Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/12/06/new-york-city-taxi-and-ridesha.html
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How do they live on even that wage in NYC?
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Having lived in NY on an editorial assistant’s salary, I can say it is possible, but not easy. Also, I was alone at the time, and only had to worry about me and my cat. For someone with kids to feed, it would be much harder. (When I worked in NY, I did know colleagues who got by because they had family money and/or spouses with better jobs.)
But the responses from Uber et al seem fairly predictable: “How can we make money/sell our services if our drivers don’t starve?”
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On a side note, many banks in NY are facing a very localized special form of mortgage meltdown.
Prior to the rise of rideshare apps a NYC Taxi medallion had an average worth at its peak about $1.4 million. Because of the recognized worth, banks were willing to let medallions be mortgaged. In the last few years the average worth of a medallion is less than $600K. Of course with any mortgages, there are going to be defaults. Since the mortgages are higher than the value of the medallions, they are essentially giving passes to the holders to try and make the payments rather than write off the loss with foreclosure.
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Gonna call out the headline here. I don’t see anything about the drivers of medallion cabs getting any increase at all.
Looks to me like the medallion holders are using what’s left of their regulatory capture power. Ridesharing companies have done their share of screwing over drivers, but who here is ready to go back to the medallion cab monopoly?
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That’s right. Nothing is being done for the yellows. Yellow cabs have been crushed by the app cars, which do the same thing but skirt paying for a Medallion. They circumvent the fact that they do real-time street hails with an app by claiming they’re ‘pre-arranged.’ Yellows are about to get hit with a $2.50 MTA tax on every trip in addition to the .80 they have been paying for years (Millions). Uber can claim the trip is a pool ride regardless of whether they pick up more than one passenger, and skirt by with .75.
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