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He Has Driven for Uber Since 2012. He Makes About $40,000 a Year. and it's YOUR FAULT!


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2019 Apr 12, 3:36am   664 views  8 comments

by Al_Sharpton_for_President   ➕follow (5)   💰tip   ignore  

COTATI, Calif. — Uber’s public stock offering next month will make a bunch of people remarkably rich. Peter Ashlock is not one of them, although he has toiled for the ride-hailing company almost since the beginning.

Mr. Ashlock, who will be 71 next week, has racked up more than 25,000 trips as an Uber driver since 2012. His Nissan Altima has 218,000 miles on it — nearly the distance to the moon. His passengers rate him 4.93 out of five stars. His favorite review: “Dude drove like a cabdriver.”

While he is an integral part of Uber’s success, Mr. Ashlock is barely getting by. His 2018 tax return will show an adjusted gross income in the neighborhood of $40,000, better than 2016 and 2017. But he has maxed out his $3,200 credit limit at the local Midas car-repair shop and needs to come up with $5,000 to pay his taxes. He has Social Security but no savings to buy a new car that will let him keep working.

Silicon Valley has always been a lottery where immense wealth is secured by a few while everyone else must hope for better luck some other time. Rarely, however, has the disparity been on such stark display as with Uber. Its stock market value is expected to be about $100 billion, which would make it one of the richest Silicon Valley public offerings of all time.

Among those with something to celebrate: Uber’s founders, the Japanese conglomerate SoftBank, the elite venture capitalists Benchmark and Google’s GV, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund and the mutual fund giant Fidelity. Some have already cashed in. Travis Kalanick, Uber’s co-founder and chief executive until he was forced out after a series of scandals, reaped $1.4 billion by selling fewer than a third of his shares to private investors in 2017.

As independent contractors, drivers are not eligible for employee benefits like paid vacations or stock options. Uber said Thursday that it would offer bonuses of $100 to $10,000 to long-serving drivers. Its chief competitor, Lyft, did the same when it went public in March.

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Mr. Ashlock spent a decade as a San Francisco cabdriver in the 1970s and 1980s as he sought to make a living as an artist.


https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/12/technology/uber-driver-ipo.html

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1   HeadSet   2019 Apr 12, 6:28am  

Lemme see.

Here in Blue State Virginia, Uber made a $100,000 gift to Gov Terry McAuliffe and got a State Law passed that prohibited localities from regulating Uber as the Taxi service it clearly is. Uber was declared an "TNC" (Transportation Network Company). It ain't about the app, as many large taxi companies already had app ordering available. And to keep taxi companies from becoming TNCs themselves, the original law required a $100,000 initial fee, with a $60,000 annual renewal (that has been eased, however). And unlike Taxi companies, Uber is not restricted in number of vehicles, pricing, required handicap service, full time commercial insurance, fingerprint background checks for drivers, color and equipment requirements, and regular inspections. Uber has an extreme high driver turnover, as each new driver discovers Uber puts all the burden of car acquisition, maintenance, gas and insurance on the driver, and the revenues for that 1099k gig just do not leave much after all those expenses, wear on the car, and time.

Now, with all these Socialist talking Dem candidates, how come none are talking about reining in the gig economy? Big talk about forcing $15 minimum wages, but nothing about laws to make Uber/Lyft/Package Delivery drivers treated as the employees they clearly are.
2   Y   2019 Apr 12, 6:33am  

Another plug for stifling innovation and supporting the upcoming commie state.
3   HeadSet   2019 Apr 12, 6:57am  

BlueSardine says
Another plug for stifling innovation and supporting the upcoming commie state.


stifling innovation

Hardly. Uber was not the inventor of apps, and running a taxi service with a disregard for local laws and no commercial insurance is not "innovation." Why not open a restaurants, but call it a "Nutrition Center" because you have a menu on an app, and then disregard all meal taxes, health inspections, zoning laws, and employees taxes. Do not want to stifle innovation.
4   Y   2019 Apr 12, 7:39am  

The jist of the article is that the driver did not reap the rewards of the company going public even though he was there from the beginning and helped put it into a position to go public. So the whole system is skewed in favor of the owners.
Thus if the system is changed such that everyone involved from the beginning gets a major share of the pot then the initial innovator investor may not see enough future profit for investing in the concept at the beginning thus stifling innovation.
FYI

in·no·va·tion
/ˌinəˈvāSH(ə)n/
Learn to pronounce
noun
the action or process of innovating.
synonyms: change, alteration, revolution, upheaval, transformation, metamorphosis, reorganization, restructuring, rearrangement, recasting, remodelling, renovation, restyling, variation;
5   Al_Sharpton_for_President   2019 Apr 12, 8:15am  

I think another way to look at this story is that this stoner wasted his productive years deluding himself that he was an artist, and working a side job to support this delusion, instead of developing marketable skills. Now he is in his ‘70’s, his art is shit, no savings, and he’ll be voting for socialized everything so that he can access money from folks who followed a more sensible path.
6   clambo   2019 Apr 12, 8:45am  

Being a contractor and not an employee has some advantages to the feelings of the worker, but they're generally not financial advantages.

I have had positive experiences with Uber; have used Uber 5 times, and an interesting coincidence is three times my driver was Cuban; once in Palm Beach (expected) and twice in Austin Texas.

I was considering driving for Lyft or Uber but making just trips to Palm Beach Airport; my car was nice so I could make the higher rate. I figured I would make $100 for a round trip about 20 minutes each way. Once per week would be OK with me to have "beer money".

I don't want to do driving around Santa Cruz now; it's not a lot of fun to drive around here unless perhaps on a Sunday morning.
7   NDrLoR   2019 Apr 12, 8:49am  

willywonka says
San Francisco cabdriver in the 1970s and 1980s as he sought to make a living as an artist
A lot of that generation squandered their youth on non-productive ventures and are now bitter because they have nothing to show for it. A pianist friend has lived in Germany since 1978 because he couldn't make a living here and barely scrapes by there even with all the benefits. He resents his three year older brother who followed a more profitably course of life and now lives in the DFW area in a nice home with a pool.
8   cmdrda2leak   2019 Apr 12, 8:51am  

Fake taxi companies externalize fleet cost, labor cost, liability, and more to the driver and passenger. It is, in effect, sweated labor (
https://financial-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Sweated+Labor ).

The sadness is that the biggest so-called "progressives" love taking Lyft around town, without a shred of irony about the fact that it represents shitting on a century of advancement in labor/worker rights.

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