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from the Money-for-nothing,-chicks-for-free dept.
I'm a driver for Uber and Lyft — here's exactly how much I make in one week on the job
The final tally was about $257 for less than 14 hours of work — or about $19 an hour.
Read on for a detailed breakdown of how much I made driving for Uber and Lyft, including some of the most unusual passengers and some mishaps I had along the way....
I put 291.1 miles on my Prius, using about 5.75 gallons of gas, which is about $13.22 in gas expenses for my area...
I had to then find who was open on a Sunday to replace the flat tire. While I was on the phone calling places, I figured I might as well get four new tires altogether, and an oil change too, since my car was almost due for those. Safety first... It was $430.22 to fix my car.
One estimate of the Prius TCO for 5 years / 75,000 miles is $34,067 - or $0.454 per mile, beating the IRS mileage rate of $0.58. This guy doesn't come off as one who does his own work or otherwise keeps that TCO down...
Interesting that he even neglected his gas money in his hourly "income" quotation, factoring in $0.50/mile TCO instead. His net income is around $112 for a self (likely under) estimated 14 hours of work (isn't calling around town on a Sunday to get your car fixed also work?), or $8 per hour. I suppose it's good for the self-esteem if you don't think of yourself putting your life at risk for less than minimum wage.
Anyone here eager to get out and live that gig economy lifestyle?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday October 11 2019, @11:15AM (35 children)
If only you had given this as much thought as your analysis of the costs (but not benefits) of being a ride hailing driver. It's a cheap learning experience on your tax dollar. I find it remarkable how people can advocate for "government assistance" and then complain when it's used well. And the value of this learning experience can be applied to one's "better employment" in the future, including starting one's own business.
That analysis, of course, ignores the situations where the driving gig is quite profitable.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday October 11 2019, @01:31PM (34 children)
You want a cheap learning experience on my tax dollar? Go to university, or apprentice in a career that actually can grow to support you into retirement.
Resume'
Uh, yeah, drove for Uber/Lyft for 6 years straight out of high school
Prosepcts:
Slightly less than a kid straight out of high school.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday October 11 2019, @01:52PM (33 children)
The Uber thing counts as well. It's certainly cheaper than some of the crazier programs out there in universities, and more likely to result in a person who can support themselves.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday October 11 2019, @03:17PM (30 children)
Logic, anywhere in there? I see kids being trained to sponge off of their relatives, welfare, and all sorts of other sources of money for living while they drive for Uber, how is that more likely to result in a person who can support themselves?
Of course, my ideas about University education are old fashioned. Back in the 1990s when you graduated with a degree in a hiring field, you could expect to get a job that paid enough to buy a car on your first day of work, maybe make a downpayment on a house within a couple of years. Not sure why that can't be true anymore.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday October 11 2019, @03:50PM (29 children)
How odd. I don't see that at all. I see someone learning the basics of self employment. And I see a hell of a lot of institutionalized sponging in college.
Such as learn costs and benefits? How to support themselves? How to run their own operation?
"In a hiring field". Plenty of fields that aren't that.
It's still true. Hiring fields never have that problem by definition.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday October 11 2019, @04:47PM (6 children)
True enough, and there have always been people who study worthless pursuits - but back in the 1960s even they got decent jobs straight out of University.
What seems to have been declining is the number of things you can study in University that offer any kind of employment assurance on graduation. Certainly the percentage of graduates who remain unemployed, or employed in a job they could have gotten straight out of high school, for a year or more after graduation has been steadily rising - almost right along with the increase in tuition and fees. Corellation != Causation, but are children really becoming steadily more inept at preparing themselves for life, or is life steadily raising the bar?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday October 11 2019, @04:57PM (5 children)
Worthless pursuits were less worthless back then. There's a lot more indoctrination now.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday October 11 2019, @05:17PM (3 children)
The value has never been in the degree, the value is in the person holding it and what they can learn and do on-the-job. There's a lot less willingness to pay for people now, regardless of how capable or indoctrinated they are.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday October 11 2019, @05:40PM (2 children)
It doesn't matter how unwilling they are as long as the check clears.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday October 11 2019, @06:28PM (1 child)
Yes, and no. I've seen companies go into "conserve cash" mode un-necessarily and impede their future growth tremendously, just to squeeze out a better EBIT or whatever on the current quarter.
So, that unwillingness to pay translates to fewer jobs, fewer opportunities to be hired, more side-shunting of people who could produce and compete at high levels into nearly worthless roles (PhD scientist driving for Uber?)
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday October 12 2019, @04:23AM
I have too. But so what? As you say "yes and no". There are companies not hiring and there are companies hiring. My take is that there might be an increase in reluctance to hiring people in the US due to the increased regulatory burden of hiring, but companies are still doing it.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Friday October 11 2019, @07:39PM
No, there isn't. What has increased exponentially is the ignorant right-wing whinging about education and how it is oppressing their stupidity and ignorant ideology. Let me guess, khallow, college drop out? Just like Billy Gates, eh? Or someone who did not learn the discipline that a long term project like a bachelor's requires? And now you recommend "Uber University"? Laughable. Insane. Idiotic. Bad faith. Get a real job, khallow! You are taking summer jobs away from actual college students!
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday October 11 2019, @05:05PM (21 children)
I've seen a lot of older people try to learn these basics of self employment from the MLM world. It ends, 999 times out of 1000 or worse, with them quitting in frustration that they weren't one of the "lucky ones" that advanced to the golden levels.
F-yeah! First 4 years of college were the best free ride of my life, just had to get something resembling decent grades to keep my scholarships. The next 2 I "worked" about 10 hours a week in exchange for free tuition and $14K per year, but... all of those years were working toward a more or less guaranteed $30-36K/year job at any one of a thousand companies. The peacetime military was little different, kids out of high school mostly screwing off and occasionally learning something of value in the world - with the added thrill that you might be told to go get shot at.
Now, back in those golden 80s, the kids that didn't go to University tended to be "getting a head start on life" which mostly translated to continuing to swap dating partners like the kids on Beverly Hills 90210 except with the occasional pregnancy, marriage and divorce thrown in. They mostly never left their home town, never achieved nearly as much as their parents, but often ended up in trouble with the law and/or on public assistance. Oh, and there was the kid whose dad owned the car dealership, he did o.k. I think lots of them would be driving for Uber today, but I seriously doubt they would learn anything of value from the experience, no more than they did driving for Dominos Pizza.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday October 11 2019, @05:21PM (1 child)
Depends what they learned from driving for Dominos Pizza. Still cheaper than someone getting a radioactive, non-hiring degree from college.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday October 11 2019, @06:23PM
The best lesson I saw learned from Dominos was: free pizza can buy friends cheaper than most other things. Might be useful for a career in politics...
Funny choice of adjectives, the only "big companies" that were hiring in '88 and '90 when I got out of school were literally the nuclear services. Still, managed to find a good gig at a smaller non-glowing shop that ran for 12 years, and taught me 10x more than my 6 years in Uni, but without that degree they probably wouldn't have hired me, and I definitely wouldn't have padded their personnel roster with as much value add without that M.S. behind my name.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday October 12 2019, @04:26AM (18 children)
Major League Marketing (MLM) is some weird business cult thing. It has no serious place in this thread. Plus, we see that the older people learned from the exercise.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday October 12 2019, @08:58PM (17 children)
Well - the MLM I refer to should be a side-show thing, but it's not:
https://www.cheatsheet.com/money-career/the-15-most-hated-multi-level-marketing-companies-right-now.html/ [cheatsheet.com]
There are hundreds of them, taking up the time / working effort of tens of millions of US citizens, generating billions of dollars of income for their top tiers and mostly sucking dry 99%+ of their workforce with sub-minimum wage net compensation. Uber/Lyft are like MLM without the pyramid...
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday October 12 2019, @09:36PM (16 children)
And providing a cheap learning opportunity on your tax dollar. What is there not to like?
In other words, not like the MLM. Among other things, you don't end up with a closet of crappy cosmetic products when you're done.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday October 13 2019, @12:10AM (15 children)
You strike me as someone who kicks puppies to teach them lessons. I don't appreciate my tax dollars being spent on kicking puppies, furthermore, the reality of the situation is: these kicked puppies often end up on perpetual assistance, having children while they are on assistance, and teaching their children how to live on perpetual assistance... selling Mary Kay & similar elevates fewer people out of poverty than the state lotteries, and teaches them just about as many practical productive skills as the lottery does.
No, in other words, like 99% of the participants in MLM, stuck on the bottom working for the "fun" of it, which is great if you don't need money from your job, but the majority of people I've encountered in MLMs actually do need money from their jobs, they are just wasting their time with the MLMs because there aren't any better opportunities immediately available, and that's a pretty sad statement on the availability of opportunity.
The lack of a "brass ring" that they will never attain in Uber/Lyft is more than made up for by the sucking of value from the drivers' vehicles which they don't understand.
Good point, and do you think that closet full of crappy cosmetic (or other, there are soooo many others) products actually teaches anything leading to future productivity? Drive for Uber/Lyft long enough and you might figure out that is why your car is an expensive to maintain high mileage piece of ---- while your non Uber/Lyft friends' cars they bought at the same time are still in good condition, maybe - lots of people still aren't that bright, and never will be no matter how many harsh lessons you put them through.
The puppies will be kicked until they learn how to be good productive doggies? Like the old British Navy: the beatings will continue until morale improves.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday October 13 2019, @05:17AM (14 children)
Funny how the empathic ones are always fresh out of empathy when it comes to disagreement. You're the third one in the past couple of weeks, pushing such arguments, who then invented some bizarre straw man just because I continued to disagree Let me just say that this sort of lack of empathy and understanding is a huge part of what makes political economic policy such a clusterfuck.
I'll note also that this sort of thinking has a lot of similarities with the MLM thing. You're sure you're going to sell that several thousand dollars in lip stick. The difference is that when "government assistance" doesn't lead to the outcome you expected, your behavior is not corrected. There's no pile of lipstick that one can stick your nose into and say "Bad dog!" The harm is either invisible to you or easily attributed to outside forces and their mental failwaves.
Oh yes, I do. "Future productivity" is more than just learning some skills, it's also learning about yourself. Here, they pick up lessons on the power of gullibility and one's ability to overestimate one's abilities. Further application may well be needed, but it's eventually going to stick.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday October 13 2019, @01:15PM (13 children)
Which... sounds to me like you're saying that there are a lot of people out there who never learn from MLM and similar failures. What is it you propose to do with these people? Deportation of domestically born citizens? Concentration camps? Or would you rather keep them dangling on a poverty string their whole lives, resenting those around them who have so much more opportunity and comfort? That last one sounds like a great formula for an extended wave of crime and violence - when they go there is it O.K. to execute them, or do we have to keep them in prison for the rest of their lives?
Keep telling yourself that, just like people who keep losing the lottery for decades on end will eventually stop spending their food money for lottery tickets (clue: a lot of them don't.)
Realpolitik: you don't get to govern the citizenry you wish for, you get to govern the citizenry you have. What makes it the ultimate clusterfuck is that the "best" form of government we have devised in 10,000 years of civilization has strong elements of the inmates running the asylum.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday October 13 2019, @01:30PM (12 children)
Doesn't sound like that to me. Failure is a very different matter when you have to deal with the aftermath, even if it's merely chucking the contents of a closet.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday October 13 2019, @02:14PM (11 children)
Well, look around and meet a few serial MLM addicts, lottery addicts, Oxycontin addicts (including the esteemed Rush Limbaugh), they can't all afford to check themselves into fancy rehab clinics, and even the best rehab clinics have a less than stellar relapse rate - and the relapse rate for "life therapy" is predictably worse.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday October 13 2019, @02:55PM (10 children)
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday October 13 2019, @03:11PM (1 child)
The point is: how much productive life are you willing to waste on "life lessons" instead of trying a little intervention?
Spare the rod, spoil the child doesn't advocate beatings, it refers to a shepherd's crook and redirection. It's how many advanced mammals pass knowledge down the generations, instead of leaving their offspring to chance and self-learning like sea turtles do.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday October 14 2019, @06:02AM
Quite a bit. It's only a short jump to intervening because you bribed the right people. Most corporate welfare, for example, is rationalized on this basis.
They'll leave a kid to die, if it just doesn't get it. Nature is not that generous.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday October 14 2019, @02:30AM (7 children)
Continuing the previous response about: nanny state, telling corporations to coddle the citizens, etc... where to draw that line? Quite simple, I think: what percentage of the corporations' employees are also receiving federal assistance? If they have "above average" dependence on federal assistance among their workers, that's O.K. - but, they should be examined more closely to ensure that they are: paying fair compensation, providing opportunity for growth to get off of federal assistance, adequately informing employees of opportunities to better their circumstances, etc.
When my tax dollars are subsidizing a company's labor, that company had better be doing everything necessary to get their employees off of public assistance - just as fast as unemployment benefits would run out, if not faster.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday October 14 2019, @06:14AM (6 children)
Why? It's not their job.
You decided to subsidize the employment of poor people - that is what "subsidizing a company's labor" means - if like it were even a bad thing. Man up and accept the consequences of your choices.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday October 14 2019, @01:38PM (5 children)
To treat their employees like human beings, that's become their job about 100 years ago and I generally thing it's a good thing.
First off, I didn't decide jack shit, I was born into a world with welfare babies.
Perpetual dependency on the nanny state, taxing the productive to house and feed the poor? Keeping a large poor population around in unhappy conditions, much more likely to strike out in crime and violence. Yeah, that's a bad thing. Corporations profiting from the situation while doing nothing to end it. Profits are fine, perpetuating poverty isn't. Figure out how to pay the workers, or fold up shop and make room for someone who will. Killing corporations isn't murder.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday October 14 2019, @01:53PM (4 children)
They are. Companies like Walmart are in fact going above and beyond that by helping their lower income employees find these programs to supplement their employee's income.
Then why not just end these troublesome programs? No welfare, unemployment insurance, etc, then no subsidies for Walmart. You're just not owning up to the decisions you made.
I call your bluff. End them, if they're so much trouble. Corporations didn't create these programs.
Why? Once again, it's not their job. If anyone has that job, it's the employees. We certainly don't have to kill off employers and make the situation worse.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday October 14 2019, @04:20PM (3 children)
And, that's great for a temporary situation. If the non-working poor can't draw unemployment for more than a limited time, the working poor should also be getting out of their welfare dependencies in a similar timeframe, not left to rot on the bottom of the pyramid.
No, the decision I made is for UBI, which could/should empower the working poor to give wage slave shops like WalMart the big middle finger if they don't like their working conditions. UBI doesn't run out, doesn't make the recipients run around doing bureaucratic BS to get what they need to live. This crap pile of public assistance programs we have in the US today are nothing like the decisions I made.
I call yours: $0.0228 per minute UBI, delivered electronically to every U.S. citizen. Start taxing income and capital gains of anything over $12K per year above that UBI at a flat percentage rate all the way up - at whatever percentage rate is needed to keep total revenue the same as it is today. No more foodstamps, no more welfare, no more minimum wage, and UBI for children past the first one in each household cuts by half for each additional child. Crappy jobs would go away, because nobody needs them. If the services those crappy job employees provided were really worth something, they'll have to find a way to make the jobs less crappy - which doesn't always mean more money.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday October 14 2019, @05:18PM (2 children)
Good thing that Walmart is improving their situation then, isn't it? Your pathology in this matter is interesting to watch.
Or work for the slave shops, if they do like their working conditions and want more spending money.
So $12k per year for a total of roughly $4 trillion per year. Even if we end all present day federal spending except for interest payments, we're only $3 trillion of the way there. Where's the money coming from? And how do you deal with the dual problems of people voting for more UBI and avoiding work like you want them to?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday October 14 2019, @06:40PM
So, without looking anything up I'm at least in the ballpark...
Social Security - replaced. Unemployment, SNAP, etc. - replaced.
Obviously, doing this overnight would be unhealthy, it would need to be progressively implemented (which is even more problematic on the political side.) Employers could pay the UBI for their employees as a different sort of "minimum wage" - but, the difference is: the employee has the option to walk and not lose anything. Jobs that people actually want to work at, imagine that.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday October 14 2019, @07:48PM
130 million FTE in the US -> 1.56T
27 million Part Timers averaging 34 hours per week, 34/40 * 12000 = 10200 per head -> 275B
Social Security -> 980B
SNAP -> 70B
Unemployment -> 100B
60 million US citizens under age 14, count them at 1/2 UBI rate on average -> 360B
There's 3.3T of your 4T. Maybe UBI isn't $12K/yr, maybe it's $10K/yr at today's tax rates. That's $10K/yr per capita of security - no excuses for homelessness, starvation, and no worry "if I don't keep this crappy job my kids are going to have to sleep in a bus shelter."
My wife's parents lived for 20 years on less than $20K/yr fixed income, and they managed to keep $18K in savings while doing it - it wasn't luxurious, but it was what they wanted to do, in Florida, with a truck they drove, a sailboat when they could manage it, a vacation to Iceland...
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11 2019, @07:32PM (1 child)
No, it does not. Full stop and obvious rebuttal.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday October 12 2019, @09:40PM