This article is part of the On Tech newsletter. You can sign up here to receive it weekdays.
Seattle and California are among the places trying to ensure higher pay for Uber and Lyft drivers. But the companies and some drivers have said that proposed regulatory changes might put many drivers out of work, force the services to shut down or make many rides unaffordable.
This fight reflects one of the important questions about Uber and Lyft: Can governments rein in some of the harm of these services without wiping out what many people like about them?
In one case, the answer appears to be yes.
New York City’s transportation commission two years ago made new rules that guaranteed a minimum wage for drivers of Uber, Lyft and similar services. Among the worries was that drivers and passengers could wind up worse off, because the rule changes would increase fares and drivers would lose work.
Some of those fears have come to pass on the margins, but the rules so far have largely accomplished what the city intended: Drivers in New York have made more per hour and for each trip on average, people haven’t been significantly discouraged from riding with Uber or Lyft, and even the companies have most likely done better.
That was the conclusion of Michael Reich, a labor economist at the University of California, Berkeley, whose work was instrumental in the New York regulatory changes and has analyzed data on about 500 million trips made in 2018 and 2019 that Uber, Lyft and other companies shared with the city.
“The lesson from New York is that, when regulators changed rules for the whole industry, drivers were paid more, companies earned more and passengers on the whole did fine,” Reich told me.
If Reich’s conclusions about New York apply elsewhere — and he said they most likely do, with caveats — it shows that governments can ensure higher wages for drivers without making everyone worse off.
There were downsides to New York’s changes. Uber and Lyft drivers earned more for the time they worked, but there were fewer open positions for newcomers and not all drivers could work whenever they wanted. This made some drivers unhappy.
Also, prices for some rides did go up. Reich said he expected a 5 to 10 percent increase in fares across the board, with a resulting 10 percent increase in driver pay. That’s about what has happened, he said. (Reich is crunching fresh data to assess the effect of the coronavirus pandemic.)
Uber has said that costs for rides increased mostly in lower-income neighborhoods. Keep in mind that higher fares are good for Uber and Lyft, because they generate more profits for the companies.
New York is unusual. Reich said fares could increase more in other places that were trying tactics to increase driver pay. But he doesn’t believe the worst-case scenarios that companies like Uber have sketched out.
One reason it’s hard to write rules for Uber and Lyft is that they know everything about what drivers make and passengers pay, but almost everyone else is in the dark. New York demanded data from the companies, and spoke extensively to drivers to find out what their wages and expenses were, said Meera Joshi, who was commissioner of the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission when it made the rule changes.
“Without the ability to double check, then all the public and lawmakers are left with are unfounded statements about what happens when they pass this law,” Joshi told me. “I hope other cities see it as a model.”
If you don’t already get this newsletter in your inbox, please sign up here.
Hooray for normal phones
You’ve heard me say before that smartphones are like refrigerators.
Many of us can’t imagine how we would manage without them. But there aren’t extremely wealthy appliance companies persuading us to regularly replace our fridges with $2,000 models that have gyroscopic heart emoji butter dishes or whatever flashy feature most mortals don’t use. That is what phone companies do, and it’s a disservice to us.
That’s why I was a little bit giddy on Wednesday when Google introduced new models of its smartphone and said, essentially, You don’t need gyroscopic heart emoji butter dishes.
Google opted for restraint over wow. The new Pixel intentionally lost some higher-end features to bring the starting cost down to $700. Last year’s model cost $800 or more. Google also introduced a more basic new model, starting at $500.
Yes, these don’t have all of the bells and whistles of top-of-the-line iPhones or Samsung phones, and some people want that. But most of us have more phone than we need and don’t use fancy things.
Google “decided to stop trying so hard,” as a Washington Post tech columnist put it. (This was a compliment, I’m pretty sure.)
The company didn’t pick the highest-end screens or computer chip for its new smartphone, and it went with a fingerprint sensor rather than more expensive parts for unlocking the phone with your face.
Especially in the middle of a pandemic that has left millions of people without jobs, a middle-of-the-road phone feels like a relief.
Now, look, what Google is doing is clever marketing spin — a phone for normals! — in the service of a useful product idea. I do still want smartphone manufacturers to shoot for the moon, partly because inventions for expensive phones will trickle down to the masses later.
So if you want that gyroscopic butter dish, go for it. But I’m glad that both Apple and Google are starting to devote more attention to plenty-good-enough smartphones that are intended for the rest of us.
Before we go …
-
Stuck between two superpowers: Companies in Taiwan are essential to producing many of the world’s smartphones and computer chips. But my colleague Ray Zhong writes that Taiwan’s role as an important cog in global technology has been complicated by political fights between the United States and China.
-
That burrito delivery costs more than you think: Consumer Reports found that food delivery companies are obfuscating their service fees, courier tips or food costs in ways that make it hard for people to know what they’re paying and how they’re helping — or not — local restaurants. (My colleague Brian X. Chen has also written about hidden fees for food delivery services.)
-
The only music critic who matters, if you’re under 25: Anthony Fantano runs a YouTube channel where he dishes his opinions on songs and albums, and has helped musicians get attention. My colleague Joe Coscarelli wrote about how Fantano dragged the rather musty art form of reviewing records into the modern age.
Hugs to this
This doctor does Play-Doh surgery with her kid and I AM HERE FOR IT.
We want to hear from you. Tell us what you think of this newsletter and what else you’d like us to explore. You can reach us at [email protected].
If you don’t already get this newsletter in your inbox, please sign up here.