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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

#271

Post by dzhiurgis »

visarga wrote: post #250
ptaipale wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's good to care about taxi drivers, but not because they are taxi drivers. Go back >200 years. In England, Spinning Jennies replaced weavers, and there were luddites who tried to resist, but the solution was not to start subsidizing weavers; and not even a specific tax to weaving machines to provide for the weavers specifically; the solution was to slowly build a social security system, and not just for master weav…

> putting a burden on something productive just because it is better What aspect of Uber is better than a regular taxi? I can hail taxis from my phone just as well. They take me to the destination. I think Uber found a way to subsidize their fleet with drivers own cars and not pay some taxes to the state which the regular taxi drivers have to pay. Maybe I am missing something...

Works globally, processes payments, eliminates bad drivers.

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

#273

Post by icebraining »

visarga wrote: post #250
ptaipale wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's good to care about taxi drivers, but not because they are taxi drivers. Go back >200 years. In England, Spinning Jennies replaced weavers, and there were luddites who tried to resist, but the solution was not to start subsidizing weavers; and not even a specific tax to weaving machines to provide for the weavers specifically; the solution was to slowly build a social security system, and not just for master weav…

> putting a burden on something productive just because it is better What aspect of Uber is better than a regular taxi? I can hail taxis from my phone just as well. They take me to the destination. I think Uber found a way to subsidize their fleet with drivers own cars and not pay some taxes to the state which the regular taxi drivers have to pay. Maybe I am missing something...

In my area, Uber is better because their drivers don't treat me like shit - and I'm not talking about being servile, but simply greeting me back and not ranting the whole way about how rides should be $20 minimum. Before Uber, I took a taxi only in emergencies, simply because it was more often than not an unpleasant experience.

Their association is also corrupt as hell, so they can't even claim that over Uber.

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

#274

Post by CamperBob2 »

visarga wrote: post #250
ptaipale wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's good to care about taxi drivers, but not because they are taxi drivers. Go back >200 years. In England, Spinning Jennies replaced weavers, and there were luddites who tried to resist, but the solution was not to start subsidizing weavers; and not even a specific tax to weaving machines to provide for the weavers specifically; the solution was to slowly build a social security system, and not just for master weav…

> putting a burden on something productive just because it is better What aspect of Uber is better than a regular taxi? I can hail taxis from my phone just as well. They take me to the destination. I think Uber found a way to subsidize their fleet with drivers own cars and not pay some taxes to the state which the regular taxi drivers have to pay. Maybe I am missing something...

What aspect of Uber is better than a regular taxi?

For one thing, with Uber, those of us who don't live in a major metro area don't have to wait 30-60 minutes for a cab that might or might not even show up. There's always an available Uber driver nearby.

Think about it. How would Uber have gotten any traction in the marketplace if it weren't better than the incumbent taxi operators in some substantial ways?

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

#275

Post by superbaconman »

hx87 wrote: post #187
tomdell wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine you want to open a restaurant. You know that it will be successful - you've done your research, whatever, yadda yadda. The government charges you a hefty initial tax to open your restaurant - it's a steep cost, but you expect that you'll be able to pay it off, because you know your place is going to do well. Seriously, you've paid attention to history - these kinds of things - the way you're doing it, anyway…

If only taxi medallions were issued in a reasonably fair manner, such as a fixed fee with no quantity limits, or an annual auction with quantity limits... A better analogy would be if the government, starting in 1930, only allowed there to be 3 restaurants in the city, and sold you one of the licenses for a sum of 1 cent. Now it's 2015, there are still only 3 restaurants in the city, and because the license is perman…

NY has some pretty fucked up food truck regulations. Because NY won't increase the number of food vending permits, a huge number are now sold on the black market.

http://www.voanews.com/a/black-market-vending-new-york-city/...

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

#276

Post by xorcist »

ptaipale wrote: post #188
erikpukinskis wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To this end, we should br taxing self driving cars to create a pension fund for taxi drivers. Taxing one cab company to pay another doesn't seem to address your listed concerns at all.

It's good to care about taxi drivers, but not because they are taxi drivers. Go back >200 years. In England, Spinning Jennies replaced weavers, and there were luddites who tried to resist, but the solution was not to start subsidizing weavers; and not even a specific tax to weaving machines to provide for the weavers specifically; the solution was to slowly build a social security system, and not just for master weav…

> there were luddites who tried to resist, but the solution was not to start subsidizing weavers

It is not fair to history to keep repeating that. The historical luddites were not against technological change.

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

#277

Post by meanduck »

hx87 wrote: post #174
dsacco wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In response to your main issue regarding socioeconomic mobility - why is this, in turn, a problem? If you can demonstrate that reduced social mobility is an issue, and that this is increased by progressively greater income inequality (the latter of which I probably agree with on cursory inspection), then it seems income inequality is a net loss. However, from a utilitarian perspective, I don't see a reason to care ab…

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…

What is socioeconomic mobility (of a person) in this discussion ? Is it rate of change in salary ?

> 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 is deprived of their contributions and is worse off.

Why are they being perevented ? If I am the CEO, would not it be against my own interest to prevent my employees from making a contribution ? What ladder is that you speak of ? It certainly cannot be salary. Is there a caste system in company ? If people are being prevented based on their position in social ladder (such as caste system) does it even matter if they have more income ?

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

#278

Post by lpolovets »

manarth wrote: post #265
lpolovets wrote: post #221

Obviously the logic is mystifying, but the math behind this is baffling as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxicabs_of_the_United_States#... says there are 1825 cabs in Boston. Boston is 10% of Massachusetts' population, so let's say there are 18k cabs in the state. http://www.reuters.com/article/us-massachusetts-uber-idUSKCN... says 5 cents/ride-hailing app will go toward taxis, and Uber+Lyft do 2.5m rider per m…

> "the tax will produce…$1.5m/year" If that's $83 per taxi-driver, then I agree: handing that $83 to the driver will not have a significant effect. So rather than use the tax to directly subsidise taxi-drivers income, what if it's used to invest in taxi infrastructure? Or perhaps invest in things that level the playing field, providing equivalents to some of Lyft/Uber's tools? Research or software into the most profi…

I completely agree with you that this could be meaningful if it's used to improve taxi infrastructure, although I'm skeptical that the government will be able to effectively allocate money to build software tools that compete with Uber and Lyft. But regardless, why is the MA taxi industry waiting tax ride-hailing apps? Why not just ask every taxi driver for $83, which seems like a small price to pay for job security?

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

#279

Post by johnsea »

As long as taxi drivers have higher salaries and are better protected this is a good move.

I very much salute the innovations uber enabled. Only there should be a law which guarantees a decent minimum salary for uber riders. No good to allow an income-race-to-the-bottom for drivers.

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

#280

Post by chii »

onion2k wrote: post #197
BurningFrog wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what happens to an industry when it's made redundant by technology We have over 200 years experience of countless industries being made redundant by technology. It's not a new scary thing that has never happened before.

We also have 200 years of people in the redundant industries complaining about it, and 200 years of government regulating to make the transition less painful. Why should we stop that with taxis?

> 200 years of government regulating to make the transition less painful.

i find that hard to believe - what was done in the last 200 years to lessen the pain of any transition?

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