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Uber is dropping rates for drivers down from 80 cents/mile to 60 cents/mile

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Re: Uber is dropping rates for drivers down from 80 cents/mile to 60 cents/mile

#211

Post by mnm1 »

user5994461 wrote: post #179
mnm1 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the cancellation fees uber in particular charges are bullshit and I always dispute them with the credit card if uber doesn't give me credit. Every single one has been for a driver taking a trip that's way too far away, estimated wait time of two to three minutes becoming ten to fifteen minutes or more. If the driver who knows they are taking this trip and won't get there for over ten minutes but the eta is th…

Maybe something is wrong with you for thinking you can get a ride anywhere anytime in less than 5 minutes. Uber is assigning the rides, consistently incorrectly showing 3 minutes away and with a ride to finish sometimes.

Yeah, something is wrong with me for believing the app. Even after I request the ride, the time estimate actually goes up instead of down and clearly, that's my fault too. I bet when an uber crashes, that will somehow be my fault too by your incredibly stupid logic.

Re: Uber is dropping rates for drivers down from 80 cents/mile to 60 cents/mile

#212

Post by _cs2017_ »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #201
_cs2017_ wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you. I guess I'm asking how likely is the (quite appealing) scenario you describe? The volume increase will more than offset the price drop -- otherwise Uber would have no incentive to drop the price in the first place. What else do we need to know to predict the outcome on drivers pay?

Predicting this kind of stuff is a rabbit hole. Suppose there is a strip of struggling restaurants downtown in an area with insufficient parking, so that your ride service is the best way to get there. If you lower prices by $.10/mile, you just lose money. If you lower prices by $.20/mile, the lower transportation cost allows the restaurants get enough new customers that they can make improvements, and then the resta…

If Uber was not reasonably confident in their predictive models, they'd be shifting rates by like 1% per week to test the waters, instead of 25% in a day. And if Uber can have good predictive models, maybe independent economists who study this market could make somewhat decent predictions as well.

Re: Uber is dropping rates for drivers down from 80 cents/mile to 60 cents/mile

#213

Post by Pxtl »

jtms wrote: post #206
Pxtl wrote: post #76

Sooner or later the us is going to have to sit down and have a long and hard conversation about this "independent contractor" nonsense.

Why do you think it’s even a remotely good idea to tell people when, where, and how they spend their time and energy?

You could apply that kind of thinking to all labour laws. Should the minimum wage be abolished? Vacation time? Overtime?

Re: Uber is dropping rates for drivers down from 80 cents/mile to 60 cents/mile

#214

Post by EForEndeavour »

adamqureshi wrote: post #118

My brother works for uber, He is 54 years old smokes a pack day and has had 2 heart attacks. He drives a Cadillac and pays $500-month for commercial insurance and has a monthly payment for his car. He has TLC plates to work in NYC ( fees apply) he makes about $300 a day works like a dog 12-14 hours a day. All of his friends are the same (uber drivers in NYC) Here you have the typical uber driver who does this for a l…

> He smokes a pack day and has had 2 heart attacks

> The job is literally killing him

I don't mean to be snide or to blame your brother (addiction is a powerful thing), but I'd say that maintaining a smoking habit despite having suffered not one but two heart attacks sounds more like putting a frog in a pot with some water, splashing boiling water into the pot twice, scalding the frog both times, and having the frog decide to stick around and see what happens next.

Re: Uber is dropping rates for drivers down from 80 cents/mile to 60 cents/mile

#215

Post by pmorici »

pishpash wrote: post #79
pmorici wrote: post #26

The IRS deduction for business vehicle use in 2019 is 58 cents per mile. So they have effectively reduced the per mile payment to the cost of operating the vehicle. Seems like they are on the verge of turning driving for Uber into a reverse mortgage for your car.

Which is what it should be no? Drivers are still paid by the minute on top of that, which in LA is 21 cents/minute according to the news, working out to $12.6/hour. Not quite $15 minimum wage, but close.

Since Uber drivers are independent contractors you need to account for the extra ~7.6% Social Security and Medicare tax they will have to pay when comparing it on a $/hr basis to w-2 jobs.

If they are also paying Uber drivers for their time in addition to their per mile vehicle costs then having a per mile cost in line with the cost to operate the vehicle is fine but when I looked into it ~5 years ago they charged the rider per mile driven and per minute of standing and then gave the driver a cut of that.

Re: Uber is dropping rates for drivers down from 80 cents/mile to 60 cents/mile

#216

Post by malandrew »

burlesona wrote: post #163
chii wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So would the tech workers cut 10% of their salary and gift it to those working for low pay in other roles? I think it's overwhelmingly no. The option where the company shareholders take less profit is not even on the table - and that's what needs tackling, and the only way to tackle that is via a mix of govt welfare and unions. But the cultural narrative has shifted to the right so much that even mentioning the word…

The cultural narrative has shifted to the right? All I hear from my red-state family is how basically the world is coming to an end because the country has veered so far to the left. I live in SF and things here always seem to be drifting leftward as well, but of course this is probably left HQ so I guess that's not surprising. That said, some of my farthest left friends in San Francisco are convinced that some kind…

Well basically all the metrics, A/B testing and optimization technologies built by companies like Google, Facebook and a load of other smaller tech startups found their way into the hands of people running media companies. Google Analytics probably did the most to set this trend as blog after blog started using it to understand how to drive traffic.

Now that the media has these tools, their content becomes subservient to getting those eyeballs, clicks, time on page and repeat visits.

What has all this taught us? That nothing drives metrics like anger and rage, so anger and rage is what the opinion industry produces. Furthermore, cognitive dissonance costs you eyeballs, so the tendency is to further self censor your content to avoid anything that might upset the increasingly sheltered worldview of your audience.

Re: Uber is dropping rates for drivers down from 80 cents/mile to 60 cents/mile

#217

Post by malandrew »

cylinder wrote: post #52
reilly3000 wrote: post #47

Its like they see developers and drivers as two different species. For every twenty something dev that makes $132K, there is a fourty something trying to rebuild a life post-trauma, doing their best to net $13K. Since insurance and gas aren't cheaper, the driver now will net $6K next year, while the dev would jump ship to another company if they didn't get a $6K bonus. While my head understands the economic principle…

There is nothing stopping us from legislating minimum rates just like we legislate minimum wages.

There's also no stopping the resulting inflation. If you want to solve the cost of living problem, you're better off focusing on reducing the costs instead of raising the amount of money available. Housing costs in many housing supply constrained markets will easily absorb any increase in median income income in those markets.

Re: Uber is dropping rates for drivers down from 80 cents/mile to 60 cents/mile

#218

Post by malandrew »

xrd wrote: post #139

I just got back from Brazil. There is a startup ride sharing service called 99 that is interesting. As a comparison, a ride that costs 40 R$ (~$12 USD) on Uber will cost half that on 99. And, I heard while I was there that incredibly 99 pays the drivers more. I don't know if this is a technical advancement that 99 hasn't needed to make the massive investment that Uber did now that lots more is understood about the ri…

99 was purchased by Didi and are heavily engaged in a price war to gain market share. Since they are much smaller, they can afford to sell at a loss, but as they scale, it becomes increasingly expensive to pay more while charging less.

Re: Uber is dropping rates for drivers down from 80 cents/mile to 60 cents/mile

#219

Post by malandrew »

akudha wrote: post #161
remote_phone wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that Lyft and Uber prey on these “people who can’t find jobs” in record low employment is laughable. There are hundreds of thousands of drivers for Lyft and Uber in California alone. If these were only those poor victims that were preyed upon by Lyft then that would be a huge number. The fact is they aren’t victims or preyed upon. They know how much they get paid and if they want to take the job, they can. I…

If they don’t want, there are plenty of other jobs out there Maybe there are lots of jobs there, but do these jobs give the flexibility of working whenever one wants, like Uber does? In life, nothing is as simple as that. Applying the same logic, we can say if a woman is mistreated by her husband/bf, she can simply leave him. If a manager is bad, find another job. If a country is hostile to immigrants, leave and move…

Flexibility itself has economic value to workers.

The Value of Flexible Work: Evidence from Uber Drivers

https://www.nber.org/papers/w23296?sy=296

There are jobs that pay more with less flexibility. These individuals are free to pursue those jobs. Personally, I would easily trade a third of my salary in exchange for the flexibility of 4 months of vacation each year if my employer offered it. I'm sure I'm not alone in wanting to trade salary for flexibility because flexibility has greater marginal utility to me.

Re: Uber is dropping rates for drivers down from 80 cents/mile to 60 cents/mile

#220

Post by malandrew »

matz1 wrote: post #27
fiblye wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people turn to jobs like Uber because they can't easily find a job. There are many people who desperately try for weeks or months to find employment. Companies like Uber love to prey on such people.

It's not prey, for a company, employee are cost. In extreme case, If it possible for a company to make money without employee, they should do it. It's more of a government responsibility to take care its citizen well being.

Since when do we completely absolve individuals of being responsible for their well being? The state should be support of last resort.
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