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When Their Shifts End, Uber Drivers Set Up Camp in Parking Lots Across the US (bloomberg.com)
A feature report on Bloomberg today illustrates the lives of several Uber drivers, who find shelter in car parking at nights when it's too pricey and tiring to go home. An excerpt from the story: In Chicago, Walter Laquian Howard sleeps most nights at the "Uber Terminal." "I left my job thinking this would work, and it's getting harder and harder," Howard said. "They have to understand that some of us have decided to make this a full-time career." Howard has been parking and sleeping at the 7-Eleven four to five nights a week since March 2015, when he began leasing a car from Uber and needed to work more hours to make his minimum payments. Now that it's gotten cold, he wakes up every three hours to turn on the heater. He's rarely alone. Most nights, two to three other ride-hailing drivers sleep in cars parked next to his. It's safe, he said, and the employees let the drivers use the restroom. Howard has gotten to know the convenience store's staff -- Daddy-O and Uncle Mike -- over the past two years while driving for this global ride-hailing gargantuan, valued at $69 billion. "These guys have become my extended family," said Howard, 53. "It's my second home. We have this joke that I'm the resident. I keep asking them: 'Hey, did my mail come in yet?'"
America! Fuck yeah!
The end game is near: the 1% will have everything, and you will have the clothes on your back, if you're lucky.
"I left my job thinking this would work, and it's getting harder and harder," Howard said. "They have to understand that some of us have decided to make this a full-time career." Howard
Yeah, fuck you. The world doesn't owe you anything and even Uber's own ad campaigns bend over backwards to emphasize that this is supposed to be a side gig to make some extra money.
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
Sleep at night?
Safe? If I did not put on this costume, after my Uber shift ends, and devote my nighttime hours to fighting crime, there would be no place to stop for them; no place to sleep.
Rest easy.
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
"Howard has been parking and sleeping at the 7-Eleven four to five nights a week since March 2015, when he began leasing a car from Uber and needed to work more hours to make his minimum payments."
Poor kid, our educational system and his parents clearly failed him.
....some of us have decided to make this a full-time career.
Decided or had to?
As a former IT worker and now MR. Mom with a medical practitioner wife, I'd resort to that if I weren't a doctor's husband.
Hmm, it's almost like they encourage people to do this job full time. These people used to be called taxi drivers before marketing got hold of it.
They all seem grateful for the work and only work as much as they want. Also a taxi license plate sells for $125k in my Soviet Canadian city - Uber is a great deal for those needing a bit extra here. I would seriously consider it if I got sick of my business.
put them all out of work, taxis too & city buses, maybe even trucking industry and railroad too
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Interesting article, it pretty much explains why regular taxi service employees are so against Uber. When you have a competitor that undercuts the service so much that you need to live out of your car in a parking lot, it's somewhat hard to make a living from it.
leasing a car from Uber sounds like the company store days of the past where they lock you into the job and when the work slows down / something bad happens your on the hook to make the company full and you are not even an W2 worker.
What a crock of shit
ok, so they get to use the restroom. How about showers?
I'd imagine that after awhile, these Ubers probably don't smell so great.
As a society, we have 3 options:
Now which one is it going to be?
Actual Fact: Trump is a douchebag. Alternative Fact: Trump isn't bald.
Hours-of-Service Safety Regulations uber does not give a dam about them but what will happen when an uber driver falls asleep at the wheel and does big damage?
I live in central London and we have a similar situation with food delivery bike riders. A couple have a very organised camp setup at a local church park. Another sleeps every morning at my wife's gym (where I presume he has discovered a membership is far cheaper than rent). I don't think I've ever seen a situation where there were so may people working yet homeless. There was a story in the paper recently about a guy who got a job at a pub that opened till 3am, and would then wonder around until one of the train stations opened at 5am so he could go in and sleep.
I just cannot see how this situation can continue. I don't think I could personally stand visiting the big empty homes of rich people to deliver them overpriced takeaways every night, while knowing that I'll never be able to buy a home of my own anywhere on the wages I'm earning. At some point surely these people will realise they outnumber the rich they are delivering meals for, and something is going to happen?
marketing: our billion dollar business idea is to empower the gig economy with a system that frees them from the shackles of the traditional labour paradigm by allowing drivers to work their own hours on their own terms. the government hates us because we're revolutionary disruptors of traditional capitalism
Reality: live out of a parking lot, subsist on slurpees and hotdogs, work more hours than you ever imagined, get sick, die somewhere conveniently outside any media scrutiny of your employe...er..i mean, app.
Good people go to bed earlier.
"They have to understand that some of us have decided to make this a full-time career."
Who's "they"
Why do "they" have to "understand" (you)?
And by "understand", what do you mean? To give some type of material support to your decision to make it a full-time gig?
That uber taxi cab must smell really wonderful, with the driver sleeping in it and using a 7-11 restroom :/
I swear to Glob, I just can't understand these people. Idiocracy at its finest.
Thank you for letting us know that you don't know anyone in the situation described. Now what, pray tell, does that have to do with the price of rice?
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Poor people who believe they can make the same living as their parents and grandparents with the same skillset. Yeah, your grandpappy could afford to buy a house, 2 cars, and raise 3 kids by swinging a hammer all day but that's over. Driving a car is not much of a "skill" anymore. Soon it won't even be a job for people anymore. Computers will do it for much cheaper. That's called progress. 70 years ago people assembled automobiles by hand. Now it's mostly robots. Same for driving.
I was the first in my family to go to college and graduated over 20 years ago. There was no way my parents were going to let me loose without ensuring that I had some form of education or at least some non trivial skills that I could use to make a living. If I hadn't gone to college they would have sent me to a vocational program. I am doing the same thing with my kids.
Idiots who thing they can stand against the tide of progress will be swallowed by it.
I'm always amazed when I hear stuff like this. People really believe that other people will treat them right when a) it's not in their interests and b) they're not being forced.
When I tell people I'm a socialist one of the responses is: "Well, are you gonna force people?". Yes. Yes I am. This is civilization. You don't get to say 'no' to civilization. Just like you don't get to say no to the polio vaccine. That's because your actions do not happen in a vacuum. They don't just hurt you, they hurt me too.
So yeah, I'm gonna force Uber to pay a living wage or go out of business. I'm gonna force everyone to give everyone else health care (aka "single payer"). Because that's civilization. We're all humans. We're all valuable. Yes, everybody gets an ever-loving Gold Star. We all earned the right to a good life simply by being born human.
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Well, there's great news for this guy. In a few years, autonomous cars will eliminate the need for drivers, and this guy won't have a car to sleep in, or an income at all. The moral to this story is if you want to make a good living, get a marketable skill that takes some skill to develop and is in demand. Since virtually every adult in the US can drive, driving services were never going to be a cash cow. Machinist, electrician, elevator repair, commercial equipment service and repair, etc. are the way to go. To a certain degree, this is the sad result of not teaching even one class in high school on basic applied economics (supply and demand, markets etc.)
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
Democrats: The party of "wah".
I hear so many people saying what a wonderful thing the gig economy is -- how much freedom they have, how much they love not working a traditional job, etc. All of that may be true, but just wait until all the traditional jobs go away and most people are forced into squeezing out a tiny living doing things like driving for Uber. I highly doubt everyone would be super-happy at that point.
The relative economic stability of the last century was driven by consumers consuming, buying stuff, paying taxes, etc. and that was driven by those consumers having a stable paycheck or other source of income to fall back on. When that gets kicked away in the name of disruption, society needs to have a better answer than "oh, we'll figure something out later." I've been lucky to have stable work, but I know that I cut back on spending when I think something might be afoot at work. I can't imagine never knowing whether I'm going to have a good or bad week coming up.
I think a lot of the gig economy cheerleaders are mistakenly thinking that Uber drivers are in the same league as, say, a flavor-of-the-moment software or IT contractor making $200+ an hour. I know a lot of people like this, who do nothing but travel around the country and get paid obscene amounts of money to implement the new hotness at random businesses. It's not super-stable, but they make enough to survive bad times. Uber drivers are barely breaking even, especially if they're financing their own vehicle purchases, etc. Like them or not, their business model is exploitative at best. Driving a cab is often the last resort job for people.
Not sure why uber drivers stay in these abusive relationships. Use a more decentralized app like Cell 411 instead...it's free and you keep 100% of your fares: http://getcell411.com/
I purpose we call these people "Uber-Hobos", or "Hubos" if you will.
I use Uber several times a month. I love the service, and I believe that some of the improvements in Uber over Taxis are due to technology and innovation rather than just taking advantage of employees. Especially in smaller cities like mine, where critical mass for traditional taxi service is not there, but being able to track and summon Ubers works pretty well.
That being said, I have noticed that drivers are getting less happy. One problem I see is that people underestimate the wear and tear on their car. This is a real expense - more frequent oil changes, tires, etc.
The other problem is I've noticed less surge pricing. Uber has recruited drivers so aggressively they have effectively gotten the price down. If you think about it, Uber's model is great, because they raise the price until someone picks you up. This ensures you get a ride home. However, their base prices are probably unrealistically low, so if they can flood the market with drivers, they are basically getting them cheap.
Now they will churn through drivers doing this, but I wonder if Uber thinks there are enough drivers out there to churn through to tide them over until they have fully self-driving cars?
In such a wold of automation, you need to wonder about basic income.
This just so exemplifies the scam aka – Gig Economy.
Looking at his numbers
Let say he makes $300/day, that’s $230 after gas and a couple of 711 munchies.
Well, since he’s self employed, he pays full SS & Medicare tas of 13.85% - which goes against GROSS receipts of $300 = $41.55
Secondly, reading through most Uber forms, people who work 55+ hours per week drive © 300 miles a day. A DAY!. The Federal allowance for vehicle maintenance is $.54 / mile. At 300 miles = $162.
The reality is he will have to change his tires, breaks, engine oil, much more often, and that costs Probably not far from the fed estimates.
So, take is net after gas, subtract $41.55 in SS/MC taxes, subtract $162 in maintenance leaves $96.45, which he as to pay Federal Income Tax of 10%.. or $9.65..
This leaves him with a NET of $86.81, for a 10 hour shift – or $8.91 with zero benefits.
You’re WAY better off flipping burgers.
Shit on workers so hard they turn to full-time Uber then demand basic income on their behalf... Aren't you virtuous.
Despite your low-PH response, the OP really has a point.
Economically speaking, automation and increased use of AI(*) will put many people out of work(**), and unlike the previous manufacturing revolutions there won't be enough work remaining to keep everyone employed.
Our economic system has to change, it simply cannot survive the rise in productivity. UBI is one way to accomplish that, I know of at least three other viable solutions.
Being toxic and preaching doom and gloom won't solve this issue, but inspiring people to action and raising their hopes might.
You could try educating yourself and then getting the word out - pick a stance that you like and try to convince others. (Assuming that you can't implement any of the actual solutions, that is.)
The system has to change - why not be part of that change?
(*) In the current industry-used version of that term.
(**) Self-driving vehicles alone are poised to put 5 million out of work in the next 10 years.
Well, not starving is high on people's lists. The fact that they are grateful for the work cuts against the 'they don't need the money' argument you're about to make.
But yes, children in sweatshops were also grateful for the work.
Which may include over 40 hours a week. After all, most people convince themselves they want to do something if they are forced into the situation. And people tend to want to work over starve.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
And that's why I always tip my Uber and Lyft drivers. They aren't making as much as you think, and most people aren't doing it as their first choice of employment.
OTOH, if I were unemployed and since I have a decent car, I'd probably start driving for Uber or Lyft immediately while I looked for another 'real' job.
- Necron69
"Howard has been parking and sleeping at the 7-Eleven four to five nights a week since March 2015, when he began leasing a car from Uber and needed to work more hours to make his minimum payments."
So you basically sold yourself into slavery just to skip taxi driver laws?
https://www.google.com/url?sa=...
look at India, South America and large parts of China. And that's just the places we pay attention to. This is nothing new and nothing surprising. For most of the world's 6 billion inhabitants this is they way things are and always have been. The best thing you can do it get over the surprise that it's like this while keeping that feeling of disgust. Don't let the fact that these situations are so far outside the norm for you let you turn away from the truth in disbelief. It's like that old quote: The greatest trick the devil ever did was convincing the world he didn't exists.
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As I have said before, Uber is a cab company that avoids the regulation of a cab company. "How many cabs do they own?" None. That's another aspect of how they privatize the profits and socialize the costs of doing business. Do not construe this as my blaming the drivers themselves. They are guys trying to make a living. I get it. But the "ride-sharing" industry is still a scam, pure and simple.
So is leasing cars a revenue stream for Uber?
and constant adjustments. Here's what makes it so hard for folks to accept real socialism: It's not a system of beliefs it's a system of government. It's a means, not an end. The practical consequences are that a socialist admits when they're wrong and makes constant adjustments and improvements. It's basically the scientific method applied to politics with a bit of Socrates "I know that I know nothing" philosophy mixed in. The short version of all that is Progresivism. Always making progress (and twirling, twirling towards freedom!).
The trouble with all that is branding. When the right wing start a debate they've got simple answers to complex problems. They're always the wrong answers, because if a problem has a simple answer then, well, by definition it's not complex. But those simple answers feel good, sound good, and just got a Demagogue elected President of the United States...
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A few years ago, a friend of mine who had been working in a full-time job in the hospitality industry, had signed up to be an Uber driver during his spare time. He claimed to be making an extra thousand dollars a month or so, which he used to finance a used vehicle.
I probed for more details. "What about insurance," I asked. "Have you accounted for wear and tear on the vehicle due to increased mileage? Is this a sustainable income model? What if the pool of drivers increases and you face increased competition for fares?" He was completely nonchalant: at the time, Uber was still growing, there weren't as many drivers as there are now, and since he was still receiving a salary, he had no concerns for wage instability.
Months later, he mentioned that he quit his full time job because he could make more money driving for Uber, and it was lower stress. He seemed happy. Well, we know how that turned out. He ended up essentially destitute, unable to afford food and rent; unable to fix his car when the inevitable breakdown occurred and would cost thousands to repair; and still had payments to make on the loan.
I'm not saying that these kinds of jobs cannot be sustainable as full-time employment, but it is a great deal more difficult to make it viable than the vast, vast majority of people enticed into the idea are led to believe. The fact that these companies make it sound like it's easy (for obvious reasons) is the modern-day equivalent of selling Amway.
Hours-of-Service Safety Regulations uber does not give a dam about them but what will happen when an uber driver falls asleep at the wheel and does big damage?
Nothing will happen. Mr Driver will be held responsible just like any Joe Sixpack that fell asleep behind the wheel. If he says anything about being an Uber driver:
1) Uber will bring up their "independent contractor" (not our employee/liability) business plan.
2) His insurance will bring up their "you're not covered under your personal policy if you're acting as a ride sharing/taxi-for-hire service" clause... and more of them have this nowadays.
The loser will be victims in the accident.
So is leasing cars a revenue stream for Uber?
No, they do it out of the goodness of their hearts.....
A business is not obligated to subsidize your choice to work a low paying job.
Uber is for college students who want to make extra money running people around.
If you're sinking all your time into a low paying job instead of an education then that's your problem.
This is why Uber is very interested in autonomous vehicles.
Those people working 40 hours a week being silly are going to find Uber force them to work only 20 hours a week or put them out of work completely.
Your pay is based on productivity per hour. Not simply showing up per hour.
Work Safe Porn
I know all about this. It will be great damage. The best damage. Blood everywhere! But I know it will be fine! We will make the victims pay for the damage.
Silence is a state of mime.
Probably couldn't get a job with a taxi firm because of the rise of Uber.
Probably can't afford to start his own taxi firm because Uber has now made him poor.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
As I've said before, people work for Uber out of desperation. It's better to be destitute and work for Uber then be destitute and out of work, these are the jobs America is churning out. The problem is why those people are destitute in the first place and businesses like Uber are the circling vultures.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
It's exactly that. Leasing a car from Lyft seems a way better deal - they pro-rate your lease payment based on how much you drive for them, and if you drive the 40 hours a week they want (rush hour, bar closings, etc.) they comp the whole thing.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
The 1% (that is about 3.5 million people) means an income of somewhere above $250k-300k after taxes. It goes up if you count households and not people but the effect is close to the same. If you go by net worth, then it is like $2.5M.
Different tools estimate slightly differently, but this site: https://dqydj.com/net-worth-in... says that the 1% level is reached at a household net worth of $7.87 million.
The ability to renegotiate the terms or quit your job without being thrown in jail.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Need a new sarcasm detector?
Sarcasm is notoriously difficult to detect on the internet, since it looks exactly like cluelessness, but I can see no indication in that case that the comment had been intended sarcastically.
Uber doesn't care if you've made a career out of this. All they care about is how much money you can make for them while maximizing how much they FUCK YOU OVER.
...when he began leasing a car from Uber and needed to work more hours to make his minimum payments.
These are the people I don't understand. Isn't the point of Uber that you can use your existing car? Don't you already HAVE a car? If not, why would you specifically LEASE one, especially with payments that are so high that you have to drive 24/7 to afford them? I don't have a lot of sympathy for people that took on risk to make an easy buck without doing some basic math on their investment first.
He likes driving, but, he said, “They need to stop lowering their rates.”
They won't until people like you stop driving. If you are willing to drive at X rate, then they lower it to Y rate and you are STILL willing to drive for them, they have zero incentive to go back to X rate. In fact, next stop will be an even lower Z rate.
Wow, 125k is cheap for a taxi medallion!
I'm shocked. These people quit their real jobs, let Uber sell them the car that they supposedly needed, and now they are not getting rich driving other people around, even when they gouge with surge fares? Yea, lets blame America for that, not the stupidity of the people who did this. (Actually we might want to blame the education system that they went through that failed to teach them common sense, but really common sense isn't taught in any school system, much less ones that rely on lottery dollars for part of their funding.)
I'm going to go set up a GoFundMe page now for any of you bleeding heart liberals who want to help these idiots. As far as you know they might actually receive some of the money that you contribute.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Wow, mankind IS getting stupider......
if you don't pay your taxes you go to jail. If you speed in your car you get a ticket. If I shoot somebody I go to jail. We're just arguing over where to draw the line, not whether it should be drawn.
You're going got get forced to do things one way or another. If you leave a power vacuum by trying to live with a weak central government then somebody will step in and take the reigns. Central Governments are just too valuable. Somebody sooner or later will create one for their own purposes. The question is never, "Will we have a strong Central Government?" but whether _you_ will participate in it?
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whose commodity (oil) just plummeted in price. Ideally what should be happening right now is the rest of the world should help them pick up their slack until oil prices rise. What's instead happening is the rest of the world is using their crisis to take advantage of them. Sorta like how Pay Day Lenders operate but on a national scale. There's things their government could have done to mitigate or prevent the crisis before it happened but, well, like I said, Socialism is hard because we're solving very hard problems.
Remember, anyone can promise to solve all your problems with their 10 step program plus some principles and beliefs. It's actually _doing_ it that's hard. I'd argue that Obama/Hilary were on the right path until Hilary screwed up by not campaigning in the swing states. But, well, here we are.
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So you basically sold yourself into slavery just to skip taxi driver laws?
No, no, the guy is just a contractor. Uber is the party ignoring taxi regulations. They collect payment from the riders and disburse it to the drivers.
Drivers sell themselves for the illusion of freedom. Illusory freedom is the hottest commodity in America.
---
According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
Thank you for letting us know that you don't know anyone in the situation described. Now what, pray tell, does that have to do with the price of rice?
That analogous evidence is just that.
The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
Yes, freedom means that you can make un-worthwhile, or unwise, or even outright stupid decisions with your life.
Part of being an adult is recognizing that and behaving appropriately.
When you account for taxes and depreciation, the uber drivers are making a minimum wage. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
So the point is that without the crappy Uber job, they are better off? The children should starve? I don't get it. Are you going to hire them instead?
Exactly. Do you know how much I want to work? Zero hours. Do you know how much I have to work? Yeah.
The only thing that concerned me in the article is that Uber is leasing the car. Uber should not be running a company store. That creates debt slavery.
If the self-employed want to get a jump on their competition by sleeping in their cars, that's their choice. If you don't want the low-skill self-employed life where you work your tail off, work a low-skill 9 to 5 job instead.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
In my experience in the UK, the difference between minimum wage and entry level graduate position is not that great. Not saying that minimum wage is too high, just that the value of a degree seems to have become somewhat devalued and I don't see salaries having moved much in ten years.
Theres a similar thing in trucking. All the big trucking companies try to sucker their new hires into their "lease" plan, where you pay $1000 a month to rent your job... and at the end you get to keep your (worn out & battered) truck!
It keeps the drivers hungry for that money, they gotta make that truck payment... so they'll take all the shittiest loads that nobody wants & fudge the logs to get it there.
Yes. By imposing some limitations on the contractual agreements that can be formed, Uber will have to offer better jobs or go out of business because of a lack of drivers. This will make their employees better off.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
The problem of cars not working at night will in some short number of years not exist as all taxi services will be nearly fully automated.
and Taxi cab driving is a full time job for adults. Always was, always is.
Burger flipping became a 'real' job when globalism eroded the job market for folks who couldn't make it to college. There's millions of 'em, and last I checked neither you or anyone else in this country has the brass balls to put a slug between their eyes and end their misery. Maybe you do. Either do something about their awful lives or admit you don't care. But enough already with the B.S. about how these jobs aren't jobs for adults. You're saying it to make yourself feel better by looking down on the folks doing them. I'm sure that's working for you. For them? Not so much.
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If you think the only education you can get to lift you out of a low paying job is a college degree then your worldview is the first thing that needs a correction through education.
Poor people like to demand that others walk a mile in their shoe because it'd be too much work to walk a mile in the shoes of those who lifted themselves out of poverty.
A $200 laptop and free wifi at McDonald's will give you all the education you need to work your way up to a livable wage.
Work Safe Porn
Now that there are multiple people camping out at the 7-11 and they all know each other, they can move into the same car at night to stay warm. However I'm glad they're deciding not to drive tried. Driving tired is worse than driving drunk.
This will become far more common once we have self-driving cars. You won't need a place to live. You can sleep on the highway and wake up in your projected most profitable location. A large section of the workforce will become completely mobile. This will probably destroy the airline industry as they always seem to be struggling even now. Greyhound and Amtrak will take longer to go under as self-driving cars will be too expensive at first. Doctor Who had an 'everyone lives in their car' episode. Anyone know of any related sci-fi books?
I though Uber was about "sharing" your existing car and free time. If you quot your joband started leasing a car just to do that... seems that's not "sharing economy" any more.
It's the height of irony to blame the loss of decent jobs on unions.
Look up the definition of a standard corporation and you'll find nowhere in their charter is to create jobs or make the world a better place. All corporations care about is creating value for their shareholders. If they can outsource, replace employees with robots, poison the air and water (and get away with it) they absolutely will.
Unions are one of the few ways workers can protect themselves from the predatory nature built into every corporation.
Uber isn't a smart career move- it's at best a temporary stop gap till ya find another job. The stupid continue onward despite that and expect everybody else to change. The smart just move on from their stupid decisions. If Uber isn't paying enough end whatever your association is with them. There are alternatives too like Cell 411 where drivers can set their own rates. If that doesn't work maybe you should think about looking for real work. There are thousands of people who start businesses. Almost as many fail. One shouldn’t be protected from stupid at the expense of others (beyond the ability to declare bankruptcy). If you f' up learn from your mistakes and move on. You have no right to a particular job/employer as many people act as though they do, but you do have a right to work unhindered by government interference (taxes, drivers licenses, other sorts of licenses, etc). One has liability- but should not be required to ask permission of the state to do business. Giving the state the power to interfere in ones livelihood is a HUGE mistake and many people figure that out the hard way- upon the state taking violence and coercive action against them. http://www.freestateproject.org
When I lived in Japan is was common to see taxi drivers living in their cabs, and being the 80s' and 90s' there was no Uber.
Ha ha ha
The poor get poorer for the same reason the rich get richer.
They keep doing what they're doing.
Work Safe Porn
The problem is that Uber competes with other workers, namely taxi drivers. Now when you are a Taxi driver whose company can no longer compete with people who made the outright stupid decision to become an Uber driver, you don't have any other choice than try to get an other job or become an Uber driver yourself. That is the problem with 'services' like Uber.
Leasing a car in the hopes that 'successful' destroys the value (ie more miles driven = less value at turn in) is, to me, slightly above payday lender logic.
I mean if you don't understand the false economy of leasing a CAR with the hopes of putting tons of miles on it to get a paycheck to pay for the same car you are destroying... I say let them sleep in the parking lots and suffer their fate.
It's describing Uber drivers who live in inexpensive areas who travel into expensive cities, drive drunk people around throughout the night, and then decide to sleep in their car at 3am rather than driving back home... alternative title: Long-haul Truckers Sleep in Rest Areas Across the US.
Uber drivers are classed as employees in an increasing number of jurisdictions. And in the places they aren't I'd expect that to change pretty quick once the courts are asked to find liability. Uber can put whatever they like in the contract but that doesn't make it enforceable, and waiving liability is one of those clauses that rarely pass the sniff test.
It's hard to say whether it was a stupid idea or not because the mode of failure was a drop in oil price removing the funds to continue carrying out the idea.
A monoculture fucked over the socialist state of Venezuela just like it's going to fuck over the monarchist state of Saudi Arabia when their oil runs out. It's got nothing to do with whether a monarchist government is better than a socialist one but all to do with bad choices and relying too much on one point of failure.
It sounds like you prefer for them all to starve rather than be legally allowed to work. Making it illegal for someone to work in the best situation they can find isn't doing them any favors... quite the opposite.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
I drove for Uber for 1 day on a dare (I earn a six-plus figure salary, and had a brand-new Audi A5 - Sydney, Australia) and this is what I learnt.
Driving across about twelve hours on a Saturday, I averaged AUD$30 an hour of take-home pay. Equate that to a full-time salary and that's about AUD$60,000 per annum - a pretty-good salary for a lot of people.
However, why Uber drivers are stupid, is that they only look at what their take-home pay is, and nothing else. They don't factor in petrol/gas (In Sydney ~$1.60 a litre), they don't factor in insurance (although you're covered on your fully-comprehensive insurance for your car, if you crash while driving for Uber and the insurance company finds out, good luck getting any form of payment - not to mention your immediate loss of wages while you wait for your car to be fixed), they don't factor in wear/tear/depreciation on the car, they don't factor in maintenance, they don't factor in cleaning/washing every few hours to maintain a 5-star rating, they don't factor in phone/data plan (calling/sms'ing your customers, data for Google maps). This is assuming they own the car outright from the get-go -- if it's leased / has repayments, they don't factor those elements in either.
All those factors depreciate immensely from your ~$30 an hour take-home pay. They're unavoidable as you need all of the above to successfully drive for Uber (successfully as in, maintain a >4.6 star rating). What full-time "career" Uber drivers realise - such as the person in the article - is that what you earn from Uber needs to be re-invested into driving for Uber - which means you struggle to pay rent / eat / have a house etc.
Short-term Uber drivers who need say, a few hundred dollars on a weekend - that's the way to make money - purely as a side-income. Anything more than that will end in tears.
Im surprised they don't rent out micro apartments too.
Uber is being shitty to these people by upselling it so much, but I spoke to a dozen Uber drivers over the past couple of years. Some complain about rent, some complain about the traffic, some complain their kids are giving them a lot to worry about, but all of them like driving for Uber, because the alternative is just so much worse. And that's the real problem. There are no better alternative for some of these people.
A couple of positive things you get from driving for Uber: flexible hours, take any day off, work anytime you want, even after your regular 9-5 job, no asshole coworkers to deal with, and refuse any customer you don't like. It's a really good deal if you're in an area with high demand.
No shit, illusion of safety in exchange for basic human rights. America was a fun experiment till the fascists got control of it...
read this
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/11/can-uber-ever-deliver-part-one-understanding-ubers-bleak-operating-economics.html
and then they will have to cover all the costs of being a landlord.
They keep doing what they're doing.
When your solution involves magically conjuring $200 out of thin air, the problem is your cloistered worldview. Not that the poor are insufficiently creative.
The cost of living in a dump varies wildly throughout the country, and is constantly changing; so no number can be decided. Besides, we can't pay people to sit around and have sex (a favorite pastime, BTW) - so case closed. ...Unless you're planning on NOT also funding each child they happen to create, intentionally or by accident.
This is probably going to become the new norm. People who work and pay taxes just living hand to mouth on the streets.
And the 1% at the top will still think the mother fuckers get to damned much money.
The phrase "unskilled job" is one used by rich elitists (or not so rich elitists) who have never worked a job. All of those jobs require skills, such as knowing how to safely lift heavy weights, and "white collar" people do not have those skills. Further more, most of the jobs referred to that way are the ones that will still be there after automation.
On the other hand, jobs that a kid can learn to do don't usually require those skills and make good starter jobs. If you destroy all of the "starter jobs" then how do kids learn about having a job, or get "experiance" so they can get better jobs?
The people complaining about "living wage" are often rich kids who majored in "art history" in school, without any idea of what job that was going to get them. Do you know how many real Art History jobs there even are? Ptht!
So what do you do for the disabled? The elderly? The people who are out of work due to an injury? Exempt them? How do you tell if the exemption is legit? What's the social safety net for them? Do they get paid? How do you ensure employee safety? Do they get health benefits?
ISTR that is was WJ Clinton who was all giddy touting the new "Service Economy" back in the halcyon 90's. I remember this because my thought was that a service job is what I wanted to get OUT of, so I went back to school to learn computers. Oy.
People also forget about insurance costs. Your typical insurance policy does not cover the vehicle being used as a taxi. Commercial liability insurance makes driving for Uber well below minimum wage work when vehicle depreciation is also factored in. This is compounded when there is an accident. When you get into an accident as a passenger in an Uber vehicle, Uber will fight tooth and nail to make sure they don't have to pay anything. So will the insurance company for the driver.
Basically you're pointing out that in certain situations a group of newcomers can get in and ruin a good thing that the original group had going on.
...
Well, that's precisely why immigration needs to be controlled.
That's why not everyone needs to learn how to c0d3z.
That's why communism doesn't work.
It's a problem with pretty much every human endeavor.
The best we can do is try to keep people from intentionally screwing up a good thing. But good luck with that.
As for the uber and taxi drivers themselves: look, all careers are, to some extent, ephemeral. Even farming doesn't necessarily last forever.
Nobody can guarantee you a farm that won't experience a dust bowl.
Nobody can guarantee you an engineering job in a city that you like.
Nobody can guarantee you that you won't get cancer at some point.
Nobody can guarantee you that you won't be poor or that you'll be rich.
There are no guarantees.
There can be no guarantees.
But even if there were some way to know the future or to offer some real guarantees nobody owes it to you or anyone else anyway.
Yeah it sucks when you had a good thing going and were making plenty of money but then it goes away.
That's why we need to be adults and save our resources for when times get tough and keep an eye out for how things are going in the world so we can see the tough times coming.
It's why we have brains. It's why we conquered the whole planet while animals are stuck in their various habitats.