"It is only at the end that you understand..."
-Emperor Palpatine, Return of The Jedi
While Trump gets blasted for making statements about illegal immigration that was common among Democrats until it wasn't, People on the ground continue to live with the results of the non-functioning occupation government that is inhabiting Washington DC. One of the reasons that one restricts immigration is to control population growth. In California they are seeing serious water supply problems. No one there wants to admit it, but part of their problem is the millions of people that are in the state who should not be who use water resources.
Another reason for immigration restriction is to protect jobs and wages for people who are
already here. As anyone who has taken pre-economics knows, if you increase the supply of a good or service, then it's value in the marketplace drops. Why should I pay a vendor 50 bucks for a product when there are 12 others who are willing to sell the same product for $5? I was bitten by this very issue when I had a business doing web design and digital video. When ISPs started offering free website design tools and services to my potential clients in return for their monthly bill, I could not compete. Similarly, when iMovie and iDVD made it relatively easy for my potential clients to make their own DVDs, then my services, using Final Cut Pro and DVD Studio Pro were no longer competitive (for the market I was in). I eventually figured out that I was paying my clients to do work for them. I closed up shop for more profitable ventures in casinos. And when you make more money in a casino then you would doing a "real job" you know there is a serious problem.
The point being here that cheap rivals undermine the economy for all competitors with devastating consequences. Meet the
suicidal taxi driver.
On Monday morning, Doug Schifter, a livery driver in his early 60s, killed himself with a shotgun in front of City Hall in Lower Manhattan, having written a lengthy Facebook post several hours earlier laying out the structural cruelties that had left him in such dire circumstance. He was now sometimes forced to work more than 100 hours a week to survive, he said; when he had started out in the 1980s, a 40-hour week was fairly typical. He blamed politicians — mayors Michael R. Bloomberg and Bill de Blasio, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo — and their acquiescence to the rich for permitting so many cars to flood the streets. He blamed the Taxi Commission for the fines and hassles it imposed...
He had lost his health insurance and accrued credit card debt and he would no longer work for “chump change,’’ preferring, he said, to die in the hope that his sacrifice would draw attention to what drivers, too often unable to feed their families now, were enduring...
Implicit in his testament was the anger he felt over the de-professionalization of his life’s work. Mr. Schifter had driven more than five million miles throughout his tenure, through five hurricanes and 50 snowstorms. He had chauffeured celebrities and worn a suit. He was not driving a car to supplement the income he was getting from his crepe business and he was not trying to make a little extra money for a gym membership. He was not a participant in the gig economy; he was a casualty of it.
I see personal vehicles being used as taxis all over the place. In fact, if I see a Camry on the road I almost always assume it is a taxi, particularly if it is driven by a non-white male. I would say that I am right 60% of the time. Now you may be wondering what this has to do with immigration. Well in NY, where this event took place, the taxi business is essentially an immigrant work business. The reason why businesses like unrestricted immigration is that it creates an excess of workers. This excess drives down wages. Suddenly a job that could support a family can't. And then you have politicians that will call you lazy because you won't work yourself to death for diminishing wages.
While Uber has sold that “disruption” as positive for riders, for many taxi workers, it has been devastating. Between 2013 and 2016, the gross annual bookings of full-time yellow-taxi drivers in New York, working during the day when fares are typically highest, fell from $88,000 a year to just over $69,000. Medallions, which grant the right to operate a taxi in New York City, were now depreciating assets and drivers who had borrowed money to pay for them, once a sound investment strategy, were deeply in debt. Ms. Desai was routinely seeing grown men cry and she had become increasingly concerned about the possibility that they would begin taking their lives.
Notice that Uber is claiming a "positive for riders". This is like the fake "net neutrality" argument. Riders get "cheap" fares like internet customers get cheap streaming. There is absolutely no discussion of the disruption to the people who were previously making a decent living being taxi drivers. No, all that matters is that riders get cheap rides (and that Uber makes it's cut off each ride). Many failed to understand that the medallion system served two purposes: It kept salaries up by creating scarcity of product (taxis) and reduced congestion, particularly in Manhattan.
For decades there had been no more than 12,000 to 13,000 taxis in New York but now there were myriad new ways to avoid public transportation, in some cases with ride-hailing services like Via that charged little more than $5 to travel in Manhattan. In 2013, there were 47,000 for-hire vehicles in the city. Now there were more than 100,000, approximately two-thirds of them affiliated with Uber.
The situation in the taxi industry is a portrait of what happens when a country is flooded with people. Now replicate this situation in construction. Replicate this in IT. Add the coming advances in AI. But it is only at the end that this guy comes to realize that his livelihood was destroyed by government policies that favored businesses that want plentiful and cheap labour. The same businesses that go all in to tell you how Trump is evil incarnate for suggesting policies that would have kept this guy's income at a level where he would not have been so desperate.
Uber is making money. The dealerships leasing these vehicles are making money. The NYSDMV is making money off the registration and inspection fees (higher for TLC vehicles) and the garages providing brakes, tires and oil changes are making out like bandits.
You want open borders and unlimited workers? You got it. Don't say you weren't warned.
Side note: You see that Via ride for $5 to travel in Manhattan? Let me explain how bad this is. Given the traffic in Manhattan and the time it takes to get to a location, a driver charging $5 per manhattan ride needs at least 20 minutes to complete a transaction. That's $15/hour at best. This same person can learn Blackjack basic strategy for Hit 17, use a 1-3 bet spread and make far more than $15/hour spending his time at Empire City or Resorts world casinos. It is literally and financially better to gamble in the NYC area casinos than to work with Via. This is how bad the "gig economy" is.
