Uber, Lyft to stop operations in Minneapolis over minimum wage law • Hacker News Board

Re: Uber, Lyft to stop operations in Minneapolis over minimum wage law

#11

Post by goalonetwo » Fri, Mar 15, 2024, 5:38 PM UTC

crooked-v wrote: post #5

kypro wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think you're mad as a consumer, imagine all the Uber/Lyft drivers who no longer have any income because the government has made it uneconomical for their employer to do business in their city.

If they can't pay even minimum wage, it was already uneconomical and being subsidized by government welfare.

Tax labor correctly then, so that it reflects how much the government wellfare will need to subsidize.

Simplistic feel-good minimum wage laws are creating unemployment. This is a perfect example.

Re: Uber, Lyft to stop operations in Minneapolis over minimum wage law

#12

Post by tbwriting » Fri, Mar 15, 2024, 5:38 PM UTC

bogota wrote: post #2

“Wage theft” what? It’s very transparent what you are getting paid and what the deal is when you drive for uber or lyft. Argue all you want for thinking that law makers should be setting special wages for specific industries. Personally i think they should stay out of it but man i would be mad as someone living in the city that these services are no longer available.

They were literally caught red-handed doing this in New York. https://ny1.com/nyc/manhattan/traffic_and_transit/2024/01/19...

Re: Uber, Lyft to stop operations in Minneapolis over minimum wage law

#13

Post by waveBidder » Fri, Mar 15, 2024, 5:39 PM UTC

bogota wrote: post #2

“Wage theft” what? It’s very transparent what you are getting paid and what the deal is when you drive for uber or lyft. Argue all you want for thinking that law makers should be setting special wages for specific industries. Personally i think they should stay out of it but man i would be mad as someone living in the city that these services are no longer available.

If it weren't an oligopoly I'd be less inclined to endorse government interference in wage setting. I'd frankly rather the twin cities just spin up their own rideshare marketplace, they have a great carshare system[0], would love to see them expand into rideshare too.

[0]: https://eviecarshare.com/

Re: Uber, Lyft to stop operations in Minneapolis over minimum wage law

#14

Post by goalonetwo » Fri, Mar 15, 2024, 5:40 PM UTC

bogota wrote: post #2

“Wage theft” what? It’s very transparent what you are getting paid and what the deal is when you drive for uber or lyft. Argue all you want for thinking that law makers should be setting special wages for specific industries. Personally i think they should stay out of it but man i would be mad as someone living in the city that these services are no longer available.

I would be even more mad if I was driving for Uber in those cities and overnight the government made the decision for me to remove that as an income option.

Re: Uber, Lyft to stop operations in Minneapolis over minimum wage law

#15

Post by olliej » Fri, Mar 15, 2024, 5:41 PM UTC

bogota wrote: post #2

“Wage theft” what? It’s very transparent what you are getting paid and what the deal is when you drive for uber or lyft. Argue all you want for thinking that law makers should be setting special wages for specific industries. Personally i think they should stay out of it but man i would be mad as someone living in the city that these services are no longer available.

It's wage theft, because the law says you owe employees minimum wages by law, and if you aren't paying them that amount, you're stealing the excess from your employees.

The fact that you think you should be allowed to pay people less than the legal requirement is not relevant, the law says you owe people $X, so if you pay them less than X, it is theft.

The problem Lyft and Uber have is the same AirBnB is starting to run into: if your business model is misclassifying things (employees in the lyft/uber case, and hotels in the airbnb case, etc), eventually either (as in NY) court cases will force you to pay what you owe, or as here legislation will be passed to make it so that whatever the company is misclassifying things as, will be covered by the regulations the apply to what they actually are.

Seriously, if your business model is pretending that your specific implementation of X is not the same X covered by existing laws, your implementation will eventually have to comply with the regulations that apply to X.

Re: Uber, Lyft to stop operations in Minneapolis over minimum wage law

#16

Post by zthrowaway » Fri, Mar 15, 2024, 5:42 PM UTC

goalonetwo wrote: post #9

kypro wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think you're mad as a consumer, imagine all the Uber/Lyft drivers who no longer have any income because the government has made it uneconomical for their employer to do business in their city.

that is the dirty truth. All of those feel-good minimum wage laws are in fact stealing wages from those workers. Those workers were OK to work for those wages before the law. Now they have nothing. The result is now higher unemployment and use of tax-dollar to subsidize those people.

Yes. More people should take note that there's always unintended consequences with price controls. It usually makes things much worse.

Reminds me of: https://www.lenconnect.com/story/opinion/columns/2013/09/23/...

Re: Uber, Lyft to stop operations in Minneapolis over minimum wage law

#17

Post by add-sub-mul-div » Fri, Mar 15, 2024, 5:43 PM UTC

goalonetwo wrote: post #9

kypro wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think you're mad as a consumer, imagine all the Uber/Lyft drivers who no longer have any income because the government has made it uneconomical for their employer to do business in their city.

that is the dirty truth. All of those feel-good minimum wage laws are in fact stealing wages from those workers. Those workers were OK to work for those wages before the law. Now they have nothing. The result is now higher unemployment and use of tax-dollar to subsidize those people.

Or, since the overall demand for transportation hasn't changed, jobs shift over time to ones with less exploitative terms.

Re: Uber, Lyft to stop operations in Minneapolis over minimum wage law

#18

Post by bogota » Fri, Mar 15, 2024, 5:43 PM UTC

bradleyankrom wrote: post #6

kypro wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think you're mad as a consumer, imagine all the Uber/Lyft drivers who no longer have any income because the government has made it uneconomical for their employer to do business in their city.

Or maybe it's a splash of reality for those businesses that have relied on undercompensated labor and VC money to acquire market share.

Not really. They haven’t been doing that for a few years now.

They are just going to leave the market if it becomes unprofitable. I see people complaining all the time about ride prices so the consumer doesn’t want this and im sure the people driving aren’t happy to lose the income as well.

Who is winning here?

Re: Uber, Lyft to stop operations in Minneapolis over minimum wage law

#19

Post by newfriend » Fri, Mar 15, 2024, 5:43 PM UTC

jrockway wrote: post #4

Hopefully more cities pass laws like this. Minneapolis must be enjoying a reduction in traffic congestion as people move onto public transit.

I wonder how the people who relied on income from driving must be enjoying the reduced traffic.

Re: Uber, Lyft to stop operations in Minneapolis over minimum wage law

#20

Post by egh » Fri, Mar 15, 2024, 5:43 PM UTC

goalonetwo wrote: post #9

kypro wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think you're mad as a consumer, imagine all the Uber/Lyft drivers who no longer have any income because the government has made it uneconomical for their employer to do business in their city.

that is the dirty truth. All of those feel-good minimum wage laws are in fact stealing wages from those workers. Those workers were OK to work for those wages before the law. Now they have nothing. The result is now higher unemployment and use of tax-dollar to subsidize those people.

this is the traditional belief, but all the empirical research on this shows that it is not true.

https://www.umass.edu/news/article/umass-amherst-economists-... https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2021/01/30/w...