Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by mrpg on Saturday March 03 2018, @12:35PM   Printer-friendly
from the dont-do-it dept.

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).

Techcrunch has a summary


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 03 2018, @07:06PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 03 2018, @07:06PM (#647198)

    They used to do something similar to pizza drivers in the US and people still fell for it even back then when the education was much better.

    I fondly remember the time when the US school system was ever so slightly better than the abomination we have now. There was slightly less rote memorization and less useless standardized testing! Wow! What a grand system it was for creating worker drones.

  • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Sunday March 04 2018, @02:28AM (1 child)

    by Grishnakh (2831) on Sunday March 04 2018, @02:28AM (#647425)

    I went through the US school system in the 80s and very early 90s. It was a complete abomination back then, and that was ~30 years ago now. If it ever wasn't an abomination, it must have been well before I was born.

    • (Score: 2) by canopic jug on Sunday March 04 2018, @11:05AM

      by canopic jug (3949) Subscriber Badge on Sunday March 04 2018, @11:05AM (#647580) Journal

      it must have been well before I was born.

      I think it was only a little before your time. "Reaganomics" had a swift, negative effect on the US schools. Talking with people that went through those schools in the 1970s or earlier gives me the impression that while not great they were acceptable. Of course some particular schools stood out noticeably on either end of the curve. However, the average seemed to have good results. The defund-sabotage-privatize tactics, with the accompanying PR smears, really only started with Reagan and have only ramped up since then. There's so many ways that causes trouble that many dissertations could be written on that.

      However, way earlier, it was possible, if one had ambition and the opportunity to later move, to start out in a one room school and rise high up in research or industry. A long since deceased older colleague of someone I know who was himself born in the 30's went to a one room school and still became a top researcher and academic. The teacher at his school had replaced the desk with his bed and would lie in it the whole day and direct the classroom with the help of a buggy whip. Apparently he could zap with extreme precision and reach every single student at their desk if they got out of line or made an incorrect answer. It was possible to learn. But unlike today rather than metaphorically beating the learning out of students it was beaten into them, sometimes physically. In these times corporeal punishment is avoidable but what needs to be revived is the focus on learning.

      In a different state, another, who was a joker to his dying day, did very well in small business despite having gone to a one room school. One of his best pranks was long running. He told that he and his friends made up a story about another kid who was too far away to do the daily walk to school. So they arranged with their teacher to bring extra homework and tests home to the imaginary student. By graduation time, the imaginary student had gotten his diploma with the minimal passing grade and the teacher gave it to this joker and his friend to bring to the imaginary student. Either the teacher was aware of what they were doing and went along with the prank or was really into getting the students to learn. I mention it only because I'd like to think it was the latter based on the small handful I knew of from that school.

      It's not going to come back on its own however. Some push is needed to bring that goal-oriented teaching back. Defunding and demeaning the teachers [newsok.com] while burying them in irrelevant paperwork [commondreams.org] is not going to do that.

      --
      Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.