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

reuters.com

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

#211

Post by briandear »

hx87 wrote: post #189
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.…

Or, you know, we could tax the disruptors (and the rest of the economy) and give everyone an UBI.

We already tax them. I'll support UBI if that's conditional on ending every other government welfare program -- including student loans and grants, health subsidies, etc.

It would be hugely more efficient!

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

#212

Post by xg15 »

rev_bird wrote: post #2

This is a pretty surreal move: >The law says the money will help taxi businesses to adopt "new technologies and advanced service, safety and operational capabilities" and to support workforce development... [Larry Meister, manager of the Boston area's Independent Taxi Operator's Association] said the money could go toward improving a smartphone app his association has started using, or to other big needs. I'm not an…

I'd agree with you on any other case. But it seems to me a big part of Uber's "innovation" was circumventing the taxi regulations - which were protecting the taxi business, yes, but also giving protection to customers and individual drivers.

With that I can kinda understand there is an interest to keep taxis alive.

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

#213

Post by staticfish »

throwaway049 wrote: post #131
AndyNemmity wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never seen a successful government app, certainly there must be one. Does anyone know of a reasonably useful government app? It's hard enough for normal tech to create useful apps, let alone the over expensive bogged down government.

Transport for London's real time API makes lots of third party apps possible. Their own route planner website is good too.

The TFL route-planner website is powered by Open Trip Planner.

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

#214

Post by dmoo »

morgante wrote: post #132
kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They will always need drivers just to stave off banditry and handle emergencies. What is likely is a single manned truck leading small convoys of automated machines.

> They will always need drivers just to stave off banditry This is an argument I have never understood. Do you really think the only thing preventing highway robbers is a driver? If anything, self-driving trucks would likely be able to respond more effectively as they can call police without fearing for their lives.

Is there then a question about how high a priority this robbery will be for the police since no life is in danger? Perhaps trucking companies will have to hire security guards instead of drivers...

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

#215

Post by briandear »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #38
maverick_iceman wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm, if liberals are so pro-business then why Bernie has so many fans?

Because he's a democratic socialist? I love tech as much as the next person, but disrupting wide swaths of the country's working populace and drastically increasing income inequality and increasing unemployment in an unsustainable manner, due to the leverage tech provides, and we step in with laws to override the marketplace. A government exists for all its citizens, after all. No man is an island.

These were that same exact arguments made against the car and airplanes. It's like history is repeating but people think they're living in unique times.

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

#216

Post by staticfish »

randyrand wrote: post #65
yohoho22 wrote: post #54

> The 5-cent fee will be collected through the end of 2021. Then the taxi subsidy will disappear and the 20 cents will be split by localities and the state for five years. The whole fee will go away at the end of 2026.

ah the old 'temporary tax' we hear time to time. I remember some story about a few WWII temporary taxes that are still taxing today.

The toll charges for a trip across the Golden Gate Bridge were instituted to pay for the segment not subsided by the citizens on each bank of the San Francisco Bay.

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

#217

Post by ucarion »

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…

It seems doubtful that income inequality is inherently bad, but perhaps it's strongly correlated with things that are inherently bad (i.e. suffering, if you ask me).

Consider a society A, and then society A+ which is identical except the most well-off person is twice as well-off. It's hard to see how A+ could be worse than A in any way. Maybe there's an even better A++ where A+ has some redistribution, but that's another argument.

We don't mind inequality within lives (nobody says it's inherently bad to have most of your happiness distributed toward the later half of your life), so we'd need an argument why inequality across lives is bad.

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

#218

Post by benjiweber »

staticfish wrote: post #199
jacobolus wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I lived in Cambridge for about 6 years from ~2004–2011. Nothing but positive experiences with Boston-area cabs. The drivers were uniformly friendly and competent, and had no trouble with the ridiculously convoluted MA street layouts. When I was carrying suitcases or moving boxes of books around, they were patient and helpful with loading/unloading. When I left my wallet one time, the driver called me as soon as he fo…

I'm not disputing your experiences for one second, but mine closely match OP's in Boston, and just about every other large city in the US.* *With the exception of London. Maybe having to study The Knowledge has something to do with it..

The "card machine is broken" line is consistently used by most London cabbies. They're being forced into accepting card kicking and screaming by regulations towards the end of the year https://tfl.gov.uk/info-for/media/press-releases/2016/februa...

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

#219

Post by briandear »

giaour wrote: post #120
a_c wrote: post #64

If this logic make sense, perhaps AirBnB need to be taxed to support hotel industry, Iphone should pay to nokia and internet should be taxed to landline

Landlines all have a fee that subsidizes service in rural areas. Hotels have to pay hotel taxes in addition to property taxes, which are often earmarked.

I have some properties that I AirBnB in France and we pay the hotel taxes just like the hotels. So that argument that AirBnB properties don't have to pay hotel tax isn't true. And the tax isn't even that much. If a hotel is on such a tight margin that €0.80-€2.10 per occupant per day is a hardship, then they have bigger problems. We also get to pay property tax, habitation tax as well as income tax. Yet here in France the hotel business still lobbies against AirBnB.

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

#220

Post by Ericson2314 »

dsacco wrote: post #179
hx87 wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Low socioeconomic mobility is a problem because the potential for any individual to contribute to the good of society is at best loosely correlated with their previous socioeconomic status. If people who could have been top-notch scientists, engineers, civil servants and entrepreneurs were prevented from doing so because they couldn't move up the ladder (and inversely, rich rent-seekers couldn't move down), society i…

Where did I conflate socioeconomic mobility and income equality? I didn't intend to do that. More to your point - I respond by asking whether or not the socioeconomic standing of a scientist matters for the societal impact of their work. I don't see an easy conclusion here. The scientists driving innovation in industry are generally paid very well (this is relative, but we can probably agree they are paid higher than…

How many famous intellectuals from before the 19th century came from the lower classes? That is what we will return to.
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