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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).
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MIT Study Shows How Much Driving for Uber or Lyft Sucks
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(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.