SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
A study conducted by the MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research analysed revenue and costs for over 1100 Lyft and Uber drivers, with the conclusion that most earn below minimum wage for their state and about 30% actually lose money when all the costs of owning and operating their vehicles are taken into account.
"A Median driver generates $0.59 per mile of driving, and incurs costs of $0.30 per mile", "On an hourly basis, the median profit was $3.37 per hour".
Because actual vehicle operating costs are significantly lower than the IRS allowance of $0.54/mile, many drivers report incomes that are substantially lower that their actual incomes, leading to a large pool of untaxed income (although it is small for each driver).
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
MIT Study Shows How Much Driving for Uber or Lyft Sucks
|
Log In/Create an Account
| Top
| 67 comments
| Search Discussion
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Grelb's Reminder:
Eighty percent of all people consider themselves to be above
average drivers.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 03 2018, @05:52PM (5 children)
If you need any evidence of people doing things because they can't do the math and get dazzled by the exceptions, just look at how many MLM schemes there are.
(Score: 3, Informative) by bzipitidoo on Saturday March 03 2018, @06:52PM (3 children)
Or look at farming. Farmers have been squeezed for decades, forced to get bigger and bigger. You can't justify a million dollars worth of state of the art farm equipment without a lot of acreage to farm. You can't work crops a measly 2 or 4 rows at a time any more, like you could 50 years ago. You'll lose money if you try it. Lot of farmers did just that. Spend $100,000 on seed, plant and grow and harvest the crops, and at the end of it all, get $105,000, or maybe $95,000, or less, depending on the commodity prices. And they'd extend their loans and try again next year, hoping for better prices. Eventually, when they have nothing more to put up as collateral, the bank won't loan them any more and they have to quit. Yes, most farmers were bad at finance. Banks too sometimes got burned. Land values could collapse any time, and then suddenly the collateral isn't enough to cover the loans.
There was a joke about a farmer who won the lottery. When asked what he would do with the money he said he'd just farm until it was all gone.
Anyway, there's more to this financial ineptitude than mere lack of math skills. It seems more a mental issue. People engaging in wishful thinking, refusing to see that their fantastic idea isn't a goldmine, or even novel. And refusing to do the math, rather than inability. They don't want to know.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by HiThere on Saturday March 03 2018, @07:29PM (1 child)
That's not as much of a joke as you think. My grandfather wanted to be a farmer, but would work as a licensed electrician for a few years every decade to build up a nest-egg that he would slowly deplete by farming. He knew he couldn't earn a living farming, but he liked it a lot better than being an electrician. (I, OTOH, never liked farming. It involves an incredible amount of hard physical work, getting up very early, being out on cold, rainy weather, and it's boring. But *he* liked it. And so does at least one of my brothers. Who also doesn't quite break even, and knows that he can't quite break even. If he had a good well he could probably break even, but not turn a profit. OTOH, because they both knew they couldn't break even, they didn't go into debt and get saddled with loans.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday March 03 2018, @09:53PM
People enjoy driving, it's why over-the-road truck drivers will work for poverty level compensation.
Some people enjoy working with kids and virtually volunteer as teachers' aides in the elementary schools - and that's fine for them.
If Uber drivers enjoy what they do and know that it's screwing them financially then that's fine, let them drive because they enjoy meeting random strangers in random places at random times on an on-call basis and driving them where they want to go. It can be interesting, even exciting sometimes...
The problem is that a lot of people will see the short term paycheck and think they're making a living when instead they're actually digging themselves into debt... so that's where fact-based education needs to come in and help those who might not be thinking long-term for themselves.
When somebody declares bankruptcy, the rest of the world that hasn't declared bankruptcy gets to pick up their tab. I'd rather not be picking up the tabs of any happily deluded Uber drivers, or similarly deceived workers at minimal net-gain jobs.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by canopic jug on Saturday March 03 2018, @08:27PM
Or look at farming. Farmers have been squeezed for decades, forced to get bigger and bigger.
From my understanding that is because of the tax breaks and other subsidies for large farms.
If things are left to the market, without subsidies, then the smaller farms turn out to be more efficient at production. However, at least in some areas there is the problem of real estate speculation and farmers get taxed as if they were sitting on an office park or large residential neighborhood. Then in pretty much all areas, due to population pressure, farms that do get sold end up priced as if they were going to be used as office parks or residential neighborhoods. That puts the new farmer in terrible debt from day 0.
Soil and microclimates are not fungible commodities. There are very, very good reasons that farmsteads were staked out on specific plots, especially during the last centuries when dynamite and machines became available. However, gone is gone [scientificamerican.com] and even if one day people figure out that you can't eat money they won't have anything to work with or on.
Maybe rockwool and hydroponics will feed the oligarchs and their immediate support system. Maybe not. The book, Make Room! Make Room! [wikipedia.org], and not the movie based on it, is too depressing because in the 50+ years since its publication it has become less and less like science fiction. In some ways the book is too optimistic and doesn't have terminator seeds and monsanto politics.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 03 2018, @07:09PM
Are you suggesting the the way Betsy DeVoss made her money is what contributes to Americans being unable to do math, and figure out that Uber is a scam?
Uber School: have a living room that is empty during the day? Can you read?
Uber Laundry: amortize your appliances!
Uber Barber!
Uber Opioids.