Massachusetts to tax ride-hailing apps, give the money to taxis • Hacker News Board

Re: Massachusetts to tax ride-hailing apps, give the money to taxis

#91

Post by hueving » Sun, Aug 21, 2016, 5:25 AM UTC

yazaddaruvala wrote: post #73

toomuchtodo wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would absolutely love for someone to leak Uber's user demographic data. I find it hard to believe it's working class people regularly using it, and not just upper middle class professionals and above primarily (except on nights out to the bar; in that case I could see the demo skewed).

My bad, I should have tried to clarify. It seems we have different definitions of the working class. I'm an upper middle class professional, but I consider myself in the "working class". Otherwise, I'm not sure why I waste 40-60 hours every week on other people's problems :P

Working class generally refers to blue collar.

Re: Massachusetts to tax ride-hailing apps, give the money to taxis

#92

Post by HillRat » Sun, Aug 21, 2016, 5:25 AM UTC

dsacco wrote: post #52

acidburnNSA wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mostly agree with you, and I would have wholeheartedly agreed with you 2 weeks ago, but I just read a book ("Listen, Liberal" by Thomas Frank) that makes some interesting points about how liberals have shifted from representing working people to representing professionals, and to worshiping innovation. While free trade and disruptive technology is good for the professional class, it inherently increases inequality.…

I like your comment as a contribution to discussion, but I'd like to see a dialectic about why income inequality increasing is bad, in of itself. I see this implied quite a bit on Hacker News. Usually something along the lines of, "But doing this will increase income inequality" stated as a counterpoint. If overall quality of life increases, I am personally unconcerned with income inequality. I haven't seen definitiv…

>I'd like to see a dialectic about why income inequality increasing is bad, in of itself.

One main issue is that income inequality decreases socioeconomic mobility by inflating the cost of scarce goods that improve earnings capabilities. So 4K TVs are cheaper but college tuition becomes unaffordable, because good universities and grad programs are valuable, scarce goods that the wealthy can outbid everyone else on.

Policies that aggressively expand capacity and defray costs, such as post-WW2 expansions of universities and the GI bill, can ameliorate this by shifting monies down the socioeconomic ladder via taxation, but high levels of inequality also lead to a powerful political interest group that generally seeks to reduce tax rates that affect them.

There's also the more general economic argument that high levels of inequality are economically inefficient since they result in a lower average marginal propensity to consume, but that's not so much "bad" as "could be better and provide greater macro stability."

Re: Massachusetts to tax ride-hailing apps, give the money to taxis

#93

Post by ricw » Sun, Aug 21, 2016, 5:25 AM UTC

This is unbelievable. Never have I used a more corrupt and unfriendly taxi service as the one in Boston / Cambridge. And they are supposed to be subsidised?!

I have 1) been driven round crazy detours to up my cost 2) been forced to drive a detour because the card machine was broken and they only accepted cash 3) been turned down because my destination wasn't far enough 4) been shouted at because I was watching the free tv in the cab

In short, they suck. Badly. Thinking about it, I can't remember a positive experience. In contrast I've hardly had a negative experience with lyft/uber and mostly had very positive or positive experiences.

What's the best way of contacting this senator?!

Re: Massachusetts to tax ride-hailing apps, give the money to taxis

#94

Post by orblivion » Sun, Aug 21, 2016, 5:26 AM UTC

dsacco wrote: post #52

acidburnNSA wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mostly agree with you, and I would have wholeheartedly agreed with you 2 weeks ago, but I just read a book ("Listen, Liberal" by Thomas Frank) that makes some interesting points about how liberals have shifted from representing working people to representing professionals, and to worshiping innovation. While free trade and disruptive technology is good for the professional class, it inherently increases inequality.…

I like your comment as a contribution to discussion, but I'd like to see a dialectic about why income inequality increasing is bad, in of itself. I see this implied quite a bit on Hacker News. Usually something along the lines of, "But doing this will increase income inequality" stated as a counterpoint. If overall quality of life increases, I am personally unconcerned with income inequality. I haven't seen definitiv…

I generally agree with you, and often ask the same question. But I do have one possible answer, which is that inequality of economic power leads to inequality of political power. Perhaps it's not so relevant between lower and middle classes, but sufficiently rich people can buy political favors.

Re: Massachusetts to tax ride-hailing apps, give the money to taxis

#95

Post by giaour » Sun, Aug 21, 2016, 5:26 AM UTC

karma_vaccum123 wrote: post #71

acidburnNSA wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mostly agree with you, and I would have wholeheartedly agreed with you 2 weeks ago, but I just read a book ("Listen, Liberal" by Thomas Frank) that makes some interesting points about how liberals have shifted from representing working people to representing professionals, and to worshiping innovation. While free trade and disruptive technology is good for the professional class, it inherently increases inequality.…

> but I think someone needs to be thinking of the swaths of working people who are afraid of losing their jobs. Yet the government watches small businesses fail all the time with nothing more than an offer of unemployment insurance. Why should the government have a special care for taxis but no special care for a pizza parlor that goes under? Do they offer to retrain the workers with more advanced appliances? In this…

Unlike an individual pizza parlor, the taxi fleet in a given city plays an important role in policy planning. Public transit planning takes taxi service into account, and taxis are barred in many locales from refusing medically necessary transportation. Taxis have obligations that go above and beyond those imposed on a generic livery provider, and as such governments might be reluctant to let a few livery providers outcompete taxis into extinction.

Re: Massachusetts to tax ride-hailing apps, give the money to taxis

#96

Post by pcl » Sun, Aug 21, 2016, 5:27 AM UTC

dsacco wrote: post #52

acidburnNSA wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mostly agree with you, and I would have wholeheartedly agreed with you 2 weeks ago, but I just read a book ("Listen, Liberal" by Thomas Frank) that makes some interesting points about how liberals have shifted from representing working people to representing professionals, and to worshiping innovation. While free trade and disruptive technology is good for the professional class, it inherently increases inequality.…

I like your comment as a contribution to discussion, but I'd like to see a dialectic about why income inequality increasing is bad, in of itself. I see this implied quite a bit on Hacker News. Usually something along the lines of, "But doing this will increase income inequality" stated as a counterpoint. If overall quality of life increases, I am personally unconcerned with income inequality. I haven't seen definitiv…

"Overall quality of life" can mean a lot of different things, depending on how you measure. Do you mean the arithmetic mean, the median, the quality of life of all members of the population, or something else? And while we're at it, it's worth considering how the population is defined -- all Americans? All westerners? All humans?

I've found that the appropriate answers tend to differ considerably depending on these definitions, and there is nowhere near a consensus for which is the right one to strive for.

Re: Massachusetts to tax ride-hailing apps, give the money to taxis

#97

Post by Dylan16807 » Sun, Aug 21, 2016, 5:27 AM UTC

dsacco wrote: post #82

Dylan16807 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It makes sense to me. Try something more like "I don't think people should get into debt, except for student loans". They support policy A for some markets, and policy B for other markets. That's not muddled.

This is exactly my point. There is no reason to use an arbitrary percentage. More to the point, if you're "100% for something, except for [whatever]", you're simply not 100% for that thing. Why even use a percentage at that point, let alone 100%? It's just involving numbers with no purpose.

Inside the category, it's 100%. It's a good way to signal that it's not a vague thing.

Let's take the statement "I'm 100% for punishing people that deserve it". That's a perfectly good statement, and the "100%" shows certainty across the category. Reinterpreting it as "I'm 40% for punishing people" is just being bad at discourse. The scope is not arbitrary, and shouldn't be treated separately.

Re: Massachusetts to tax ride-hailing apps, give the money to taxis

#98

Post by raquo » Sun, Aug 21, 2016, 5:27 AM UTC

dsacco wrote: post #52

acidburnNSA wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mostly agree with you, and I would have wholeheartedly agreed with you 2 weeks ago, but I just read a book ("Listen, Liberal" by Thomas Frank) that makes some interesting points about how liberals have shifted from representing working people to representing professionals, and to worshiping innovation. While free trade and disruptive technology is good for the professional class, it inherently increases inequality.…

I like your comment as a contribution to discussion, but I'd like to see a dialectic about why income inequality increasing is bad, in of itself. I see this implied quite a bit on Hacker News. Usually something along the lines of, "But doing this will increase income inequality" stated as a counterpoint. If overall quality of life increases, I am personally unconcerned with income inequality. I haven't seen definitiv…

With rising income inequality the difference between the average Joe and the 1% Joe is growing larger and larger. This seems increasingly unfair to more and more people. Eventually all those disillusioned poor people will act on this by bringing to power some radicals who will bulldoze the current system much like the Bolsheviks bulldozed the Russian empire.

If you need evidence that income inequality is itself a bad thing, ask anyone who happens to be on the poverty side of the inequality. There's much, much more of such people than rich people. All these poor people hold a lot of latent power.

Re: Massachusetts to tax ride-hailing apps, give the money to taxis

#99

Post by tomdell » Sun, Aug 21, 2016, 5:27 AM UTC

dsacco wrote: post #52

acidburnNSA wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mostly agree with you, and I would have wholeheartedly agreed with you 2 weeks ago, but I just read a book ("Listen, Liberal" by Thomas Frank) that makes some interesting points about how liberals have shifted from representing working people to representing professionals, and to worshiping innovation. While free trade and disruptive technology is good for the professional class, it inherently increases inequality.…

I like your comment as a contribution to discussion, but I'd like to see a dialectic about why income inequality increasing is bad, in of itself. I see this implied quite a bit on Hacker News. Usually something along the lines of, "But doing this will increase income inequality" stated as a counterpoint. If overall quality of life increases, I am personally unconcerned with income inequality. I haven't seen definitiv…

There are quite a few places where you can look into whether or not you think an increase in income inequality is a bad thing or not.

Feel free to start here - https://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/about-inequality/impacts - or here - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_inequality#Effects

Re: Massachusetts to tax ride-hailing apps, give the money to taxis

#100

Post by hueving » Sun, Aug 21, 2016, 5:27 AM UTC

AndyNemmity wrote: post #35

xname2 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

uber is not a taxi company

Just googled Taxi Service. Uber is the third listing under Yellow Cab, and Discount Cab. Looking at Uber's SEO, they have a lot of listings like "Request taxi cabs from your phone with uberTAXI" on their home page in the source. 52 entries. Strange for a company that isn't a taxi company to advertise their taxis.

Methinks you don't know what uberTAXI is.