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Happy New Year, Seattle: You May Kiss Uber Goodbye!
Among the many new laws taking effect tomorrow, Seattle has a new minimum-wage law. That law required ride-hailing services like Uber and Lyft to dramatically increase what they pay their drivers. Seattle’s new minimum-wage law mandates that companies with over 500 employees must pay them $16.36 per hour or more. The KOMO article states that ride fares might increase up to 50% to satisfy that new law.
A spokesperson with Uber says fares will increase starting Jan. 1 when they add a new 61-cent surcharge to cover costs of paid sick time and a new mandated 75-cent fee which overall will lead to an increase in fares of about 24 percent.
It’s the first of three planned fare increases over the first three months of 2021 that could see fares be up to 50% higher by April 1 when the compensation for drivers fully phases in.
As usual, an effort to help low-paid workers results in fewer jobs for those workers and the Leftists who run Seattle really don’t care that their law hurts those Uber drivers. It makes them feel better, and that’s all that counts.
Seattle Uber riders, how will that 50% fare increase affect your ride-sharing behavior? Does it increase the chance that you might just buy your own car? The Seattle minimum-wage law might result in fewer riders, and drivers with fewer opportunities to earn a little extra money. Double-whammy! I wonder if Uber will be evaluating whether it’s really worth it for them to be in Seattle at all.
One more thing: The state-wide minimum wage will be rising on January 1, to $13.69 per hour. One has to wonder how many small businesses already slammed by the government COVID shutdown rules, will now give up the ghost, as their mandated wages increase their cost of doing business.
Published in Economics
Higher costs, fewer jobs, and reduced service. The Left has the reverse Midas touch.
Hay, RushBabe, does the “minimum wage” apply to restaurant wait staff?
Only restaurants/companies with over 500 employees. Since fast-food outlets have no waitstaff, it doesn’t affect places like McDonald’s or Wendy’s. It does affect fast-casual places like Applebee’s or Olive Garden, but not today since inside dining is prohibited by the Dictator in Olympia, at least for another week until he extends the shutdowns again. There are special rules for tipped employees, and it’s way too complicated for me to waste one minute on. I haven’t been to Seattle since at least February. There is nothing in Seattle that I need or want. Seattle has already started on the road to Hell; may they get there as soon as possible (but not before @susaninseattle is able to get out).
Oregon has a tiered minimum wage: as of next July 1, $14 for Portland metro area, $12 for rural areas and $12.75 for smaller metro areas. Crazy.
Good, I hope Seattle gets everything it voted for. The only thing that would make me happier is a wall to lock them in to their decisions.
Yes, it’s just wrong that so many stupid people get to escape from their bad decisions made by voting.
Seattle, like San Francisco, is a beautiful city. I wonder if that is what attracts the crazies ?
Leftist first, everything else later.
You know what they say in North Dakota: -40ºF keeps the riffraff out.
Those omniscient bureaucrats are able to calculate what is fair, down to two decimal places. Wonderful… except for those who must suffer from the consequences of their policies.
Lots of crazies in Canada these days. Maybe it skips.
Pish. Most of the Canadians are south of Mackinaw City, which I think is south of North Dakota.
I had a friend who worked for awhile in North Dakota—during the winter. He asked one of the locals what people did in North Dakota during the summer. The response : “If it falls on a Sunday, we go fishing.”
To be fair, it’s only the working poor using Uber or Lyft to travel between their second and third jobs who will have to kiss it goodbye. The middle class will be fine. As usual with progressive leftism.
Some states are working on that by exploring various exit taxes, wealth taxes and follow you taxes.
Florida is increasing the minimum wage, but they’re doing it slowly.
Right now, it’s $8.56, but it goes to $10 on September 1, and then increases by a dollar each year til 2026.
It’s definitely time to start getting some training on self-serve kiosk repair. That’s a growth industry now.
The idiocy. It burns. Only that noted economics major Alexandria Occasional Cortex could believe this benefits anybody. Distort the labor market and watch unemployment rise among people most in need of dignified work. Not to mention price distortions for everyone else. Lefties are a danger to society.
That sounds like people to repair the kiosks. It would probably be better as “self-serve repair kiosk.”
My standard question for supporters of higher minimum wages: Why do you want to put black men out of work?
For other workplace rules: Why do you want to prevent non-standard workers like students , mothers reentering the workforce, and older people from finding work?
It’s probably been a couple of years. I had a long layover at SETAC, about 5-6 hours. So I decided to eat at a favorite restaurant which was maybe about a 30 minute drive. So I took a taxi from the airport to Des Moines in King County.
I had a good meal, paid for it, and asked one of the restaurant employees for a taxi back. The restaurant serves alcohol, so I figured that they might have had a request like that on a regular basis. It gets to be a long story, but the upshot was that I ended up trying it myself. There was some sort of automated phone system I was trying to deal with that was unworkable, and it explained the difficulty the staff had in getting me a taxi.
I downloaded the Uber app, and it was surprisingly easy to order a lift back to the airport. So for me, it wasn’t the money saved, it was the service. King County apparently has crappy taxi service, starting with actually calling a taxi.
By the way, that does bring up the question, how is this affecting the surrounding communities in the Seattle metropolitan area?
I do know that a few years back that the town of SeaTac raised their minimum wage which affected the workers at the airport. Their special situation probably did not result in a loss of jobs, though I don’t know this for sure.
Obviously Covid has probably devastated them economically.
If you were trying to call a cab from a “house phone” (at the business) that can be a problem too. Sometimes the taxi companies don’t respond if they get calls from numbers that “stiffed” them before, and if that place is a business it can have nothing to do with you as an individual.
I do not, and will not, use Uber. When we fly out of SeaTac, we drive our own car and leave it in the airport garage for as long as we are gone. Alaska Airlines now has service from Paine Field, which is about 5 miles from our house.
Giving up on these great, American cities is a mistake. You should hope they’ll learn. I certainly do.
Detroit was a great city in 1950 then got progressively worse in more ways than one.
Seattle is turning into Portland, which is a 3rd world
Ride sharing in Los Angeles is a disaster now… my friend tried to hail Uber or Lyft last week… no drivers would pick him up. He then chose the ‘premium’ or luxury car option. Someone picked him up.
By any chance would Seattle happen to have a unionized taxi system, along with all the – what are they called? – medallions that must be purchased in order to operate?
I hope they learn and get better too, but that won’t happen if they turn it into a cesspool and then flee to do the same somewhere else.
We were in Brussels in 2015 and learned that all taxis in the city were on strike to protest Uber. Now, how stupid is that ? To protest the competition from Uber, then taxis were all on strike. I tried to download Uber but it would not work because we were in Europe. Our only choice was to walk a 1/2 mile to the underground station in the rain. Yes, it was raining at the time.
About two weeks later, that underground station was blown up by Muslim crazies.
All cities limit the number of taxis allowed. Seattle has limits, but they don’t sell the kind of “medallions” that New York does, which are literally passed down in families and worth many thousands of dollars each. Seattle’s downtown is coming to resemble Portland now. The big concert hall, Benaroya Hall, is located right in the thick of the worst destruction, and I’m wondering what will happen with it, if and when it is allowed to reopen for concerts. Will anyone want to go there? I sure won’t.