Leaked Docs Provide An Unprecedented Look At Income Of Uber Drivers (buzzfeed.com)

In 2013, Uber told the Wall Street Journal that a typical Uber driver takes in more than $100,000 in annual gross fares. The ride-hail platform, which has shared similar estimates many times since, says that the company's efforts toward its drivers is a pathway to a modest, more attainable American dream. Turns out, the it has been exaggerating. According to BuzzFeed News, which obtained leaked documents, drivers in some markets don't take home much more than service workers at major chains like Walmart when it comes to net pay. According to the publication, drivers in three major U.S. markets -- Denver, Detroit, and Houston -- earned less than an average of $13.25 an hour after expenses. From the report:Based on these calculations, it's possible to estimate that Uber drivers in late 2015 earned approximately $13.17 per hour after expenses in the Denver market (which includes all of Colorado), $10.75 per hour after expenses in the Houston area, and $8.77 per hour after expenses in the Detroit market, less than any earnings figure previously released by the company.

Comments

Uber income

[Anonymous Coward]

They aren't buying you a new car either after you use your car up driving for them .. so much for the new gig economy

Re:Uber income

[Anonymous Coward]

why would they buy you a new car?

Re:Uber income

[known_coward_69]

you can buy your own car to use on uber. leasing is easier when you do your taxes

Re:Uber income

[TapeCutter]

They won't buy you a car but they're eager to sell you one on dubious credit terms..

Re:Uber income

[drinkypoo]

They won't buy you a car but they're eager to sell you one on dubious credit terms..

Actually, what they do is hook you up with a sleazy lease company. They will give you a lease even if you don't "deserve" one because you're a bad risk, but the rates are high, and they want way too much to buy out the vehicle at the end of the lease period. Presumably since times are tough there's no trouble finding people willing to work as repo men, so it's a fairly secure business model. People aren't going to shit up a car they're using as an Uber taxi.

Re:Uber income

[Anonymous Coward]

About a year ago, Uber was advertising heavily on Craigslist for drivers in my area. But if you did the math, based on the numbers they put in their ads, you would have to drive 70 hours a week to make the amount of money they claimed. I see now that the amount of money they are claiming you can make per week has been cut in half.

Re:Uber income

[known_coward_69]

so you pay this first car on time, raise your credit and get the next car on better terms. not like leasing a 20 year old NYC taxi for $2000 a month which is what cab drivers are forced to do

Re:Uber income

[mvdwege]

Ah, the return of the company store.

Really, given the facts on display and a history of the 19th century only a few clicks away, why exactly does Uber still have defenders?

Re:Uber income

[drinkypoo]

so you pay this first car on time, raise your credit and get the next car on better terms.

Or you don't make enough to survive and pay for the lease driving for uber unless you spend every waking hour doing it, and uber knew they were grossly exaggerating so they're party to your suffering.

I'm an outspoken proponent of things like uber, I'm just not sure it's uber. I still cheer their legal victories since it's good for their competitors, too

Re:Uber income

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, as you say, it is the Gig economy. Doesn't anyone know what a Gig is anymore? http://www.ebay.com/bhp/frog-g.... A Gig is not something you want used on you. What would people expect from a Gig economy? You get Gigged.

Re:Uber income

[known_coward_69]

or you share the car with another uber driver. i know a few and they make decent money. one of them is on vacation right now across the ocean. nice vacation too. another driver i know shares a honda accord with someone else so it's used almost 24 hour a day. he's got his own car but doesn't want to use it.

Re:Uber income

[fluffernutter]

They're going to be sorry they spent that money on vacation when that Accord wears out from extreme use.

Re:Uber income

[Anonymous Coward]

Because they're making money devaluing yours. It should be plainly obvious that any business model that relies on having desperate people "trade" the equity in their vehicles for less cash than the equity is not much different than loan sharking.

Re:Uber income

[known_coward_69]

sounds like you've never driven a honda. it's not like a GM or a chrysler

Re:Uber income

[DahGhostfacedFiddlah]

Really, given the facts on display and a history of the 19th century only a few clicks away, why exactly does Uber still have defenders?

Because the taxi racket has been enjoying its monopoly for too long. Where I am, we have some of the highest taxi prices in Canada while many the taxi drivers are near minimum wage (because the drivers rent the licenses from the people who could actually afford them). An Uber driver told me he makes more money on Uber than he did driving a cab, although I didn't ask if that factored in vehicle wear'n'tear.

Everyone I know had pretty much stopped taking cabs because they were so unreliable. You could end up waiting an hour longer than claimed, or the cab just wouldn't show. Uber has effectively brought taxis back into our lives as a viable option.

From everything I've heard, Uber takes advantage of its workers and uses some pretty shady tactics. I support government regulation to ensure drivers can make a decent wage. But they've disrupted a market that desperately needed disrupting and have noticeably improved my personal standard of living.

So given the choice between Uber and the previous status quo? Yeah, I'm an Uber Defender, if a cautious one.

Re:Uber income

[jellomizer]

However with the "gig economy" you are your own boss, and have greater control of your hours and what you do. So that $13.00 an hour isn't going to make you rich, It is profit. Plus you can work more hours to make up the difference too. Or work a job and have this as a part time supplemental job.

Re:Uber income

[Bob the Super Hamste]

Hey my jeep had 371,+++ miles on it when the fuel pump went out because it sat for too long with not enough fuel in the tank for a winter. So not all Chrysler corporation vehicle don't keep running. Granted it was a rusty pile of crap which is why I didn't replace the fuel pump, one apart all that stuff was never going back together, but up until I basically did it in on accident it ran great. then again that engine was the 4.0L inline 6 that was not a Chrysler designed motor and it didn't have one of the trash Chrysler designed automatic transmissions.

Re:Uber income

[fluffernutter]

Any vehicle will wear out from being driven 24 hours a day.

Re:Uber income

[Anonymous Coward]

The AMC-designed 4.0 straight-6 is not indicative of the quality of almost every other domestic powertrain. And I've owned a Jeep, the electrical and body are still standard-fare garbage.

Re:Uber income

[rockmuelle]

Interesting what you did there, calling the $13.00 after expenses a "profit". What's left out in the expenses is the salary for the contractor. That $13.00 is their take home pay after the expenses of running their car. So, if you have zero living expenses and don't eat, then sure, call it profit. But since Uber drivers are humans, they actually need food and shelter. Some of us also think that all humans should have a decent standard of living and have a decent work/life balance, not just those of us that can make six figures surfing the web all day and occasionally banging out a few lines of code.

$13.00 take home pay equates to roughly $26k/year (using the standard 2000 hour work year that every software person I know uses to compute their "salary" based on their consulting rate). The poverty line in the US is roughly $23k.

tl;dr: the $13.00 is not profit, it's salary; $13/hr won't even let you save and the US deems that salary the bare minimum to just scrape by. Working more destroys the work/life balance.

-Chris

Re:Uber income

[Anonymous Coward]

My wife is a jeep fanatic, despite every jeep her and her dad owned failing every 3-4 weeks in some way after 100k miles. Not always bad enough to kill the engine but they seem to think they're saving money by dumping more into repair bills than they would on a 3 year loan for a new car+warranty.

Re:Uber income

[Anonymous Coward]

Uber isnt perfect, but compared to Taxis around the country they are absolute saints.

Re:Uber income

[Anonymous Coward]

Any vehicle will wear out period.

Re:Uber income

[drinkypoo]

Really, given the facts on display and a history of the 19th century only a few clicks away, why exactly does Uber still have defenders?

I think Uber are a bunch of cocks but I also think that Taxi medallion programs are bullshit. I'm happy to cheer for Uber's legal victories against them. If people mistake that for cheering for Uber, so be it.

Re:Uber income

[Anonymous Coward]

sounds like you've never driven a honda. it's not like a GM or a chrysler

No matter what lifetime you assume for the vehicle, it's going to wear twice as fast if it is being driven twice as much.

There's replacing the engine oil at every 7,500 miles, filter at every 15,000 miles, spark plugs at every 30,000 miles, engine coolant and brake fluid around every 60,000 miles, then the timing belt and water pump at every 100,000 miles (technically, you just need to inspect the water pump, but if you are replacing the belt, the water pump is easily replaced at the same time).

Then there's the non-scheduled repairs. Brake pads. Tires. Shocks, struts, and other suspension components.

Re:Uber income

[fluffernutter]

Makes me wonder how much of the $13/hour will remain at the end of the day.

Re:Uber income

[fluffernutter]

Except for the fact that taxis are legal (and thus brought on by consent of the people in theory) and Uber isn't. You have a strange idea of a saint.

Re:Uber income

[Anonymous Coward]

With a company store, you had zero alternatives and you'd go in debt to the company due to being forced to buy from them, until you became de facto slaves to the company, such that you might be held at gunpoint to repay them.

As crappy as an Uber job might seem to be, let's not exaggerate here.

Re:Uber income

[lgw]

All business owners are humans that need to live. Profit is what you take home from your business, not what you save. The profits an Uber drive makes may be shitty, but that doesn't mean you get to re-define words.

Working more destroys the work/life balance.

You've never been poor, I see. Working 2 30-hour jobs is the normal way you get by. One 60-hour job is better, saves you 1 commute. One 60-hour job where you at least sort of control your hours is much better.

Re: Uber income

[ShieldW0lf]

How many "jobs" let you decide you don't feel like working this week with no consequences?

How many "jobs" let you decide on the spur of the moment that, because your plans fell through, you're going to work for an hour and make some extra cash?

Uber isn't a job. It's a way for people who have a stable income to pick up a little extra cash. Uber drivers deserve to be paid practically nothing. They are not taxi drivers, who commit to serve an area on a predictable and reliable schedule, and do not deserve to be compensated as though they were.

Re:Uber income

[MightyYar]

It's a work vehicle, it's supposed to wear out from extreme use. It's more economical to use a piece of capital equipment 24 hours a day than to let it sit. The faster they use it up, the faster they reclaim their initial investment.

Re:Uber income

[chadenright]

The 13/hr is supposed to be net after expenses like car maintenance and taxes.

Re:Uber income

[Captain Splendid]

I dunno. My wife's car is an '02 Cherokee, and while there's tons to complain about, the engine's never once quit on us.

Granted, window motors have died repeatedly, the coolant system is fubared, the overall quality of the interior was pretty shit when it was new, but the damn thing runs and runs well.

Re:Uber income

[MightyYar]

You can't just throw "consent of the people" out there and then couch it with "in theory". Communism is perfect! In theory. :)

I've never met anyone who was happier in a city cab than an Uber. The only "consent" going on is the payoff from the taxi companies to the city.

Re:Uber income

[ravenshrike]

The majority of wear and tear on vehicles happens when their fluid and tire rotations/changes are neglected. Keep those things constant, realign the suspension every 3-6 months, and a car would last a long time as a taxi. The issue is companies see those costs as an issue up front, even though long term they would get 2-4 times the use out of it with minimal repairs.

Re:Uber income

[fluffernutter]

The faster they have to replace it.

Re: Uber income

[The-Ixian]

How many "jobs" let you decide you don't feel like working this week with no consequences?

UPS is one

When I worked as a loader (in the local Teamsters union) I got 100% medical and dental benefits, got $15/hour and the official policy was that if you don't show up WITHOUT CALLING IN for 4 days in a row, that was grounds for termination (it was *grounds* for termination... but I rarely, if ever, saw anyone fired)

I personally saw, several times, people not call in and not show up for a week at a time. Then they would show up when they needed money.

Because of the benefits and short hours (no full time employment and anything over 4 hours in a single shift is overtime, which was almost never authorized) there were a lot of people who had their own businesses during the day and just use UPS for the benefits.

I was going to school at the time and UPS also kicked in a few thousand per semester for that.... I always recommend UPS to people... it amazes me how many people turn their nose up at it.

Re:Uber income

[stabiesoft]

The article assumed the car would "wear out" after 250K miles and would need replacing. Although it was based on a pretty crap car of 17K if I remember right. It was part of the expenses that were deducted in arriving at the hourly salary. The main take away was the net from driving for uber was highly dependent on location. Detroit was like 8.79/hr. Sounds like colorado is the place to be for driving for uber.

Re:Uber income

[Khashishi]

Is your argument just about definitions? Yes, $13/hr is not very much--comparable to working in fast food. But salary refers to salaried employees. Income is probably a better word here.

Re:Uber income

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, "profit" to a business is what is left over after all expenses are paid to run that business. You are assuming that the labor of the driver is free. If you were to hire an outside driver how much would you have to pay them. Or, in other words, what is the going hourly rate to hire a driver. Subtract that amount and then you have "profit". If that amount is more than $13 then you have a loss. This distinction is important because you can't, for instance, sell your "Uber driver business" unless it is making a profit above and beyond labor costs.

This point is confusing for small businesses because small businesses generally don't have to cut themselves a paycheck but instead all revenue after expenses is treated as pay. This makes separating pay and profit more difficult but when comparing "profit" to other companies, you have to take out all wages.

Re: Uber income

[jklovanc]

How many "jobs" let you decide you don't feel like working this week with no consequences?
How many "jobs" let you decide on the spur of the moment that, because your plans fell through, you're going to work for an hour and make some extra cash?

Every self employment "job" has those aspects. There are consequences for not working. One does not make the cash and may not be able to pay the bills.

Uber isn't a job. It's a way for people who have a stable income to pick up a little extra cash.

I agree with you that is the original design of the service but there are many drivers are working 60+ hours/week and Uber is their only source of income. If they truly want to go back to the "extra income" model they need to limit work hours. The problem is that Uber would not have enough drivers.

Re:Uber income

[jklovanc]

Uber has zero regulation burden while cabs have a lot of regulation they must comply with. Regulation compliance costs money which is why there is a lower margin for cab drivers.

Re:Uber income

[Anonymous Coward]

Maintenance probably includes: oil, tires, brakes, rotors, other fluid changes, checkups and minor repairs. I don't think it includes replacing the entire car, but I could be wrong.

I am guessing it is "light" on maintenance when the car completely dies and would be more expensive to fix than buy new.

Re:Uber income

[GLMDesigns]

Not in the slightest. People own the car anyway. They have a few hours in which they would like to make some money - and now, through Uber, they can. They can sit in their car watching a movie or reading a book until a car comes and then make some money. No work. No fuss. Until there is a fare. Then you go, make some money and then go back to your book or movie.

Some people might actually like having a part-time job that they go to WHEN THEY FEEL LIKE IT.

It has its advantages. If you don't like it - don't do it. If you use the service and feel that way then tip better.

Re:Uber income

[MightyYar]

That's the point. You buy a piece of capital equipment to make money. The faster you wear out your equipment, the more money you make. Usage of your capital equipment is a GOOD problem to have.

Re:Uber income

[umghhh]

but uber, new economy, sharing etc - and besides it is still better than nail polishing business.
Or uranium ore mine in some free market country.

Re:Uber income

[K. S. Kyosuke]

I'm not an expert, but I believe that capital assets in the future have lower value than they would if they were in the present. So you want to wear them out as soon as possible.

Re:Uber income

[Bob the Super Hamste]

Exactly my point. That AMC I6 is a great motor, the rest left a lot to be desired, but the AMC designed drive train (transmission, transfer case, etc) was all very good. Mine had plywood for floors and the good old armstrong windows. It even had an aftermarket radio as the original probably went to shit long before I got it.

Re:Uber income

[Bob the Super Hamste]

What engine does it have? The 4.0 liter I6 is a great engine for reliability but that wasn't a Chrysler designed engine as it came originally from AMC. It seems like Chrysler mostly left that I6 alone only hacking fuel injection in to it, seriously the intake manifold looks like it is still set up for a carburetor with the awful intake plumbing setup and the taps for the injectors.

Re:Uber income

[Anonymous Coward]

Uber isnt perfect, but compared to Taxis around the country they are absolute saints.

Yeah Uber loves you morons. You pay 5-10 times the regular rate when it gets busy. And you get to use a funky phone app. Woohoo. Suckers.

Re:Uber income

[just another AC]

Correct ONLY if the above "earnings" account for depreciation (which I don't think they do). If they are then then effectively uber IS paying for a new car for the drivers. If not then the wearing out of the car is an unrealised loss the drivers are incurring which will come back to haunt them once their car is toast.

Re:Uber income

[Captain Splendid]

I believe it's a 4.0 but don't quote me as I'm not really a car guy.

Re:Uber income

[erapert]

In any country where Uber drivers are making $13 an hour they already have a very decent standard of living. Compare an Uber driver in the USA or Europe to anyone from Africa, the Middle East, India, or most of China.

No wonder the rest of the world considers first-worlders such pricks. We complain about living in the lap of luxury. We have air conditioning, big screen TVs, internet, no warlords raping and killing us by the thousands, and so much food that over half of us are obese and dying from it! Yet folks like you complain about earning more than minimum wage?!

Even the poorest in the first world is like a king. But most importantly of all: even if you're poor now nothing prevents you from rising above it thanks to the relative freedom and opportunity we enjoy in the first world. Yes, it absolutely isn't a cake walk to raise oneself out of poverty, but then again all it takes is hard work and not making stupid decisions in the first world. No wonder the third world is stampeding our borders.

Re:Uber income

[Grishnakh]

Reading posts like this makes me glad I'm not married any more. Such a money drain.

Re:Uber income

[jbengt]

According to TFA, they accounted for a $16,000 car lasting 250,000 miles, plus $3,000 / year in maintenance, and getting 25 mpg on gas that costs only $1.75/gal.

Re: Uber income

[Anonymous Coward]

I always recommend UPS to people... it amazes me how many people turn their nose up at it.

Yeah because working with a bunch of criminals and drug addicts sounds like great fun!

Specifically because of the lax policies on employment is why it's attractive to the unsavory types.

Re:Uber income

[Grishnakh]

Regulations are useless if they make the whole industry useless to customers. Waiting an hour for a cab to arrive (if it comes at all) makes the service completely unusable.

Re:Uber income

[Grishnakh]

I don't see the problem. $13/hour is much better than what many, many other people earn at other jobs. The minimum wage is only $7.50, and there's plenty of people who earn somewhere between $7.50 and $10/hour in this country.

Maybe you should complain first about the plight of all those people who really are below the poverty line, before worrying about Uber drivers who are above it.

What's more, countless Uber drivers claim that they make more money with Uber than they ever did driving for taxi companies. So what's the problem? You want them to go back to being even poorer than they are now?

Re:Uber income

[Grishnakh]

The concentration camps were legal (and thus brought on by the consent of the people in theory).

Re:Uber income

[fluffernutter]

If you feel you live in such a country, I suggest you immigrate somewhere else immediately. Why would you live there?

Re:Uber income

[bmk67]

According to TFA, they accounted for a $16,000 car lasting 250,000 miles, plus $3,000 / year in maintenance, and getting 25 mpg on gas that costs only $1.75/gal.

I'm pretty sure we haven't seen gas at $1.75/gallon since the early 90s. It almost got there briefly several months ago.

In any case, that figure is ludicrous.

Re:Uber income

[Anonymous Coward]

You may pay 5-10 times that rate when it is busy, but at least you actually GET a cab that way. Not so much for the taxi services out there.

Re:Uber income

[tburkhol]

I don't see the problem. $13/hour is much better than what many, many other people earn at other jobs.

The problem isn't that $13/hr is inhumanely low. The problem is that Uber's recruiting material says its drivers make $20-30/hour, net, after expenses and taxes, but their drivers actually make $9-13.

Re:Uber income

[K. S. Kyosuke]

In any case, that figure is ludicrous.

So is 25 mpg, isn't it? Here in Europe, that would be 9.5 liters/100 km. Here, you'd throw that car away and buy a new one to save almost $20k over the life time of that vehicle.

Re:Uber income

[Pfhorrest]

I'm not going to argue that $13/hr is in any way good money objectively, for all the reasons you've already laid out, but the median personal income for the US is in fact just about $26k/year.

Which just means that almost everybody is pretty squarely fucked, but literally half of Americans are even more fucked than someone making $13/hr full time.

Re:Uber income

[NormalVisual]

Granted, window motors have died repeatedly

I've replaced three of them on my '02 GMC Sierra with 130K miles. The stupid Bowden cable assemblies that everyone uses now run a stainless steel cable over nylon pulleys and are pretty much guaranteed to die at some point. The older scissor-lift mechanisms were heavier, but much sturdier, and you could replace just the motor instead of the whole damned assembly. Otherwise my Sierra has been a tank.

Re:Uber income

[jklovanc]

Lets go back to the no regulation time where the following occurred;
1. No inspections to ensure safe vehicles.
2. No licenses to pull in case of violations.
3. No accessible vehicles for the disabled.
4. No employment standards so exhausted drivers are on the road.
5. Rampant discrimination so certain groups can not get a cab.
6. Low insurance so accident victims are not compensated fully.
etc.
Do you have to wait an hour every time you call a cab? Doubt it. Do you have to wait an hour on the few high usage nights like Halloween and New Years? Probably. No business can carry the number of cabs all year to deal with those two nights and that is not an excuse for killing the business the rest of the year.
Regulations built up through the years to deal with bad actors. They exist for a reason.

Re:Uber income

[Grishnakh]

Because the legality of taxis and the corruption in that industry really doesn't affect my daily life much?? WTF?

Re:Uber income

[Grishnakh]

You're full of shit.

Yes, I really do have to wait an hour every time I called a cab. I lived that before in one place, when I was temporarily without a car and before I started using Uber. No, it wasn't on high-usage nights, that's just the way it was.

And your stupid regulations don't work for the other things either. The cabs I've been in were just shitty old Crown Vics; they were not "accessible for the disabled". And they were falling apart, so I call bullshit on your "inspections". There's countless stories about exhausted cab drivers, so #4 is bullshit too. And there's countless stories about black people in NYC being unable to hail a cab, so #5 is total bullshit too.

Re:Uber income

[PCM2]

Because they're making money devaluing yours. It should be plainly obvious that any business model that relies on having desperate people "trade" the equity in their vehicles for less cash than the equity is not much different than loan sharking.

But the figures cited take into account expenses, including depreciation of the vehicle. So it sounds like Uber still pays significantly more than the value of the equity in the vehicle.

Re:Uber income

[fluffernutter]

You were talking about concentration camps, presumably referring to nazi concentration camps. If you feel your government is capable of such a thing then you should move. Having a controlled market with certain positives and negatives is way different then having concentration camps. The taxi regulations prevent too many cars from being on the road and help to contribute to overall safety for drivers and passengers.

Re:Uber income

[MightyYar]

If the cost of using the car is higher than income generated by the car, then you really should not be in business driving.

Re:Uber income

[bmk67]

No, here 25mpg is not ludicrous. It's low, but not that low.

Re:Uber income

[Anonymous Coward]

Dumbass

The sooner the car wears out the sooner they have to buy a new one.

What you are claiming is that it would be better for a car used in a business to die after 10,000 miles instead of 500,00

Dumbass

Re:Uber income

[Grishnakh]

You're an idiot. I was making a comparison that legality and regulation aren't necessarily correct, and it's true for taxis too. The taxi regulations do nothing but artificially reduce competition, and I can't imagine how anyone could argue that's a good thing, and it's proven by how poor taxi service is in so many markets.

Re: Uber income

[ShieldW0lf]

That's their own fault. I wouldn't sympathise with people bitching that they don't make a living wage from their paper route, either.

I wonder how many of you remember paper routes. Bought my 5 1/4" floppy drive with paper route money. No more saving my programs on cassette tapes... good times.

Re:Uber income

[Anonymous Coward]

I am pretty sure that gas was $1.70 here in Washington state a few months ago.

Re:Uber income

[TroII]

or you share the car with another uber driver. i know a few and they make decent money.

Nice. So who's the named insured in these situations? What happens when one of the other people is driving and gets into an accident?

Re: Uber income

[Anonymous Coward]

No, what he is saying is if you are a driver by trade it is better for your vehicle to die at 400,000 miles in four years than 400,000 miles in ten years. Pretty basic.

Re:Uber income

[Anonymous Coward]

Drive for Domino's.

You can make a fuckton more than $13 an hour.

I did that right after I got out of the Army. $15/hr was a slow night and I was able to work 30-40 hours a week plus free shitty pizza.

I also don't have to drive drunk fuckstains around and had the added bonus of delivering to houses with hot and very lonely and way under-dressed housewives.

Uber is a scam on the drivers and the customers and neither are intelligent enough to see it.

Re: Uber income

[jklovanc]

Except that the newspaper didn't run adds like this. Making $24.41 an hour sounds pretty good.

Re:Uber income

[jklovanc]

I guess where you live cabs are pritty bad. Where I live it is very different.
I used to drive cabs so I know a few things you don't. I had to take the cab in every 6 months for inspection at an approved shop. Our company had to have a designated number of accessible cabs on the road at all times or we were fined. You didn't see an accessible taxi because you didn't ask for one. Yeah we were tired at times but were not allowed to work 16 hour shifts. I also notice you didn't mention the license that could be pulled for violations.

Re: Uber income

[Anonymous Coward]

How much do Uber make per hour from their drivers' labour?

Re:Uber income

[Grishnakh]

This was in northern NJ. The cabs there are atrocious. SanFran cabs are also infamous for being horrible, which is the whole reason Uber did so well there and took off. The ones I used in Phoenix sucked too.

The only place I've seen that had pretty decent cabs (if you're white) is Manhattan, NYC, but that's mainly because there's so many of them, and they're used by so many people, that it's usually pretty easy to get one by standing on the corner. However, black people in Manhattan have to use Uber because the cabbies won't pick them up.

As for license pulling for violations, what happens when the cab is being driven by one of the cabbie's unlicensed relatives? That's pretty common too. (I think one of the other comments here mentioned that one.)

As for accessible taxis, there were none of those in NJ. You must be from NYC or something, where they really do have that stuff. You'll never find an accessible cab in a city like Phoenix either.

Re:Uber income

[Zaelath]

Mmm yeah, I don't use the service for the same reason I didn't shop at Walmart when I lived in the US...

Tipping the driver isn't a solution for the problem of Uber running at a loss to deflate the market either.

Re: Uber income

[ShieldW0lf]

Looks like that was created by an enterprising individual who gets a commission when he signs people up, and not Uber themselves. I doubt Uber would put a link allowing people to sign up with Lyft if it were their site...

Re:Uber income

[Anonymous Coward]

My 1.5L Honda Fit easily gets 35mpg in mostly highway driving, but 28mpg in city driving with some highway driving mixed in.

I happen to not live near any limited-access highways, so I'd probably only get 25mpg driving people randomly around my city.

I could get better mileage with a hybrid, but not much more without getting a hybrid.

dom

Re: Uber income

[Anonymous Coward]

My buddy is an Uber driver and he only drives durint surges

Re: Uber income

[Anonymous Coward]

When Obama was first elected, gas was $1.80/gallon

Re:Uber income

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Hah. City driving. Well, that could explain things. But a PHEV could probably fare better.

Re: Uber income

[Anonymous Coward]

G gd rrsf see tfdt

Re:Uber income

[jklovanc]

When the cab's tag gets pulled it is a big deal. The driver license is a minor inconvenience.
Here is a list of accessible taxis in Phoenix.

Re: Uber income

[jklovanc]

How about this one from Uber's site? $1029.79 is a good haul for a week.That is over $52K/year.

Re:Uber income

[Anonymous Coward]

Like I said above, Uber loves you morons, keep pumping in your cash I want to buy a new cottage. Oooo, look at da pretty app, I can see where my car is.

Re:Uber income

[Anonymous Coward]

It appears most of the above fucktards can't figure this out. Oh well, as long as it's their cash and not mine...

Re: Uber income

[Anonymous Coward]

Same for taxis no different more or less.

Re:Uber income

[hucker75]

If you don't like the job, get a different one.

Re: Uber income

[Anonymous Coward]

Because when you work for a taxi or limousine company as a driver, and their car wears out, they are responsible for buying a new car to relace the one that is worn out, not you. If all you are making is not much more than minimum wage in driving for Ãoeber, you are not making enough to replace your worn out car. Maybe that is why certain Ãoeber drivers sued for and won the right to be classified as employees, not contractors. That $8 something an hour is certainly not anything like the $100,000 a year that the company has said is average.

Re:Uber income

[fluffernutter]

Taxi regulations give enough of the pie to everyone involved in the industry to make a living, while maintaining control over the number of cars on the road and the quality and safety of those cars. They ensure that there is service for everyone, not just the most profitable people so that they can be part of overall municipal transportation solution. It's good for drivers and the general public. Again, you shouldn't live in a country where you are so paranoid of government corruption.

Re: Uber income

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit

It was over $3 and what the fuck does the President have to do with gas prices?

Gas got expensive because rich assholes drove up the price of oil on the commodity markets, where oil should be allowed to be traded.

Re:Uber income

[Grishnakh]

I live in the US. If this is the poster child for corruption, then the whole world is fucked.

The taxi regulations don't work. They give us shitty cabs driven by people who don't speak English, drive around in circles, and take an hour to show up when hailed. This is contrary to the whole idea that we should have fewer cars on the road, and be sharing more (i.e. instead of owning your own car, you should use services for transport when possible): because public transit and cabs don't actually work for people, they're forced to buy and maintain their own cars, so we end up with exactly what we were trying to avoid: too many cars, too much pollution, too much of a cost to society.

By contrast, Uber has actually made it so that some people have decided to give up their cars and use Uber exclusively. This is what regulations should have done in the first place, but utterly failed to do. Don't blame the consumers for the failure of the bureaucrats to craft good regulation.

Re:Uber income

[fluffernutter]

Is there a $16,000 car on the face of this earth that will last 250,000 miles?

Re:Uber income

[fluffernutter]

Then why not buy the cheapest car you can and have it break in a year and replace it?

Re:Uber income

[slashdotwannabe]

If you don't like it - don't do it.

"You don't want to let them fuck you over? Then don't" is no moral defense against the way they exploit their drivers, and is no defense at all against those who are poor and have no choice but to allow themselves to be fucked over from time to time. Just because a sucker is born every minute does not make it right to take a sucker's money unethically.

At some point "free markets" give way to "morality" -- otherwise we'd still have child labor.

Re: Uber income

[Firepig]

Exactly! Nobody said you'd get rich driving for Uber.

Re:Uber income

[fluffernutter]

There are taxi services like that, you just have to pay for them. I guarantee you, a society without regulations is damn sure to not work. All they need is for someone to fight to improve them. Granted, government is out of touch but don't take it out on the taxi industry. Those are the hard working people who are supposed to be rewarded in this country. Uber will never be anywhere as good for the people in terms of quality of life. They'll have automated cars as soon as they are available. I'm not saying we can hold back the tide of AI, but let's look at who the little guy really is here.

Re:Uber income

[Grishnakh]

Oh please, Uber drivers aren't all "hard working"? Taxi drivers are just corrupt players in a pay-to-play system. Fuck 'em.

And I'm sorry, I am NOT going to sit around for 1 hour waiting for some guy with a stinky cab who can't speak English and insist his card reader is "broken" just to support "the little guy". Not when there's a far superior service available, or I have any alternative at all.

Re:Uber income

[Grishnakh]

And finally, if the taxi drivers don't like the regulation, then THEY can lobby to fix it. They're the ones paying off the politicians anyway.

Re:Uber income

[fluffernutter]

Yeah well you take the 'screw everyone as long as I get what I want' approach that is becoming so prevalent around here.

Re:Uber income

[Grishnakh]

Yeah well you take the "if I keep trying the same thing over and over, maybe it'll come out differently" approach that insane people take. Taxis have proven themselves to be miserable choices, that's why Uber and Lyft have become so popular. If you can't get your head out of your ass and figure that out, then you're beyond hope. You're just like the dinosaurs in the media industry who just can't figure out why people don't want to watch TV with commercials any more.

Re: Uber income

[Anonymous Coward]

Shut up. I know the owner of a taxi company and he showed me one of his GM made taxis that had over 900K miles on it and it's still in service.

Re:Uber income

[fluffernutter]

Yes... first world problems indeed.

Re:Uber income

[Bob the Super Hamste]

It most likely is the 4.0 which is a really good engine as far as reliability goes so long as the main seals are good on them the rest of the vehicle will turn to dust around them. This isn't all that different from those old Volvo diesels that that just keep going just fine while the rest of the car rusts away to nothing. The 4.0 liter engine wasn't designed by Chrysler and they don't appear to have mucked with it much which is probably it is a really good engine. If you want to find out just open the hood and if there is a really long engine (that inline 6 is substantially longer than it is wide) then you have the 4.0. I gave up on my jeep when the fuel pump went out even though the engine ran great as it was so rusty I would have likely had to replace all the fuel lines, fittings, tank, and tank support when changing out the pump that it just wasn't worth my money and time with that many miles. I do miss having a vehicle with real 4WD, limited slip differentials on both axles, and high clearance though.

Re:Uber income

[Anonymous Cow Ward]

You dramatically missed the point. They're saying that, distance otherwise being equal (which is reasonable for estimating car maintenance), you want to go that distance in as short a time as possible, as long as it's being used to make money.

Re: Uber income

[Anonymous Coward]

Or lease you one through their partnership with flexdrive. I drive for Uber and I pay over $1,000 a month to lease a 2013 Nissan Altima. If you are 30 minutes late(literally, not exaggerating) making your payment they will disable your car and start calling you threatening they're dispatching a repo service and you will be billed. Companies like Uber and flexdrive prey on those who are desperate and have few choices. It's disgusting.

Re: Uber income

[Anonymous Coward]

Current lease on a 2015 Prius
$153/week
625 miles per week allowance and $.15/mile overage capped at $100/week billed the next month.

I am shocked

[allcoolnameswheretak]

*GASP* No! Say it ain't so!

Houston and Detroit...

[Anonymous Coward]

I grew up in Detroit and currently live in Houston. Traffic in the latter is bad but the city is so spread out that it takes forever to get anywhere. Everything is a long drive and the roads are seemingly designed to make travel as inefficient as possible. I can totally believe that since fares are based on distance (and gas here is cheap), not time, that lots of time gets wasted.

Detroit is largely the same story. All the action is in the suburbs and that involves driving large distances, although not nearly what we have in Houston. (And at the moment Detroit has some ghastly construction projects that have shut down some major freeways.)

Re:Houston and Detroit...

[cjjjer]

Are there any outlying suburbs left in Detroit? I remember reading a while back that the city wanted to shrink the footprint and was bulldozing entire neighborhoods that only had a few families living in them to do so.

Re:Houston and Detroit...

[turp182]

Detroit is almost all out lying suburbs. It is the city itself where the situation you describe has been going on for the most part.

Re:Houston and Detroit...

[gnupun]

I can totally believe that since fares are based on distance (and gas here is cheap), not time, that lots of time gets wasted.

Wrong.
How much does Uber cost?

Your Uber fare is calculated on 4 criteria:

        Base fare â" A flat fee charged at the beginning of the ride
        Cost per minute â" How much youâ(TM)re charged for each minute youâ(TM)re inside the ride
        Cost per mile â" How much youâ(TM)re charged for each mile of the ride
        Booking Fee (Formerly known as the âSafe Rides Feeâ(TM)) â" A flat fee to cover âoperational costsâ(TM) (Not included for UberBlack and UberSUV)

http://www.ridesharingdriver.c...

Re:Houston and Detroit...

[Grishnakh]

Detroit is actually a nice place, in the suburbs. It's the city itself that's a disaster.

What, me exaggerate??

[inode_buddha]

Of course the exaggerated. I've been watching companies do this my whole life, it seems par for the course.

The large print giveth, and the small print taketh away. Because of this, I would never work for a franchise outfit like Uber; instead I would file a 1099 and use my own SSN for the business number (sole proprietorship) and actually work for myself.

Re:What, me exaggerate??

[jellomizer]

However with a Franchise you have a marketing engine behind you. If you go in it for yourself you will need to do all your marketing yourself. Without the economy of scale thus you may be working in the red for many years.

Long term if you can tolerate it, you will make out. However short term it will just suck.

Re:What, me exaggerate??

[magarity]

It probably isn't exaggerated at all, you just have to understand the terms involved. Right there in the first sentence it clearly states "gross fares". Of course this number is going to be higher, and probably a lot higher, than "net pay". Basic finance fail for anyone who thought someone bragging about workers' gross contribution to company balance sheet was going to vaguely resemble employees' personal income.

Re:What, me exaggerate??

[Anonymous Coward]

So what you are saying is that these workers would make better money if they could just drive unlicensed like they are doing now and not have to give money to the parasite that is Uber. Dat extraction of surplus value, doe. Sure sounds like Marx was right again.

Re:What, me exaggerate??

[HornWumpus]

People that run their entire perception through marxist dogma are funny.

When was marx right the first time?

Re:What, me exaggerate??

[Anonymous Coward]

what franchise Uber is a publically traded company employing 1099 workers so what you posted is utter BS-you work for yourself and get paid thru the app which gets you your customers and does your billing. Uber avoids paying payroll taxes by forcing you to work as a 1099 worker

Re:What, me exaggerate??

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course the exaggerated. I've been watching companies do this my whole life, it seems par for the course.

The large print giveth, and the small print taketh away. Because of this, I would never work for a franchise outfit like Uber; instead I would file a 1099 and use my own SSN for the business number (sole proprietorship) and actually work for myself.

when you do that,. you're no longer 'ride sharing' you're running a cab service.
In most places that means buying a medallion.. ignoring the need to rivet it to the hood of your car, thats a startup expense of 10's (or in the biggest cities) 100's of thousands of dollars

Re:What, me exaggerate??

[Anonymous Coward]

Marx was right with some observations. Adam Smith was right about some things. And yet they both also misunderstood a lot of things.

If you automatically reject everything written by one of the most influential economists of the past couple of centuries, you're an idiot, regardless of whose flag you mindlessly wave instead.

For example, the current protectionist behaviour of Britain in wanting to leave a free trade/movement bloc is discussed by Marx in terms of proles disenfranchised and deskilled by the efficiency of capitalism and wanting to halt production and go back to a byegone time when they didn't have to be confronted by huge technology. Much analysis of voting behaviour in North England and Wales - the ex industrial areas of the UK - involves an element of this. Had the Remainers considered this, they'd have focused there instead of hipster London where everybody knows that immigrants aren't bogeymen coming to take away your jobs.

Re:What, me exaggerate??

[HornWumpus]

One example?

The one you give was not marx making a prediction, it was an obvious observation about his world.

I don't think marx understood Smith, not at all.

I'll give you a partial list of marx's failed predictions:

Social evolution (towards marxism), shrinking profit margins causing capitalism to eat itself, the 'new communist man'. Those each involve many failed particular predictions.

Hitler was influential too. At some point you have to recognize a bad idea for what it is and start ignoring those it has influenced. For marxism that time was 30-50 years ago.

Bad reporting.

[gurps_npc]

If you start out talking about "100k in Gross Fares" then reveal that number was wrong, you need to tell us what the actual GROSS FARE was. Switching to take hour earnings, after expenses is the mark of an incompetent statistician, and a poor journalist. At the very least.

For those of you that did not read the article, they claimed that expenses were 25-33%, so at 100k, that would be somewhere between 66 and 75k, assuming 60 hour week that would have been $22 an hour, far more than the current claims of $13.25 (which sound exaggerated to me.)

Re:Bad reporting.

[aicrules]

Because BuzzFeed news is a super credible news source in the first place. It's like a idiot version of YouTube, which already has its fair share of idiots. Yet they are suddenly an investigative news agency? Bulllllllshit

Re:Bad reporting.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, the advertised gross according to Uber themselves is $1,021.79 per week.
Gross = 1021.79/week is 53,133.08/year working 52 weeks per year
Net = 684.60 - 766.34 per week (on expenses of 25-33%) is between $35,599.16 - $39,849.81 per year

They don't advertise how many hours you have to work to make that weekly gross, though, but for the numbers given above to make that 684.60 net means you have to work:
At $13.17/hour = 52 hours.
At $10.75/hour = 64 hours.
At $8.77/hour = 78 hours.

And that's at only half of the 100k gross that Uber is claiming.

Re:Bad reporting.

[Anonymous Coward]

The point is that Uber deliberately chose that number to make it seem like it was giving its drivers a fair deal. When most people see that, they think that the driver is making $100k pre-tax, so that their income is that number minus taxes.

This new number shows to what extent Uber has externalized its operating costs onto its drivers. That a company worth a staggering $62BN should do this is reprehensible. It is truly a business model built on finding ways around all rule of law (labor law, insurance law...). I'm guessing they attract investment because investors think Uber will do this successfully.

Re:Bad reporting.

[NoNeeeed]

The $13.25 is a calculation by Uber, not by the journalist. The journalists re-ran some of the calculations and got slightly lower figure.

"Internal Uber calculations, provided to BuzzFeed News by Uber, based on data spanning more than a million rides and covering thousands of drivers in three major U.S. markets — Denver, Detroit, and Houston — suggest that drivers in each of the three markets overall earned less than an average of $13.25 an hour after expenses."

Assuming Uber are not lying about the $13.25, that would still mean that if you worked 40 hours a week, every week of the year, you'd make $27,560 a year.

Whether this is a good or bad depends on how much ordinary taxi drivers make for a similar amount of work.

Uber has frequently talked about how much a driver's gross income will be as a way of encouraging people to join up, which is a nice bit of marketing, and standard practice for companies like Uber.

Re:Bad reporting.

[PCPackrat]

Because you still have to provide your own gas, car payment, maintenance, and insurance. That adds up really fast to your take home. Especially as gas rises again.

Re:Bad reporting.

[Anon-Admin]

Actually, you missed something and at @$100,000 it breaks down as follows assuming no state income tax.

Gross @ $100,000
Federal Taxes = $18,184
Social security = $12,400
Medicare = 2,900
25% in expenses == $25,000

Leaves $41,516 or a profit of $798 a week, If the state has an income tax it changes those calculations some.

as a 1099 self employed you are responsible for all of the above.

Re:Bad reporting.

[evolutionary]

you have a point, but perhaps the word you are looking for is CORRUPT statistician. there are a number of ways to make statistics lie. There is even a book titled "How to lie with Statistics". Many high school teachers (at least good ones) talk about this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:Bad reporting.

[The-Ixian]

I know... I think of Buzzfeed as the crappy clickbait list people... definitely NOT the news people...

Re:Bad reporting.

[stephanruby]

If you start out talking about "100k in Gross Fares" then reveal that number was wrong,

One problem is that this 100k figure was quoted in 2013 (and I assume it only covered year 2012 for a Uber driver, to make the company look as good as possible).

We're now in 2016, and the article compares the 2013 (2012 year) to a calculation done for the 2015 year. The problem is that Uber has lowered its base rate since that quote in 2013, flooded the market with new drivers since then, added UberPool in some regions with an even lower base rate (and increased risks for drivers who don't get the per person safety fee that Uber collects despite the fact that drivers make that many more stops when pooling), and in addition to that, Uber has increased the commission percentage it took from drivers. In other words, Uber drivers that used to drive around that 2012 period used to make a lot more and are super upset at the company (and for good reasons).

That being said, I have no reason to believe that Uber lied to the Wall Street Journal in 2013, and to imply that Uber did, is just lazy click-bait journalism. And I really do mean lazy. It's not like there is a shortage of Uber drivers that you can interview (all Uber drivers know this stuff, even the new ones). And that so-called Buzzfeed reporter could have just called an Uber driver to get a reaction on that story, or just plainly have done a google search on ridesharing bulletin boards, where all of this is talked about in thousands of bulletin threads. But that writer did no such thing, neither did her Buzzfeed News Data Editor listed next to her byline, which brings me to another point.

Buzzfeed staff are probably paid very little to nothing at all (one would surmise). If paid something, they're probably paid on the amount of controversy and clicks they can generate, not on the amount of time the spent researching the topic. There is obviously little to no quality control done on each article and no double-checking of any kind. And Buzzfeed readers are actually dumber for having read Buzzfeed than not having read it.

Re:Bad reporting.

[Karlt1]

Comparing apples to apples, I wouldn't take income taxes into account. Everyone has to pay those. I would take the 6.2% in SSA and 2.8% that the employer pays if you're not a contractor into account.

Re:Bad reporting.

[Qzukk]

Sounds the same as any other ad for an MLM scheme or work at home scheme or real estate scheme. "Working with us you can make thousands of dollars a day! *"

*: [3 pt font]The president makes thousands of dollars a day. Median income 38 cents.

Re:Bad reporting.

[Anon-Admin]

I dont understand why not, they are talking about the GROSS amount. As such you have to take into account the taxes, SSA, medical, expenses, etc to get to the NET amount. Most will figure there income on the GROSS but as you can see from the above income people are trying to base the hourly on the NET. Which is wrong. However if you are going to try and determine the Hourly from the NET amount you have to include all the debits from the NET and not cherry pick the numbers.

Re:Bad reporting.

[AvitarX]

If that figure includes a relatively new car too, not so bad.

Re: Bad reporting.

[Karlt1]

It's not cherry picking. When most people talk about their income. They are talking about income before taxes. Everyone's tax situation is different. But no one pays 25% of every dollar in taxes.

Re: Bad reporting.

[Anonymous Coward]

Come to Europe..

Re:Bad reporting.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Internal Uber calculations, provided to BuzzFeed News by Uber, based on data spanning more than a million rides and covering thousands of drivers in three major U.S. markets — Denver, Detroit, and Houston — suggest that drivers in each of the three markets overall earned less than an average of $13.25 an hour after expenses."

Cut their gross pay in half (self-employed pay both the "employer's" and employee's portion of federal taxes), take out expenses, and you're left with maybe a net of $8/hr. No thanks!

Re: Bad reporting.

[Anon-Admin]

The above is 30% paid in Taxes and SSI. So yes, people do pay more than 25% of every dollar in taxes. The above numbers were based on a single income, single filer, with no dependents working on a 1099.

Re:Bad reporting.

[Anonymous Coward]

Those expenses were all subtracted as part of the 25%-33% operating expenses.

Re: Bad reporting.

[Karlt1]

That's not how it works.

For a single filer you pay in federal taxes.

10% of your income on the first $9.225
15% of your income from $9,226 - $37,400
25% of your income from 37,451 - 90,750

So if you make $60,000 a year, you pay

$925 + 4083 + 5637 in Fed Taxes. You have to take the tax brackets into consideration. You can't just multiple the income by 25%. In the above scenerio, your effective tax rate would be 17.42%

Your marginal tax rate would be 25% on the next dollar earned up to $90,750.

SS taxes are 12.4%. As a W2 employee, you pay half and your company pays half. As a 1099 employee you have to pay the whole thing. Same with Medicare.

Then you don't pay SS at all on income of $118,500

Re:Bad reporting.

[umghhh]

Not sure if I got that right - 25% called expenses in your calculation is actually Uber fee right? So the actual expenses like fuel and car wear and tear are not calculated in.
Nice try tho.

Re:Bad reporting.

[Anonymous Coward]

The market is not fair. Life is not fair. People are not fair. Corporations are not fair. And socialist bureaucrats are evil.

If you dislike the term you are under employment, you are voluntarily able to choose better terms from a better employer.
Unlike the state, where you are stuck, at gunpoint, with whatever they choose to give or take from you.

Re:Bad reporting.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you start out talking about "100k in Gross Fares" then reveal that number was wrong, you need to tell us what the actual GROSS FARE was. Switching to take hour earnings, after expenses is the mark of an incompetent statistician, and a poor journalist. At the very least.

For those of you that did not read the article, they claimed that expenses were 25-33%, so at 100k, that would be somewhere between 66 and 75k, assuming 60 hour week that would have been $22 an hour, far more than the current claims of $13.25 (which sound exaggerated to me.)

First why assume a 60 hour work week.

Second the difference between the 60-75K Uber charges after expenses and 26K the drivers make is called profit. Odds are the $13/hour the driver is making is already figured into that or It's really 60-75K proft for Uber and 26 K for the drivers and that probably doesn't include expenses.

Sucks to be an Uber driver.

Re:Bad reporting.

[jbengt]

According to TFA, that figure includes a $16,000 car lasting 250,000 miles for an expense of 6.4 cents per mile. Which means they've figured no interest or other costs of money for the $16,000 car. Not to mention that $16,000 cars don't typically last 250,000 miles. They also figured $1.75/gal gas at 25 mpg. So, not so good.

Re:Bad reporting.

[jbengt]

Yeah, at rates like $1.75 / gallon for gas and interest-free car payments. (According to TFA)

Re: Bad reporting.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's funny, my wife and I are W-2 and we pay probably 35% of every dollar in taxes between federal income tax, state income tax, property taxes, sales taxes, and vehicle taxes. Feds & State add up to 28%, sales taxes are 7%. (We are both salaried employees in the software sector.)

I'm at the point where I would prefer this scenario:

1) Employer buys muni bond
2) Employer sells me the muni bond directly for $1, claims a huge short-term loss, with a contract that I sell the muni bond back to them just before maturity or when I leave the company. The interest in this muni bond is equal to my salary + benefits (health care, 401(k) matching, bonuses, etc.)
3) My income is now taxed at a very low rate (muni bonds can be tax free in some cases)
4) Upon leaving the company, I sell the muni bond back to the company for $1 (this results in zero capital gains tax)
5) The company can then re-use the muni bond with another employee or receive the principal as it matures, paying taxes only if it collects the interest on the muni bond while the company owns it. (The principal payout is not taxed.)

Unfortunately this scheme would require the company to retain a significant pool of assets to pull off properly.

Re: Bad reporting.

[Anonymous Coward]

"That being said, I have no reason to believe that Uber lied to the Wall Street Journal in 2013"

Why not? What would be in it for uber NOT to lie; it's not like WSJ would fact-check them on it.

Re: Bad reporting.

[Anonymous Coward]

I can assure you that I pay more than 25% of my gross income in taxes, quite a bit more in fact - and I live in the US.

Re:Bad reporting.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Expenses such as gas and insurance"

umm, where is Uber's cut?

Another story with annoying and mostly useless figures

Re:Bad reporting.

[Anonymous Coward]

Uber doesn't get anything?

Re: Bad reporting.

[HornWumpus]

Your own numbers: 17.42 + 12 (minus some) is much greater than 25%

Re:Bad reporting.

[Anonymous Coward]

Expenses come off the top when you are running a company-- you are taxed only on your net corp profits, and ss/med only on your 'salary'.

Re: Bad reporting.

[stephanruby]

Why not? What would be in it for uber NOT to lie; it's not like WSJ would fact-check them on it.

I am only speaking from my personal experience of being a newer Uber driver myself who has talked to other older Uber drivers.

I am not asking that you believe me. For all you know, I could be full of it. I am not full of it, but of course I can not prove that.

Re:Bad reporting.

[whoever57]

That a company worth a staggering $62BN should do this is reprehensible.

You have things backwards. The company is worth $62B because it has externalized its costs.

Re:Bad reporting.

[Firepig]

This switch is a great example of misusing statistics. I would never advise someone to make a career of driving for Uber. But, hey, if someone needs a few extra dollars, why not?! People should have an opportunity to earn money in a variety of ways, not just being a salaryman.

Re: Bad reporting.

[Anonymous Coward]

This isn't correct. Self employment ends up being about about 30%. I'm self employed. A business who is paying an employee is normally taxed 15%, and then the employee is taxed an additional 15%. This is why people perceive that there tax is less than it really is. Not to mention all the other taxes one pays. From property taxes (either directly or through ones mortgage/rent) to sales taxes to vehicular registration [taxes, as this is really what that is]. There are also other taxes people pay depending on where they live. For instance duties (ie trade barriers, you pay this when importing a good from overseas).

Re:Bad reporting.

[AvitarX]

Yeah, that's optimistic, you need to assume $0.35-$0.50/mile (total) to be safe (going with IRS numbers for when I drive mine over the last 15 years or so).

$13 and hour and my car is a tax write off?

[known_coward_69]

great deal considering a lot of service workers pay for their car out of pocket. Same goes for a smartphone and the service which is another write off for uber drivers

Re:$13 and hour and my car is a tax write off?

[Anonymous Coward]

That all Uber is. A big libertarian, anti-government scam to get out of taxes, regulations, and have middle class drivers. And a dot com type place for Wall St to dump some money in to get rich quick.

And I don't even like the taxi industry, especially in Vegas.

Re:$13 and hour and my car is a tax write off?

[Anonymous Coward]

Argh...it's a fucking DEDUCTION, not write off. Why do so many people have trouble with such basic financial concepts and terms?

Re:$13 and hour and my car is a tax write off?

[known_coward_69]

with all the miles they drive and the time on the app their car and smartphone plan might as well be free. if i was an uber driver i'd get the top AT&T or Verizon plan to share with my family and write it off since it's used for Uber. and pay $200 a year to a good accountant and he will make sure they barely pay any taxes and qualify for government aid

Re:$13 and hour and my car is a tax write off?

[__aaclcg7560]

Why do so many people have trouble with such basic financial concepts and terms?

Because financial literacy isn't taught in the schools. The last thing Wall Street wants is a population of financially literate people who can easily avoid all the scams that separate their hard earned money from their wallet.

Re:$13 and hour and my car is a tax write off?

[Anonymous Coward]

If it sounds so great, why aren't you doing it? If you're really into your job, why not ask to get paid similarly?

No? Huh. I guess it's only good for those other people.

Re:$13 and hour and my car is a tax write off?

[whoever57]

with all the miles they drive and the time on the app their car and smartphone plan might as well be free. if i was an uber driver i'd get the top AT&T or Verizon plan to share with my family

A good accountant will tell you that you can't do that. You could only write off a portion of the cellphone plan.

Re:$13 and hour and my car is a tax write off?

[known_coward_69]

a good accountant will leave you with more money and the IRS with less money in a way where the IRS won't pursue it because it's too costly for them

Re:$13 and hour and my car is a tax write off?

[smooth wombat]

Are you including the higher insurance costs related to using your vehicle for business purposes?

As to smartphone use, it would be similar to a home office. The space designated as a home office would have to be the primary use of that space to get a tax deduction. Not your den where you occasionally work.

In this case the primary use of the smartphone would have to be for Uber. Not your personal phone which happens to have an app for Uber. This means you would have to have two phones and the cost of the second, for Uber use, can only be partially deducted.

Re:$13 and hour and my car is a tax write off?

[known_coward_69]

8 hours a day using the uber app? yeah that will will work. and you can deduct the insurance as well. every penny you spend in bringing in that revenue is deductible. i know, my wife used to use a car we had long ago for per diem work. it was amazing having an almost free car. a lot of people we know who do similar work drive a Lexus or another luxury car because they can write it off

Re:$13 and hour and my car is a tax write off?

[110010001000]

You must be joking. The IRS doesn't care about the cost of pursuing tax cheats.

Re:$13 and hour and my car is a tax write off?

[LynnwoodRooster]

Good luck doing that write off of the plan! You only get to deduct YOUR PORTION, not the whole thing, and only the portion that is 100% used for your business. Claim more - and you're setting yourself up for an audit. And $200/yr for a good accountant? Try that PER HOUR. You'll need to keep your own expenses, receipts, and costs fully documented as well (dates, amounts, copies of receipts) for that accountant to spend a few thousand to get you lowish taxes.

And that good accountant will NOT go for a 100% write off of a shared cell phone plan. Not if he's good and wants to keep his CPA license and avoid fines...

Re:$13 and hour and my car is a tax write off?

[known_coward_69]

they have to identify them first and the low hanging fruit is small businesses with cash revenue. not people deducting a little more than they are supposed to

Re:$13 and hour and my car is a tax write off?

[Anonymous Coward]

if i was an uber driver i'd get the top AT&T or Verizon plan to share with my family and write it off since it's used for Uber.

Okay. Assume you got a family plan for $250 or so - 4 lines, 4 newish phones, plenty of minutes, data, texting. You use one for work and the rest for family members. Your tax preparer decides he'll risk the government wrath for you, and even though you are using only 1/4th of the plan for work, he deducts all four.

Instead of your taxable income being $X, it's now $X-(12*250). Assuming your household is in the $25k-$75k yearly income range, you are in the 15% bracket for that income. You've spent out $3k, but you "save" $450 in taxes - so your four lines cost you still $212.50/mo.

If your tax preparer isn't a crook, he's only going to allow you to deduct 1/4th of that bill (the line used for business). Which makes the numbers worse.

Re:$13 and hour and my car is a tax write off?

[Frank Burly]

There is a difference between minimizing your taxes by following the law and minimizing your taxes by breaking the law in ways that are too difficult or expensive to prove.

Regarding regulation generally, Uber claims to be the first—but when your market cap is that high, nothing should be too expensive to prove.

Re:$13 and hour and my car is a tax write off?

[rockmuelle]

Tell me what part of the US a roughly $26k annual salary is a "great deal"?

-Chris

Re:$13 and hour and my car is a tax write off?

[known_coward_69]

that's left over after you pay the car and other bills. and that's averaged across all of colorado incuding areas where uber is old and retired people doing part time work so they don't go crazy and to pay their property taxes. full time drivers make more than that it's more like $40,000 or more with no car or smartphone payment because that's a tax write off. at least that's what i hear from the full time drivers i know

Re:$13 and hour and my car is a tax write off?

[whoever57]

A good accountant will help you find ways to legally minimize your taxes. What you are suggesting is tax fraud and any good accountant will not help you to do that.

Re:$13 and hour and my car is a tax write off?

[Anonymous Coward]

Agree. There is a reason so many people dig themselves into financial holes. Every time I hear "It's a write off" I think of the Seinfeld skit. When asked to define a "write off," the response is along the lines of, "I don't know but people are writing things off."

My wife and I have a friend who was about to sign up to drive for Uber. Swallowed the whole "make up to $100K" marketing BS hook, line, and sinker. She never considered, Uber's cut of the gross, background check, gas, car maintenance, accelerated wear and tear, depreciation, and "dead" miles driving around to a fare. All she thought was, "I drive 100 miles and I earn lots of money!!!" We figured she would actually be driving ~125 - 150 miles to earn something less than minimum wage and zero benefits. On top of that, she would be dealing with random strangers at night and take on the risk of a accident. Don't believe for a second that Uber will defend you rather than hang you out to dry if there is an incident.

Re:$13 and hour and my car is a tax write off?

[Anonymous Coward]

false when your deducing buisiness expenses you deduce them 100%, if you bought $100 tire each month for 12 months you can deduce $1'200 from tixes for buisiness expense "tires" you can also substract any costs for electricity (if its electric car) or gas (if its gas car) ... it is your buisiness costs you would not have them if you did not do buisiness

$income-$expenses=$profit
you pay tax on $profit part

Re:$13 and hour and my car is a tax write off?

[kriston]

"Write off" doesn't mean what you think it means.

And if you think Uber/Lyft pay anywhere near the $0.54/mile rate that an employer would pay, you're in for a shock. It's a small fraction of that.

You obviously need a tax advisor, and if you already have one you definitely need a new one.

Re:$13 and hour and my car is a tax write off?

[Anonymous Coward]

They're not basic. In order to understand the Internal Revenue Code properly, one must become an attorney with a specialization in tax law, and then dedicate one's life to the study and understanding of approximately 20,000 pages of laws and regulations. People have trouble understanding the concepts and terms hidden within because they were written to be as vague, cryptic, and difficult to understand as possible. This tactic allows the IRS to persecute anyone they think they can get money out of, so this is exactly how they want it.

Your arrogance and condescension illustrates my point. The problem is the length and complexity of the law. By making people feel stupid because they don't have law degrees and years of experience studying the Holy Tome, they might actually believe the problem is their fault when it's really the government's fault.

As a short term temporary solution, perhaps you could throttle back on the elitism and stop being such a dick, asshole.

Re:$13 and hour and my car is a tax write off?

[Anonymous Coward]

Given that your phone and car are write-offs, and you need no special skills or training, it's a pretty good deal everywhere. What other job (that you can essentially guarantee that you'll be able to get) will offer a better compensation under those conditions?

Re:$13 and hour and my car is a tax write off?

[Anonymous Coward]

You do know that "tax write off" just meas not paying taxes on that expense, not that the expense is free right? In that tax bracket, essentially they will be saving around 15% or less on the amortized cost of their car and phone over the standard deduction rate. So likely about a thousand dollars a year. Not very impressive.

Whatever drivers have told you is either a lie, exaggeration, admission of tax fraud, or you misunderstood them.

Re:$13 and hour and my car is a tax write off?

[jbengt]

. . . with no car or smartphone payment because that's a tax write off.

Are you kidding? They still have to make the payments, they just avoid the tax on the amount of the payment. My wife uses her car and phone for her self-employed job, and, believe me, there are still plenty of payments. The tax deductions at most reduce the costs by 30%, and it's only that high because our joint income puts us in a higher marginal bracket from which to deduct than she would be in by herself.

Re:$13 and hour and my car is a tax write off?

[gnupun]

Tell me what part of the US a roughly $26k annual salary is a "great deal"?

Can you explain how they are making so little while charging a lot?

Assuming the following:
a) about $1.50 fare per mile
b) car costs at 6.4 cents per mile (from TFA)
c) gas costs at 7 cents per mile (from TFA)
d) insurance, service etc costs at $1.50/hr for a 40 hour week (from TFA)

hours worked per year = 40 x 50 = 2000 hours
miles traveled = 2000 x 30 mph avg = 60,000 miles
revenue = 60,000 miles x $1.50 fare/mile = $90,000
uber's cut = 30% x 90,000 = $27,000
expenses = 60,000 miles x $0.14 + 2000 x $1.5 = $11,400

pre-tax income = 90,000 - 27,000 - 11,400 = $51,600

$51,000 is almost double of $26,000 you're claiming.

But even if the final profit is still low, the solution here is obvious: Uber needs to a charge a lower commission (15% instead of 30%).

Re:$13 and hour and my car is a tax write off?

[Anonymous Coward]

You are a moron. The amount spent on items for a business is deducted from the income.

That doesn't mean that they are free.

Why go AC known_coward_69? Your stupidity is obvious.

Re:$13 and hour and my car is a tax write off?

[LVSlushdat]

AND don't forget the fucking business licenses.. I'm retired and have a 2012 Ford Escape, and looked into signing up for Lyft and Uber. After doing a bit of due-diligence, I found that living in Clark County Nevada, just outside Las Vegas, Nevada, I'd have to have a county business license, a Las Vegas city license, AND a state license, all for an annual total of close to $500... Then I talked a couple of people who actually drive for Lyft and Uber.. Both told me if they had it to do over, they'd have skipped doing either of these.. They said the only way they did fairly well was if they spent most of their time running during large events, which Vegas has quite a few. The surge pricing tended to make things a bit more fair... Needless to say I dumped the idea of driving for either....

Re:$13 and hour and my car is a tax write off?

[david_thornley]

In the scenario you outlined, you don't deduct $1200/year from tixes. Not even taxes. That reduces your taxable income, and saves you your effective tax rate times the $1200. At an income of about $26K, that's going to be only a few hundred dollars in tax reductions.

Re:$13 and hour and my car is a tax write off?

[HornWumpus]

A good accountant will tell you about things (s)he doesn't/can't know about. The cash, the slushfund, the kickback account, the fake vendors etc etc. Think of dealing with them as practice for dealing with auditors.

Re:$13 and hour and my car is a tax write off?

[HornWumpus]

That's why you divide all expenses by your marginal tax rate (for reporting). Duh.

Re:$13 and hour and my car is a tax write off?

[lgordon]

I think you meant a "lawful good" accountant. In my experience, most accountants are "chaotic neutral."

Re:$13 and hour and my car is a tax write off?

[whoever57]

That's why you divide all expenses by your marginal tax rate (for reporting). Duh.

Is that meant to be a joke? If not, it should be. That's not how it works.

Re:$13 and hour and my car is a tax write off?

[david_thornley]

You don't divide on your income tax form. It's reasonable to do so for your own financial planning.

Re:$13 and hour and my car is a tax write off?

[whoever57]

You don't divide on your income tax form. It's reasonable to do so for your own financial planning.

Only if you do so very carefully. You need to make sure that you are using the correct rate, because your income might reach a higher tax bracket without the deduction, or you might be trying to deduct something that doesn't actually affect your taxes, because it was covered by the standard deduction. Even if you don't opt to use the standard deduction, you should only account for the difference between your deductions and the standard deduction.

TL;DR. Simplistic analysis of the effects of deductions can lead to erroneous results and bad financial planning

Re:$13 and hour and my car is a tax write off?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that depends on your definition of good. Tax is theft and that's bad. Any means an accountant uses to reduce that including illegally is good.

Re:$13 and hour and my car is a tax write off?

[HornWumpus]

Duh, you don't do it on the form. That would be a little obvious.

One day I will write tax prep software that works like people actually do. Start with how much refund you need/payment you can afford, then guide the user in making up deductions to get there.

Re:$13 and hour and my car is a tax write off?

[david_thornley]

We're talking about the cost of deductible items, such as business expenses, etc. If I use a lower tax bracket than I really should, it's still a better basis for planning than disregarding the value of the deduction, and it's a conservative estimate, since the savings could be more.

Insurance in Michigan

[Anonymous Coward]

is really expensive. Being a no-fault state makes things cost a bit more but the state has a mandatory "uninsured motorist" clause in all policies so that people who don't want to pay for insurance can be covered by those who do. It's something like $300-400 per car per year. I suspect the number is higher for commercial drivers.

Re:Insurance in Michigan

[Anonymous Coward]

with no fault you pay FAR LESS than the other way.

because you have to pay for the possibility that you hit a rolls royce with your beater pos car.

3-400... rofl.

Re:Insurance in Michigan

[torkus]

If I wasn't on a conference call I'd be laughing out loud at this...

Move to NY, especially the suburbs of NYC. Moderate risk drivers can pay that per MONTH for full coverage.

Re:Insurance in Michigan

[nharmon]

The mandatory fee is the "catastrophic claims" fee which pays the medical bills of anyone in a car accident. I don't think uninsured/underinsured is actually mandatory.

Taxis

[Major Blud]

Looks like they make less than they do driving a taxi full-time in Denver....

"The median annual Taxi Driver salary in Denver, CO is $33,803, as of May 31, 2016, with a range usually between $28,077-$41,255 not including bonus and benefit information"
http://www1.salary.com/CO/Denv...

At $13.17 an hour, 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year, an Uber drive in Denver would pull in $27,394 at that rate, and that's WITHOUT benefits and bonuses.

There's a lot that I' assuming here, like a person working strictly full time as an Uber driver.....but if you were going to work strictly as a driver, you'd probably be better off driving a taxi.

Re:Taxis

[known_coward_69]

does that include leasing the taxi? in NYC most medallions are owned by a few millionaires who lease them to garages who put them on cars and then lease the cars to sharecropper drivers who pay so much money that they don't have much left after a shift. and worse off the rush hour is when shift change happens so a lot of taxi drivers miss out on a lot of income since they have to bring back their cars back to the garages

Re:Taxis

[Major Blud]

No clue. Obviously I'm leaving out a lot of info here, and I don't know how much licensing and such cost for a taxi driver that Uber drivers don't seem to have to worry about (for the time being anyway).

Re:Taxis

[known_coward_69]

NYC most cabs need a medallion which costs around $500,000 or more at current prices. for uber you take a 6 week TL&C class and get your special plates for your own car. if you don't have the money to buy a medallion or no one will lend you the money for one then you have to lease a car with a medallion which is close to $100 per shift

Re:Taxis

[Anonymous Coward]

So probably close to the income of the guy who drives around with "free candy" painted on the side of his van. Which for females might as well be the same thing as hopping in a car with a Uber driver.

Re:Taxis

[Anonymous Coward]

I would hope Uber drivers are more hygienic than yellow cab drivers. At S.D. International the cabs are stinky, filthy, cheesy, and I saw one driver that looked like a transient that was barefoot.

Re: Taxis

[Anonymous Coward]

The last couple times I took an Uber the driver and experience weren't much different from a traditional taxi.

I have no complaints, other than the guy not knowing which way to go and driving 20mph over the speed limit.

Re:Taxis

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks like they make less than they do driving a taxi full-time in Denver....

"The median annual Taxi Driver salary in Denver, CO is $33,803, as of May 31, 2016, with a range usually between $28,077-$41,255 not including bonus and benefit information"
http://www1.salary.com/CO/Denv...

At $13.17 an hour, 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year, an Uber drive in Denver would pull in $27,394 at that rate, and that's WITHOUT benefits and bonuses.

There's a lot that I' assuming here, like a person working strictly full time as an Uber driver.....but if you were going to work strictly as a driver, you'd probably be better off driving a taxi.

FWIW, in the early 2000's when I was between jobs after a layoff at IBM (best thing that could have happened BTW) I drove a Taxi here in Denver. Taxi drivers here are all independent contractors so there is no bonus or benefits. Furthermore, because you're dealing with cash, most Taxi drivers aren't reporting their actual earnings.

Uber is different on the wage reporting level because all transactions are electronically tracked and therefore (I'm assuming) reported correctly.

Re:Taxis

[swb]

Does any of this seem surprising?

By and large I've found Uber rides cheaper than cabs. It doesn't make sense that cheaper ride sources would ultimately end up in more income to the driver.

In some ways, Uber is just a more efficient and centralized way of providing the same service. They may charge less for the ride itself to the rider, but Uber is just settling for slightly less gross profit than the existing system which splits the profits between the cab company and whoever actually owns the medallions. The consumer gets the savings, but the drivers make the same money.

It doesn't seem possible that Uber could charge less than a conventional cab and pay its drivers more than a conventional cab company. That's expecting Uber to leave some profit potential on the table.

Maybe in the short run they can pay drivers more than cabbies to attract cabbies to be Uber drivers instead, but once they've driven a few cab companies out of business and the drivers can't switch back to being cabbies, they will cut driver compensation back to cabby levels and probably raise rider fares to cab levels.

There's some efficiency of scale and automation savings to be had, but they're not leaving that on the table in the long run.

Re: Taxis

[Anonymous Coward]

other than the guy not knowing which way to go and driving 20mph over the speed limit.

1. You got to your destination?
2. You were still sucking in air?

What's the problem?

Re:Taxis

[Khashishi]

The $13.17 is after taxes.

Re:Taxis

[Anonymous Coward]

No it doesn't. Leasing cabs costs *a lot*, even in a dinky little town like Denver. I always took cabs late at night, and they were nearly always being (illegally) driven by the Nepalese guy's nephew or cousin or uncle or brother because without running the damn thing 24/7 they couldn't make end's meet driving a cab. Note they had, of course, no option but to lease the cab. Fly the company's own colors and contact information. Remain restricted to their bought-and-paid-for "turf." And of course the cabis had to pay all expense and were 1099'd in spite of such controls. Uber by comparison is, for many taxi drivers, a godsend.

Re:Taxis

[Solandri]

By and large I've found Uber rides cheaper than cabs. It doesn't make sense that cheaper ride sources would ultimately end up in more income to the driver.

Actually, that does make sense. It's one aspect to this whole thing which is missing from this analysis - how much money is Uber making? If Uber's margin is (say) 15% of the gross while a taxi company's is 30%, then it would be possible for Uber to pay its drivers more while charging customers less. The pro-Uber tagline thus far has been the traditional taxi companies are crufty and inefficient, protected from competition by their government-granted monopoly. So in that respect, it does make sense to expect cheaper rides but more income for drivers.

Unfortunately everyone is so focused on the two endpoints (money paid as fares, money to driver) that they're not bothering to do this in-between efficiency calculation. The smaller % of the gross the managing company takes as a cut, the more efficient it is. And it's the more efficient company that should win in the market, not necessarily the one with the cheapest fares or the highest pay for drivers. That's how you can tell if Uber is real or blowing hot air. Compare their cut of the gross to a taxi company's cut of the gross. If Uber's is a smaller percentage, then they're right. Get rid of the traditional taxi companies, and add a few competitors who operate like Uber does. If it's the same percentage or higher, then they're not doing anything better than a traditional taxi company.

Re:Taxis

[Anonymous Coward]

Most non-Uber cab drivers are considered "independent contractors" who lease the vehicle on a daily basis and are expected to take care of their own taxes, medical insurance etc, They pay their own gas, are responsible financially for accidents (if they're at fault, then can be sued personally), and a percentage of each fare goes to the company/medallion owner, usually a 50/50 or 60/40 split. NYC taxi driver will pay $150 up front to lease the cab for 12 hours, so accounting for gas, they have to hustle as many fares as possible in 12 hours, and may not start turning a profit until their 7th or 8th hour.

BTW, most cab drivers drive 12 hour shifts, 6 days a week, maybe someone can calculate the Uber driver's rate of pay at 72 hours a week.

Re:Taxis

[Anonymous Coward]

In major cities Uber undercuts the other cab companies prices, while charge much higher in affluent areas, as much as 3/4 times the average taxi fare for the area. It all depends on location.

Re:Taxis

[swb]

I think you're right in principal, but...

It just strikes me that over time cab fares may be too high, but ultimately the macroeconomics of taxis have settled into something of an equilibrium representing the cost to producers and consumers. Ultimately Uber may drive out the inefficiencies of the existing taxi system, but who is going to claim the excess value these inefficiencies represent? It seems unlikely that the drivers will be the beneficiary. Consumers may hang onto some of the new efficiency gains due to the difficulty in raising prices.

But overall, it seems like Uber will simply take those inefficiencies as profits. The alternative is what -- shrinking the total macroeconomy of taxi-like services? That doesn't seem likely.

Re:Taxis

[Grishnakh]

The thing you're missing here is that Uber actually has competition, and drivers aren't prevented from working for the competition at the same exact time they're working for Uber. Lots of Uber drivers also drive for Lyft; they keep two phones in the car, and respond to calls on one or the other service as they come in. (Obviously, they can't actually be driving customers for both services at the same time.)

The competition factor will help prevent the scenario you're predicting. Even if Uber and Lyft decide to collude, in that event there really isn't much preventing someone else from starting up an identical service. It just isn't that hard these days to write an app.

Re:Taxis

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, we're 19th!... Huh, that's 1% of the urban populace. The 18 larger metro areas, have 42.5% while the rest of the metros below us have 56.4% of the urban populace. (And having lived in Ames, IA, it barely scratches “Urban”). Apparently Denver is right around that Average city size. Not median, for sure, but average.

With 318mil in the USA there's 42 mill unaccounted for in that metro list, presumably those who live in Rural America. Which is about twice as many as in NYC metro.

Huh.

Re:Taxis

[whoever57]

By and large I've found Uber rides cheaper than cabs. It doesn't make sense that cheaper ride sources would ultimately end up in more income to the driver.

One word: medallion. These are typically absurdly expensive. Drivers either have to take out a huge loan to buy one or they rent from someone else. This is a huge cost that the Uber drivers don't have.

Compared to Big Box and Fast Food

[Anonymous Coward]

Through college I worked for both a Big Box and a couple Fast Food chains, I can tell you that those jobs are miserable. The option to be paid the same amount to drive my car around and make conversation with people, on my own schedule, would of been fantastic.

Re:Compared to Big Box and Fast Food

[Anonymous Coward]

I worked the same - fast food, then a retail outlet. Not the best jobs - totally agree. But much better than driving my car around picking up people and hoping that they aren't smokers who will make my car smell (bad smoke allergies) just from their clothes, drunks who may puke in the seat, etc. I'm sure 90% of fares are fine, but the other 10% - heck I wouldn't want them. Better to work fast food or retail.

Re:Compared to Big Box and Fast Food

[FunkSoulBrother]

Would it of been?

Re: Compared to Big Box and Fast Food

[Anonymous Coward]

I worked as a cashier at both WalMart and Target and I loved both of those jobs, particularly the WalMart job because I had about 7-8 of my circle of HS friends working there also.

Re:Compared to Big Box and Fast Food

[fluffernutter]

You're not getting paid the same amount though, because working in a fast food restaurant you're not wearing out your car.. a car that you now depend on for an income.

Similar to DoorDash

[rgbscan]

I used to track all my DoorDash deliveries to a T. That gig earns $11.21 an hour in the Minneapolis/Saint Paul market on average. I'd be happy to share my data spreadsheet with anyone interested.

Re:Similar to DoorDash

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds freakin' awesome.

contact info:

dictionnaire philosophique

Drop the french term for dictionary

add "inquirer" to the front of what remains

but separate the two terms with an "@" (minus quotes)

and add "dot com" to the end

Gross Fares?

[bjwest]

...typical Uber driver takes in more than $100,000 in annual gross fares.

Are they saying that the typical driver brings in $100,000 to Uber? If you take an Uber or taxi, the fare is brought in by the driver, then his pay is deducted from that.

Re:Gross Fares?

[The-Ixian]

I get the feeling that this is exactly where that number came from.

Take all revenue earned by drivers and divide by number of drivers. See? every driver earns, on average, $100k/year (for us)...

Uber says "Typical", TFA has 3 locations...

[Anonymous Coward]

Cherry picked?

Shocked

[DidgetMaster]

What?!?? You mean those signs by the side of the road or emails I get saying I can make $80K a year in my spare time doing this or that are not telling me the whole truth??? I am shocked.

Uber isn't in the business of making people rich

[Anonymous Coward]

Rich people aren't good wage slaves. Can't pay your slaves too much, or they get ideas.

Obviously..

[laxguy]

Did anyone really think that being an Uber driving was the new American Dream??

Re:Obviously..

[houghi]

I am not even sure what the American Dream is. I see one person making a calculation on a 60 hour week and another a working year of 52 weeks.

As a European that sounds more like a nightmare. I rather have my 38 hours per week and 45 weeks per year. That way I can actually live my life and not just dream about it.

But then if the American Dream is to work as much as possible, more power to you. Just do not be surprised if people are less jealous of your dream.

Re:Obviously..

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the new American reality for too many

But, yes, Uber was selling this as the American dream

Re:Obviously..

[PmanAce]

This comment is such a revealing one it is incredible. The "American Dream" only works for a select few (lucky or not) leaving the rest in despair or just well enough to get by oblivious to what conditions are elsewhere, like in Europe.

Re:Obviously..

[Anonymous Coward]

So, hold on, well, now that it's in a leaked document, we know it to be true.

If they hadn't leaked them, there is no way to know!!!! .....

Did anyone try asking some Uber drivers? Last one I asked told me it was just for extra money and he couldn't really make a living just on it.....

Re:Obviously..

[Kohath]

It may not be a dream come true, but it can be a way to make a second paycheck working entirely on your own schedule. There aren't a lot of easy ways to turn a few otherwise idle hours into an income.

Plus it provides a helpful service to people and leads to less drunk driving.

What were the arguments against it supposed to be? We owe the taxi monopoly and their political friends a favor?

Re:Obviously..

[Bob the Super Hamste]

Not all Americans are like that but it does seem that far too many of my fellow citizens are. I have things other than work I like to do and do take time to do them. I have made it very clear that while I will work extra if needed, needed means it is a once in a very long while. Also I have made it clear that when I go on vacation don't bother trying to contact me as I will be out of range of any method you would use. The last time I had a manager who insisted that he be able to contact me I told him where I was leaving my car and heading into the woods and if he wanted to find me he should hire a trained tracker and a team of dogs and start there.

Re:Obviously..

[TheSync]

it can be a way to make a second paycheck working entirely on your own schedule. There aren't a lot of easy ways to turn a few otherwise idle hours into an income.

Especially if you now fall under the higher income limit for overtime non-exemption, where you would have to be paid time-and-a-half for an hour on your primary job, as opposed to just being paid normal pay for your secondary job.

Re:Obviously..

[TheSync]

The "American Dream" only works for a select few...oblivious to what conditions are elsewhere, like in Europe.

The upper middle class in the US has expanded from about 12% of the population in 1979 to a new record of nearly 30% as of 2014.

Also the US has an unemployment rate half that of most European countries (Germany is the only exception with equivalent unemployment rates to the US due to labor law reform there in the early 2000's).

Re:Obviously..

[PmanAce]

Yes but the upper middle class works much harder than the equivalent in Europe, that is what I was alluding at.

Re:Obviously..

[Anonymous Coward]

Do not worry. My generation is somewhat fed-up with subsidizing the European economies in defense (often hidden with accounting tricks or ignoring operational costs to show only purchase price), maritime affairs, nearly all major biomedical R&D, and so on. America spent much of its treasure (and liberty) pulling Europe from an ideological nightmare and now it won't even defend itself...so plenty of us are talking like "why keep ties with these dead societies: China may be hostile, far-easter Asian nations difficult, but they actually have sense", so we're moving off and away from Europe and should continue to.

It's easy to build yourself a nice little Utopia when you need not fund your own defense and instead can invest in healty and welfare, even despite massive aggressor nations to the east that are eager to recover their past glories of empire. But like Europe, America is broke and bankrupt (except Germany, but it won't even be German in 5-10 years). France never repaid Britain and in turn Bankrupted them, and likewise will soon be hardly French (indefensible and impossible to hold unless you're the side willing to be a perpetual guerrilla force): my Asian acquaintances actually called me this morning to ask "is Britain gotten out of that bad deal yet?"

And don't think I'm gleeful: I am eligible for an EU member-nation passport upon request, speak Spanish and a little French (which makes Italian easy), used to read German dictionaries for fun (when I was 9-12), and marvel at Europe's history...

But as an American I would like our defense and other expenditures to come home to invest here, rather than subsidize you arrogant fatasses any longer.

Re:Obviously..

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes but the upper middle class works much harder than the equivalent in Europe, that is what I was alluding at.

I'm an upper middle class American and I work an average of 38 hours a week about 45 weeks a year. Maybe I work harder, maybe I don't but I don't really work longer. It's not that difficult to accomplish. You just need to be a smart, skilled worker. Unfortunately many many Americans (and if we're honest, people in general) are neither so if they want that lifestyle they have to work more. Many Europeans don't live anywhere near the lifestyle of a middle class American and they don't work as much either. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Re:Obviously..

[alvinrod]

I always thought that the American Dream meant that it didn't matter if you were poor or came from nothing in the United States because you were afforded the freedom to pursue your own ambitions and that your hard work could give you a better life. It doesn't mean that you'll be successful in your endeavor only that you can try and if it works you'll be able to keep the fruits of your labors. There are still a lot of people who immigrate to America and do improve things for themselves and their family, but they probably do need to put in 60+ hours in order to achieve that.

I don't think it's really something that's unique to America either. Plenty of people immigrate to Canada or European countries for much the same reasons and similarly build better lives for themselves, but the name dates back to an earlier time in America's history when a large number of people (typically Europeans) were immigrating to the U.S. for a variety of reasons so the name has stuck.

Re:Obviously..

[umghhh]

I suppose if you have to work for Uber than you are just a temporarily embarrassed capitalist waiting to go at it again.

Re:Obviously..

[Anonymous Coward]

Much harder with many heart attacks, kids that do not see their parents, and very little self development

Re:Obviously..

[GameboyRMH]

Yes, conservatives who were desperate for the "gig economy" to save this stupid economic system from falling flat on its big dumb face (at least in terms of providing jobs). Oh well, they still pin their hopes on VR or social media stardom or whatever overhyped concept might employ the masses against increasing automation and decreasing spending power among most of the population.

Re:Obviously..

[neonv]

For those who are not aware, the American dream is the opportunity for prosperity and success through productive work, regardless of class in society. It's not working to death at 60 hours a week for $13 an hour. It's not working one day a week at $100 an hour and being lazy the rest. You can do that if you want, but it's your choice. A successful person chooses a field in demand and becomes productive in that field. Or perhaps finds a need for a product, and invents and markets that product. There's an infinite number of ways to become successful, and everyone can do it. Being an Uber driver for life probably isn't one of them (though Uber driving may help you along the way of getting to success, such as paying for college).

Re:Obviously..

[Anonymous Coward]

The American Dream was a home with a dog, white picket fence, a loving wife/husband, kids, and the ability to afford all that and still eat pies. All of should be achievable if you worked hard and for many it was.

Re:Obviously..

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with alvinrod.
I think the American dream has less to do with one's immediate status than it does one's ability to eventually move one's self or at least one's children into a higher socio-economic status.
  Whether Uber could play a part in anyone's American dream depends on where they are starting from. If all someone has is a drivers license and access to a car, maybe it could (play a part).
Does it democratize this type of role more? Are there people who are unable to land a job as a taxi driver, but who can work for Uber as a contractor? I don't know.
I agree, though, that Uber is NOT going to be a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow for most people at these rates.

Shocked, Shocked I tell you!

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean you're telling me that buying or leasing a relatively new car and driving drunk people around at all hours of the night isn't a six-figure job. Listen if a few of you people that fell for this could email me, I have a $10,000 check I need to cash, if I send you the check you can send me back $8,000 and keep the rest for your efforts, just email me at scamer1@craigslist.com. Please hurry, I need this check cashed, I don't know of any legitimate business where you can bring them a check and they will give you money, or you can leave the check with them and they will give you extra money for holding it. So please respond quickly.

Re:Shocked, Shocked I tell you!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll need to pay you with real estate, if that's okay? I have some property in Canada. It's a little damp but I'm sure it's valuable. It's located five miles south of Toronto. The last-surveyed value was about $15,000.00USD. If you don't mind can you pay the difference in cash? Thanks and it's nice doing business with you. Have a good day.

They boss themselves. They work extras as needed.

[cloud.pt]

I will take a job that let's me make my own schedules based on my socioeconomic needs: I'm having a bad time financially, I can work longer hours for decent overtime (do they even pay overtime in the US?). I want a rested month, be it 1, 2 or 3 per year, I do part-time. The number of companies offering these two benefits at once. Not to mention some people really enjoy driving in urban traffic. I highly doubt people at Walmart enjoy their jobs half as much as the average. And they admit it's a modest American dream. You know, not one that entails being in the top 1% but actually providing a decent service to society through value your own hands create and not some stupid stock market gambling, seed round handout, a flat out buyout or IPO profits, like them vaporware startups. These people are actually doing something only humans can do safely, at least for the next 10 to 20 years.

As Obi Wan Kenobi said

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you ever notice in Star Wars that Obi Wan Kenobi was the biggest liar in the galaxy? He manipulates Luke into trying to kill his own father by telling him that Darth Vader killed Luke's father, and then when Luke finds out about the lie Obi Wan lies right to his face saying "No, no, what I told you was true, from a certain point of view." However from another point of view, Obi Wan manipulated a son into trying to kill his father and blow up infrastructure to push his own political/religious agenda, so from a certain point of view, Obi Wan is a terrorist, ISIS like figure.

Uber is like Obi Wan Kenobi. What Uber is saying is true, from a certain point of view. In this case yes it's possible for an Uber driver to earn in gross fares $100,000 per year. By that definition they are closer to the "American Dream". Good manipulation Uber! From another point of view, they didn't say how many hours per day that takes; if a guy drives 16 hours per day maybe he can get there! And since this is gross, once you subtract gas, maintenance for all the miles, insurance costs, and the split with Uber, a driver could be barely making a living wage if at all. So also Uber, from a certain point of view, you are presenting a situation where people will work overtime but not get overtime pay because they are "contractors" and work for sub-standard wages providing a service that is quasi-legal in most metropolitan areas. In fact, given the minimum wage laws in some cities ($15 per hour in Seattle for example), anyone earning this level of pay is now earning below minimum wage, but Uber skirts that law because the drivers are "contractors".

Re:As Obi Wan Kenobi said

[__aaclcg7560]

What Uber is saying is true, from a certain point of view. In this case yes it's possible for an Uber driver to earn in gross fares $100,000 per year.

That's what they say about the construction trades, which has an acute shortage of skilled workers. As a plumber/electrician/carpenter, you too can make $100K+ per year. The fine print is that you will need to work 60 to 80 hours per week and/or start your own company to make that kind of money. Most people are unwilling to put in that much time for a well-paid job. I had a coworker who left a $50K-per-year government IT job to start his own roofing company and makes $10K per week in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Re:As Obi Wan Kenobi said

[Anonymous Coward]

to start his own roofing company and makes $10K per week in the San Francisco Bay Area.

.. and his costs are $9,700.00 per week.

Re:As Obi Wan Kenobi said

[__aaclcg7560]

.. and his costs are $9,700.00 per week.

You pulled this number out of your ass for what reason?

Re:As Obi Wan Kenobi said

[K. S. Kyosuke]

However from another point of view, Obi Wan manipulated a son into trying to kill his father and blow up infrastructure to push his own political/religious agenda, so from a certain point of view, Obi Wan is a terrorist, ISIS like figure.

Heh. Reminded me of this... :D

Re:As Obi Wan Kenobi said

[Anonymous Coward]

Dumbass

SF is fucking expensive. He may have more than $300 a week in actual income, but I bet it is less than $1000.

People constantly forget to add in living expenses in calculations in how much they make. You have a $4000 mortgage? Your income just dropped $48,000 a year. Ditto for cars, credit cards, etc. You don't make minimum wage(assuming you are making this since all your posts are fucking huge displays of retardation), you make $1-$3 an hour because you have to pay for your shitty one room apartment that you share with 5 other people and your 1985 Accord and you have a credit card that is maxed out every month, you have been paying the minimum for the last 10 years and didn't notice your balance never really drops. Plus the card is 30% interest because your dumbass has bad credit.

It is like a business, they don't get to only count income as their bottom line, they have to include business expenses. It is the same thing for personal income.

Ignorant fuckstains like you, who have zero financial sense, are a blight on the world.

Re:As Obi Wan Kenobi said

[Anonymous Coward]

Because your post reminded me of all the "Make $5k/week" ads I see.

Re:As Obi Wan Kenobi said

[__aaclcg7560]

Ignorant fuckstains like you, who have zero financial sense, are a blight on the world.

I make $50K per year at government IT job, save 20% of my income and live in Silicon Valley. If you live a modest lifestyle, this is entirely possible. Unfortunately, most people who live in Silicon Valley want big cars, big houses, big wife and big kids. That gets expensive in a hurry.

Re:As Obi Wan Kenobi said

[__aaclcg7560]

Because your post reminded me of all the "Make $5k/week" ads I see.

There are jobs where you can make obscene amounts of money IF YOU ARE WILLING to work 80 hours. My former coworker currently makes $10K per week for 80 hours per week. Prior to going full time as a roofer, he did roofing as a 40-hour job while working 40 hours remotely in government IT at night for six months after getting his contractor license. Construction is red hot now because there is an acute shortage of skilled workers.

Re:As Obi Wan Kenobi said

[Anonymous Coward]

No you make minimum wage at your McJob.

You retardation is proof of that.

Your post just displays your idiocy. You claim that you live in SV and only make $50k in a government IT job? That is what GS-5? That is a job that requires zero education as educated people can start with the feds at GS-7 or even 9.

A dumbass barely graduated CS drone can make $110,000 in SV yet you are making less than a livable wage. Of course you can save money, you are sharing your 1 room apartment with 5 people. smh

Dumb fuck

Re:As Obi Wan Kenobi said

[__aaclcg7560]

No you make minimum wage at your McJob.

$50,000+ per year IS minimum wage for technical jobs in Silicon Valley. It could be worse. A Dell technician only makes $17 per hour plus mileage in Silicon Valley. Some tech sweat shops only pay $10 per hour.

You retardation is proof of that.

Funny you should mentioned that. I spent the first eight years in Special Ed because of an undiagnosed hearing lost. Skipped high school, spent four years at community college, and got an associate degree in General Education. A decade later I went back to school, got a associate degree in Computer Programming, and made the president's list for maintaining a 4.0GPA in my major.

You claim that you live in SV and only make $50k in a government IT job? That is what GS-5?

Beats me. I'm a contractor and $50K is the national average for a senior system administrator position. I've been trying to get my contracting agency to pay me a Silicon Valley cost-of-living adjustment to bring my pay rate up to $100K+ per year.

That is a job that requires zero education as educated people can start with the feds at GS-7 or even 9.

All the people hired for the project that I'm working on has 20+ years of IT experience. All accepted $50K per year. That pay rate goes far in the Pacific Northwest and Southwest, but not in Silicon Valley.

Of course you can save money, you are sharing your 1 room apartment with 5 people.

I live by myself in a studio apartment for the last 11 years. In Silicon Valley. I'm three years from being priced out of the market. A few more certifications underneath my belt, my next job will pay $120K+ per year.

Re:As Obi Wan Kenobi said

[Anonymous Coward]

Good senior sys admins can make $100k a year in both the public and private sector.

You guys are just the dregs left over that will work for peanuts because it is the best you can do.

Certifications are meaningless and don't cover your lack of formal education.

At least you are proud of your retardation.

Re:As Obi Wan Kenobi said

[__aaclcg7560]

Good senior sys admins can make $100k a year in both the public and private sector.

This is the first job that ever gave me the title of senior system admin. Which is why I'm learning everything I can for my next position in three years that will pay $100K+ per year.

You guys are just the dregs left over that will work for peanuts because it is the best you can do.

That's funny. We were hired as desktop techs. When the contract started, we found out we were all senior system admins responsible for 80,000+ systems. Obviously, the prime contractor low-balled us. After two years of job security, I don't mind using this position as a stepping step to my next job.

Certifications are meaningless and don't cover your lack of formal education.

Certifications are worthless without the experience to back it up. Everyone I worked with has higher-level certifications than I do.

At least you are proud of your retardation.

I don't let negative people put me down. I know where I came from, I know where I'm going. Most people don't know either.

"which includes all of Colorado"

[friedmud]

This completely invalidates the analysis. Colorado is huge and I'm sure there are several small cities way outside of Denver that skew the statistics.

I've used Uber in some small towns (like Idaho Falls, ID) where it was basically just one dude with his old Prius. He just sits at home and waits for Uber to ding and jumps in his car. How much money he's making "per hour" isn't really a relevant metric...

Re:"which includes all of Colorado"

[smooth wombat]

waits for Uber to ding and jumps in his car. How much money he's making "per hour" isn't really a relevant metric...

Yes, it is. He is an Uber driver. He waits, hour after hour, for the ding. He only makes money when he is hailed. That is part of the metrics.

This is no different than guy in Miami who gets hailed 2-3 times per hour. He happens to work in an area with a larger population so doesn't have to wait as long to get hailed but there are times when he's waiting to get hailed, just like in Idaho Falls.

Re:"which includes all of Colorado"

[CaptainLard]

Eh, maybe not the most rigorous analysis but I wouldn't go "completely invalid" either. 70% of Colorado's population lives in the greater Denver area (including Boulder and CO springs). The next biggest population center is Ft Collins, 90 min up the road at ~300k and most of the rest is small or spread out enough that there probably aren't any Uber drivers (Idaho Falls has 50K residents? Thats huge!).

Using Denver to represent the state is a fair ballpark.

Re:"which includes all of Colorado"

[known_coward_69]

i can sell my apartment in NYC right now and buy a smallish house in colorado in a cheap area for cash and do uber just to pay the taxes and bills. colorado gets a lot of california refugees doing this. uber is pretty awesome for a low cost of entry to make some cash to do something in your retirement. if uber had been around 10 years ago i would have told my mom to do it when she retired in her 50's

Re:"which includes all of Colorado"

[known_coward_69]

i'm going to fort collins next month and just looked up the rates. it's the same or cheaper for me to take an uber with my kids than to take that bus or van they have

Re:"which includes all of Colorado"

[Grishnakh]

I'm sorry, that's just plain dumb. If I'm sitting at home, I can be doing a lot of things I enjoy, which do not count as "work". When you're away from home, waiting on a call (especially at some employer's building), you're limited in what you can do for enjoyment. With the Uber guy in ID, he can do whatever he wants and normally does at home, and then has the luxury of taking that call if he wants (or he can just blow it off if he's busy). That's a kind of freedom you don't get with a regular job. And getting hailed 2-3x per hour is an entirely different scenario, because with that kind of frequency, you can't dedicate any time to doing anything more intense than maybe a phone game app because your next call will come in a few minutes. With the Idaho guy, he might not get a call all night because it's such a low-traffic area.

Re:But Hillary says $12/hour is plenty

[Anonymous Coward]

And the Republicans would do away with minimum wage entirely is they had a chance. What's your point? That Uber drivers should be happy making slightly above a McDonald's burger-flipper? I mean, Uber's not really supposed to be a full-time job, but it's not really being the competitive employer that it claims to be when working at Walmart is a more attractive option to make a bit of extra cash.

And why are you surprised?

[MikeRT]

Driving people around is a marginally skilled luxury service that in theory a teenager with 1-3 years of personal driving experience could do. Heck, a 20 year old born and raised in an area can probably do it more competently than an older "more experienced" driver who hasn't lived in the area that long.

This is like the outrage that McDonalds workers, people who make $2 hamburgers, are the lowest men and women on the food industry totem poll in terms of wages. Forget automation; if your job is something that a 19 year old high school dropout who fits the stereotypes can do as competently as a "20 year veteran," you aren't going to make much money because the barrier to entry and value of experience is minimal.

It's like going back 100 years and complaining that "senior ditch digger" doesn't pay substantially more than "junior ditch digger."

Re:And why are you surprised?

[fluffernutter]

I like how people who make that argument totally fail to address the decline of well paying jobs, and what people are supposed to do who get forced out of those jobs as they become less available. The only thing there is left are jobs that someone inexperienced could do.

Re:And why are you surprised?

[TheSync]

Driving people around is a marginally skilled luxury service that in theory a teenager with 1-3 years of personal driving experience could do.

Thanks to automation (GPS/Waze/Google Maps), now you don't event need to know anything about directions to drive a cab/rideshare. 30 years ago, you needed deep geographic and traffic knowledge. Thus it has become a less-skilled job.

Re:And why are you surprised?

[Anonymous Coward]

I like how people who make that argument totally fail to address the decline of well paying jobs, and what people are supposed to do who get forced out of those jobs as they become less available. The only thing there is left are jobs that someone inexperienced could do.

What exactly does it mean to ask, "what people are supposed to do..." when the world changes and nobody really wants the stuff I do? The answer is that you look around and figure out what the next thing is for you. What do people need and how can you do it? Nobody has earned the right to have the world hold still for their comfort. It's a fool's demand, a lazy fool.

Methodology

[steamraven]

Here is BuzzFeed article listing more information on how they arrived at their numbers
https://www.buzzfeed.com/jsvin...

Common practice...

[evolutionary]

I learned that there are often two sets of books in businesses: one for the public/Auditors, and one for the top executives/owners. You can guess the numbers reflected in the public books. It's funny how the 2 books never seem to match. Of course with vulnerabilities, people's lack of tech security matters, plus private/government installed backdoors (added to or as part of software products/OS), documents like this will be leaked with increasing frequency. And the revelation will be shocking to those who believed the marketing hype. If these folks want to keep their private set of financial books secret, they'll have to learn to go back to paper, or at least use a set of isolated computers that never touch the Internet.

Re:Common practice...

[JesseMcDonald]

I learned that there are often two sets of books in businesses: one for the public/Auditors, and one for the top executives/owners. You can guess the numbers reflected in the public books. It's funny how the 2 books never seem to match.

Not too surprising, really. One set of books is tracking everything according to the legal definitions, which are designed around the requirements of the IRS and the SEC. The other set is used as the basis for business decisions, which have entirely different requirements, and thus benefit from a different organization. Why would you expect them to be the same? Different requirements, different metrics. The same transactions end up in both sets of books, they're just categorized differently.

Re:Common practice...

[evolutionary]

LOL, okay, 3 then. The 2 you mentioned (each have categories) and the 3rd, being the real data so the top of the food chain knows what it actually has. I know I sound cynical, in addition to what I've been told, we have lots of stories that seem to reflect the same. Oh, and of course, the off shore accounts we didn't know about (well some of us) before the Panama papers. ;). still, it's good info to look at (and potentially see how much further some businesses go). Thanks for the info!

Did anyone actually believe the $100k number?

[zerofoo]

The job market is exactly that - a market that sets wages.

Rare, highly sought skills command high salaries. Driving a car is not one of those skills.

No one should expect a person driving people around in a car to make $100k a year. That's crazy.

If people willingly want to work for Uber at those wages - what's the issue?

Re:Did anyone actually believe the $100k number?

[110010001000]

Uber never said they made $100k a year. It is in the first sentence.

Re:Did anyone actually believe the $100k number?

[truckaxle]

Insightful... yes exactly that. The market sets the income. Supply and demand. What are people expecting that the gov't intervenes to set the wages? Stupid outrage here.

Re:Did anyone actually believe the $100k number?

[Anonymous Coward]

People set the market.

There is no invisible hand, that is 100% bullshit.

All income is set by people not some magical market.

Re:Did anyone actually believe the $100k number?

[HornWumpus]

You couldn't get an F1 driver to spit on your car for $100k.

A driver could still make $100k

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, to be fair a driver could make $100k a year if they just stretched a little and worked 220 hours a week

Re:But Hillary says $12/hour is plenty

[LynnwoodRooster]

If the minimum wage is to be a "livable" wage, then that minimum wage is way too low in many places - and too high in others. That's the problem with a Federal minimum wage - it doesn't make sense in the vast majority of These United States. Leave it to each State to set its own minimum. Which, ideally, should be regional - for example, San Francisco should probably be $17/hr to be livable, but down in Gilroy it could be $10/hr.

fuck all them fuckers

[Thud457]

It says on the cover "Human Resources"

It's a cookbook.
A COOOOOKBOOOOK!!!!11!!!

Re:But Hillary says $12/hour is plenty

[Frank Burly]

I don't think anyone in history has said that minimum == plenty.

This is the future of work ...

[Anonymous Coward]

... in our glorious libertarian paradise! Don't worry though, you'll be able to work two or three jobs at $13 an hour.

Tip?

[MindTree]

I understand that drivers can't count on tips to be consistent or even provided. It's also common to tip Uber drivers. I don't see these articles taking tipping into account. Probably fair since Uber probably didn't assume any tip in their $100k figure. I'd find it interesting to hear how tipping might change that hourly wage figure.

Not as bad as I'd assumed. I feel LESS guilty now

[CFD339]

So this is meant to be an anti-Uber argument. To some extent it is because it suggests that Uber overstates what drivers can earn per hour.

On the other hand, it indicates that in most markets Uber drivers can earn a living wage and even in the most competitive markets they can cover expenses and beat the minimum wage.

I suggest this is a valid choice for Uber drivers. It doesn't suggest that you would leave a good manufacturing job with benefits to drive people around, but is that realistic in any case?

I actually had a lower estimate on what could be made doing this, and would have bet that many drivers don't earn enough to cover the wear and tear on their vehicles. Clearly this isn't the case.

I feel less guilty about using Uber after reading this.

Re:Not as bad as I'd assumed. I feel LESS guilty n

[fluffernutter]

Living wage? You know there are still a lot of costs that need to come out of that 'wage' right? In fact, if Uber drivers are in fact contractors, that isn't considered a wage at all, that's considered income for their company as a private driver. Then out of that their company pays vehicle costs, insurance, and health coverage. Their wage can be what is left over. There can't be much left.

You're cheating yourself

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting what you did there, calling the $13.00 after expenses a "profit". What's left out in the expenses is the salary for the contractor. That $13.00 is their take home pay after the expenses of running their car. So, if you have zero living expenses and don't eat, then sure, call it profit. But since Uber drivers are humans, they actually need food and shelter. Some of us also think that all humans should have a decent standard of living and have a decent work/life balance, not just those of us that can make six figures surfing the web all day and occasionally banging out a few lines of code.

$13.00 take home pay equates to roughly $26k/year (using the standard 2000 hour work year that every software person I know uses to compute their "salary" based on their consulting rate). The poverty line in the US is roughly $23k.

tl;dr: the $13.00 is not profit, it's salary; $13/hr won't even let you save and the US deems that salary the bare minimum to just scrape by. Working more destroys the work/life balance.

-Chris

Nope, this software person doesn't use 2000 hrs. This software person starts with 2080; then subtracts 80 for 10 holidays, then I subtract time for vacation, and if I'm doing contract work that's either 120 or 160 hours.

Re:Not as bad as I'd assumed. I feel LESS guilty n

[toadlife]

I actually had a lower estimate on what could be made doing this, and would have bet that many drivers don't earn enough to cover the wear and tear on their vehicles. Clearly this isn't the case.

Don't be so quick to sell yourself short. Your lower estimate may be correct.

The IRS rate for vehicle depreciation is around $0.50 per mile. Uber is calculating $0.06 a mile in value depreciation and 0.07 per mile in fuel costs and adding in $3000.00 a year in "other" costs. In my opinion, that kind of calculation is clearly designed to muddy the waters in regards to what the actual costs of their drivers are over the long term. If they just used the $0.50 number, which for the entire fleet, is probably closer to the truth, the numbers would look much worse for Uber drivers.

That IRS rate may not be perfect, but there is no corporate agenda driving it's calculation.

Re:Not as bad as I'd assumed. I feel LESS guilty n

[Jack_the_Tripper]

That IRS rate may not be perfect, but there is no corporate agenda driving it's calculation.

And you know the IRS isn't really in the business just giving away money out of the kindness of their hearts -- though with things like earned income tax credit and whatnot they have been somewhat transformed into a wealth redistribution scheme so, who knows?

Re:Not as bad as I'd assumed. I feel LESS guilty n

[toadlife]

Taxation is, by definition, a wealth redistribution scheme.

How best to set up that scheme is the debate to have.

And, yes, given that our tax system is heavily influenced by corporations, perhaps me saying there was no corporate agenda behind it is not accurate. It's certainly not Uber's specific corporate agenda.

Re:But Hillary says $12/hour is plenty

[Anonymous Coward]

livable ... San Francisco ... $17/hr

There's your problem, fishbulb.

$17/hour is not livable in San Francisco.

"Oh, but if you rent a place with a bunch of other people and..."

Great - that means the current minimum wage, everywhere, is livable. Which it is, in fact. It's minimum wage. It's not own your own private house, have 2.5 kids and two cars wage. Nor should it be.

Estimates are off....

[theendlessnow]

Uber driver's use their mom's car.... Profit!!

Insurance .... need commercial insurance.

[Anonymous Coward]

I was just in a tiny accident.

First question from my insurance company was "is this vehicle used for ride sharing or commercial riders in any way?"

Last time I was in an accident, the question was whether everyone in the vehicle was wearing seatbelts or not.

Why do they ask? ZERO COVERAGE CLAUSES. If your normally insured vehicle is used for any commercial purpose, then different insurance is required.

I was ridesharing for a 25+ mile commute into town with a lady about a mile away from my home 10 yrs ago. She never wanted to drive, so I used the rideshare program's way to estimate costs and she paid $7 a day. Does that change the relationship into a commercial one from a shared expenses one? I don't know, but I suspect the insurance company would see it as one.

actually no.

[CFD339]

The numbers provided where estimates that purported to include vehicle costs. They may be a bit low or a bit high, but they're not too far off. Even in busy markets, you can earn money doing this. Driving a cab is never going to be a shortcut to wealth and an excellent lifestyle. Uber isn't going to change that.

Re:Obviously.. Reagan, Kardashian, and Zuckerberg

[Anonymous Coward]

I can help.

The "American Dream" used to be get an education, get a job, get married, raise 2.3 kids, pay off the mortgage, and retire with a pension.

It required work, it took time.

The new American Dream is to become a millionaire/billionaire by 30.

I can explain why it changed using three people as examples.

Kim Kardashian, Ronald Reagan and Mark Zuckerberg.

In high school in the 70's I knew a kid who wasn't very bright, but he had no worries about his future. His father worked at the auto plant in Fremont, CA, and he was going to get into the union.

He would make enough to live the American Dream. Hard work, but a livable wage, benefits, and a pension.

Union jobs and their higher wages are all but gone in the US. Ronald Reagan made union busting as American as Apple Pie.

Pension plans have been replaced with 401k plans that slowly move your money to Wall Street.

Now the view of many of my fellow 'Merican's is that government rules and regulations don't protect them from exploitation, the rules and regulations are keeping us all from getting rich.

On to the second guy.

Mark Zuckerberg won the lottery, because the odds of him being in the right place at the right time to create Facebook are a few hundred million to one.

That he won the lottery is a factor missed by most of the newer Americans. Get a copy of Coding for Dummies and you're set.

Kim Kardashian being the third example should be self-explanatory, but the short version is "I'm going to be famous!!!!!"

So the American Dream no longer requires years of hard work.

The American Dream is Get Rich.

38 hours a week and 45 weeks a year sounds pretty good.

Don't get me wrong, the USA is still the best place to live overall, but our values are a little out of whack right now, and your lack of jealousy is to be expected.

6. Low insurance

[Anonymous Coward]

No proper insurance. They all don't tell their insurance company they are driving for Uber. I always worry what happen if we get into a crash? Will the insurance company pay?

Lol, no way!

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

"Turns out, the it has been exaggerating. According to BuzzFeed News, which obtained leaked documents, drivers in some markets don't take home much more than service workers at major chains like Walmart when it comes to net pay."

Cue the "I'm shocked" posts.

Wow, could believe that a fine upstanding company like Uber would fib about something like the pay rate of their slaves, err, I mean their "independently-contracted-not-an-employee-drivers"

Re: First! (+5, Insightful)

[Anonymous Coward]

And it's "unprecedented"

Tax write off

[rsilvergun]

it's one of the dirty little secrets of these outfits. I know a couple guys that do this sorta work as part runners. By the time they're done writing off their mileage they effectively have $0 income. This doesn't get them food stamps or welfare (God only knows how destitute you have to be to get those, everybody I know who hit a rough patch got turned down) but it gets them healthcare.

On the one hand it's incredibly fucked up because it's a multi-billion dollar subsidy for Uber. On the other hand I think the local gov'ts have got wise to this and started demanding more proof of income documents though so they can kick 'em off the programs. Most of these pseudo employers won't give you that because what they're doing isn't legal.

I can't decide which is more fucked up, giving those bastards a subsidy or the nasty way we're trying to deprive these folks of health care. At any rate it wasn't an issue when it was a few hundred thousand part runners. But Uber & Lyft have millions. Gonna be interesting to see how it plays out.

Re:But Hillary says $12/hour is plenty

[Anonymous Coward]

Leave it to each State to set its own minimum.

The problem with that is that right wing, third world hellholes like Alabama and SC would set it at $2 an hour.

Re: First! (+5, Insightful)

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently most here have not been a pizza deliverer. Whew. Hard on a vehicle. Start stop off on. Wow. Kills a better unless you leave it running. Also mowing lawns with fuel prices and wear and tear. Not worth it. Maybe I did it wrong way back

Re: First! (+5, Insightful)

[Anonymous Coward]

I typed battery.... not better.. oh well