break to start up another job, and then allow you to come back.
Furthermore, it's not just one thing. It's a set of criteria/tests that for certain states like CA and NJ are defined in the law. Taken in aggregate and not just on one single characteristic of the employment a determination can be made.
But the current dichotomy limits the freedom of individuals to contract out their labor on terms that work form them. It replaces the free choice of individuals with the "wisdom" of bureaucrats and politicians.
In practice contractors still have to charge market prices. I’m not going to pay 20% more for the same quality of service.
https://www.fairwork.gov.au/how-we-will-help/templates-and-g...
But the criteria have to make sense in the context of the law. For instance, "unemployment" doesn't make much sense in the context of a driver who works for Uber and Lyft. And "minimum wage" doesn't make sense if the drivers are able to decline or cancel a request.
So can you be more specific about what aspects of employment should apply to an Uber driver?
No, the main benefit is that Uber doesn't choose who can drive, anyone can sign up and start driving. I don't see how you can classify them as employees without Uber having any selection criteria at all for the drivers except that they have a valid drivers licence.
The workers choose to work at Uber, Uber didn't choose to employ the workers since Uber is open for all.
You can't really look at one aspect of it and make a determination, it's based on several factors. The main ones that come up in this scenario are if the contractor/employee can set their own rates, and how closely management monitors how they do their job. Flexibility of employment - either in terms of scheduling or to take periods of time off - is not considered.
All jobs that are desperate for workers. It's constant shortage if you listen to the news, but when you see conditions it's more that people don't want to work there because the conditions and the pay are quite bad.
If Uber left, it would look more like NJ made an example out of Uber. Other states would see NJ's success in beating down Uber, and might be inspired to tighten their own labor law enforcement.
Also, Uber would be leaving behind a very lucrative market in NJ: it's the 11th most populous state, 3rd highest in income,[1] and a large part of its population is in the NYC metro area (high population density, lots of rides to commuter trains, etc.).
but hey, it's easier to sleep at night when you just dismiss opposing opinions due to their lack of the exact same life experience as you?
An in the USA (vs the UK) actually self employed workers get screwed over getting 20% over a FTE i seen as good where in the UK I would go out for 3x my FTE sallery.
Uber's not some irreplaceable God's Gift to Man.
In order to make the taxes not ridiculous Uber would be forced to start declining people who want to start riding, you'd have job interviews with an application process ensuring that the driver is going to be worth the significant employee tax, since a driver only driving a single time will cost them significant amounts. That is how normal businesses do this, and I think it would be a huge loss. The ability for anyone to just start driving for Uber with no questions asked is extremely progressive, not sure why anyone is trying to ruin that. I don't understand why people think that making money needs to be so controlled like it is today.
Source on number of rides in New Jersey:
https://eu.app.com/story/news/traffic/commuting/2015/11/12/u...
how is this different than anyone else who has to work in the state? You can replace drivers with almost any other job. Why should uber drivers get special treatment when its comes to paying taxes?
California's done this with emissions.
Uber broke that and introduced people to what is possible with the free market. Now the government can't just go back to its corrupt ways. People will notice if service degrades.
I hope Lyft, Uber, and others are driven out of some markets just so we can see if there's a backlash against the unholy union of government, left-wing unions, and taxi cab companies.
I feel like people should be reminded about what the government and taxi cab union dominated market was like with their hedgefund insider deals (to purchase medallions) and other corrupt dealings.
People always assume decapitating Uber will bring an utopia ... they should be reminded about how corrupt government is when nobody is watching (and people usually aren't watching).
Requoted:
> Employee and employer state Unemployment Insurance tax rates will apply to the first $34,400 of an employee’s earnings in 2019 (up from $33,700 in 2018). For 2019, employees are subject to a 0.0425% (.000425) Workforce Development Partnership Fund tax rate. The employee Unemployment Insurance tax rate remains at 0.3825% (.003825) of taxable payroll.
I meant it breaks the flow of the code by inserting line breaks.
> Make your window bigger (80 chars) if you want to see full lines. For mobile it’s still more readable than horizontal scrolling code.
Not all code uses 80 as the standard, many use 100 instead. Regardless, it is not at all true that wrapping is more readable than horizontal scrolling. Wrapping doesn't obey the indentation of the surrounding context.
Edit: and society for that matter. See Al Capone, a murderer, being finally arrested for tax evasion as an example.
Or its fundamentally correct under the law and Uber has misclassified its drivers as independent contracts whereas they should properly be classified as employees.
After all Uber did disclose this was significant risk in their S-1, and further that such a reclassification could be an existential threat to the business.
It sounds conspiratorial, but now that they have gone public (and investors have cashed out and dumped the bag) the money that was roadblocking these moves by government (note the article makes it clear NJ has been pursuing these taxes for 4 years) has dried up and governments will begin to act. Its no surprise to anyone in the know, just follow the money (in this case the shorts)
The "sharing economy" is a scam of epic proportions.
hardly comparable.
Let's start with the costs of the business model.
What are the two costs involved in transporting a customer from point A to point B? They are: - The car’s time - The (human) driver’s time
Operating or leasing a car for a certain amount of time (maintenance/insurance/gasoline) has not become significantly cheaper since Uber was created, so there is no cost reduction here.
Hiring a human's dedicated time (at least minimum wage) has also not become significantly cheaper since Uber, so here too there is no cost reduction.
Therefore the cost to transport something from point A to B has stayed exactly the same, before Uber and after Uber.
To transport something from point A to point B, someone must still carry this unavoidable cost. If the customer is not carrying this cost, then Uber must be carrying it. Uber can do so for now because investor money has subsidized the cost. But Uber can’t do this forever because investors will lose patience and stop the subsidy.
Uber can only be profitable once the unavoidable cost transport is passed on entirely to the customer. At that point, Uber will have to charge the same price as any taxi. Stated differently, Uber can never be more profitable than a taxi company on a per-ride basis.
Given that customers have no loyalty to a ride-share service, because every ride is virtually identical, any taxi company can build a similar service, removing any "walled garden" or "network effect" Uber may have hoped for. In fact, Uber clones are doing well in other countries and are creating significant headwinds for Uber.
Uber therefore has no hope of ever delivering its promises unless it can deliver driverless cars. Even if it can do that, the technology will quickly become commoditized and ubiquitous, meaning that any other ride-share service could offer it as well, once again removing any advantage, and driving margins for all ride-share services to near zero.
Isn't it true that independent contractors are not eligible for unemployment or disability claims?
Yes that's true.
Given that, it is false that the "cost" is being picked up by others, because there is no cost here.
And given that the state is seeking retroactive reimbursement for past years, all independent contractors in the state who worked at this during this time period should be retroactively reimbursed for times of unemployment and for disability issues. Odd the state's not offering that.
What's the point of these fines if NJ and other governments have no real power to enforce them? This seems to be all for show. Sure, we throw poor people in jail over a $20 fine. But Uber doesn't pay tens of millions and nothing at all happens to them. It's impossible to see this as anything other than separate justice systems for the rich and poor. If Uber was a real person, they'd probably be in jail for life. If they weren't white, they'd be sitting on death row. Instead, we talk of them as if they are some sort of success: a company breaking laws and hemorrhaging money with no chance in fucking hell of ever being profitable.