Uber, Grubhub and DoorDash must pay NYC delivery workers an $18 minimum wage

Capitalism at its finest

That's an auction. I need to keep bidding to get my order

Postmates would only ask for a tip after the delivery was completed. But now they don't exist anymore so...

No, I think he expects their employer to pay them through the fees they collect. If the tip is mandatory, it's not a tip, it's a fee and it should be included in the up front costs with payroll taxes etc deducted.

Invalids and disabled people use these services too. The problem isn't they expect it for free, the problem is the people who do the work are not being paid a living wage to do it.

There's already a delivery fee

A tip is merely subsidizing a company's inability to pay its employees appropriately. I really could care less seeing Stanley Tang (door dash founder/ owner) gamble (and lose) hundreds of thousands of dollars on hustler casino live playing poker while simultaneously claiming his company can't pay a living wage.

Go back and reread what they said but slower this time.

You aren’t a smart person, hey?

Pretty sure they get paid regardless of if they're tipped.

You dont have to always be the victim, dont strip away your obligation for due diligence just because some corporation made a nice commercial.

It's not one or the other. The corporate propaganda works because people are stupid.

I agree. I'm having a hard time understanding how raising the salary of delivery workers to what an entry level doctor, engineers or lawyer is going to solve the problem. There are two things that might happen, either all the other salaries in the world will then also increase (and thus services too), keeping the wealth disparity the same, or, since these delivery companies already operate on such thin margins (GrubHub net profit for past years have been negative $millions), they are going to pass the cost to the consumer. It creates an interesting problem where then it's too expensive to get delivery so you don't order food, which means less delivery jobs are needed so people are laid off, preventing people from making money. Also, from what I've seen, most of the workers seems to be immigrants. While I'm not saying we take advantage of immigrants, but these low barrier to entry jobs have always been helpful for those who have complicated statuses.

I'm not bashing any delivery worker (I used to work at a wings shop in my youth), but the amount of interaction you spend with a delivery worker is usually minimal. It doesn't require any formal training and neither being a bad one is going to affect whether you are in the mood for Thai food.

This part I haven't figured out. Seems chicken and egg to me. If we keep raising wages to match inflation, the costs of good measured to match inflation will also go up and we end up with higher inflation right?

I disagree with you but upvote for engaging. People are really bad about using that as a disagree button.

I agree that raising minimum wage won't help, but I still think it needs to be done. For as long as our shitty treasury targets a 3% YoY inflation rate (and esp when it goes way over that), the minimum wage needs to keep pace. Personally, I'd greatly prefer that we lower our target inflation rate but that's a totally different discussion.

I don't think it forces them to increase the cost of the delivery fee, I think it gives them an excuse too. They always want to. To anyone that has used meal deliveries, we know that it is wildly overpriced as is, to the point where it's downright foolish to use any of them. They can try to increase their prices if they feel 'forced' to (read:want to maintain profit margins), but the fact of the matter is they've already done the math to maximize profit and determined that fees any higher will result in fewer customers and less profit. That will shift a little as the upfront cost of providing the service does, but they simply can't go much higher without losing more customers than it's worth. I hope I'm wrong though, because if it does force them to go much higher then the entire delivery ecosystem of apps will collapse and that would be a good thing.

I don't know the answer to the affordability crisis either but I do know that meal deliveries are not part of that crisis. It is an extremely overpriced luxury service. They are about as worried about being affordable as Apple and Cadillac are. Frankly, I'm rooting for their downfall.

Well. It doesn't force the service to do so, the higher ups just decide they want to preserve their pockets and charge the customer more.

Yes @missveeronica, love peace, love discussion! I am curious what other alternatives we have or what people can think of. It's obviously a very tough problem since the US government can't seem to (agree to) fix it. Things that pop in my mind:

• I understand this is a basic overstatement, but in general, people work so that they can afford a house. I think housing prices have gone bonkers in recent years, partially due to foreign investors and the flipping houses/Airbnb craze. One thing that pops into my mind is to impose a flip tax, where unless the owner personally lives in a house for 4-5 years, they pay a large tax when selling the home. This of course applies to corporations as well but with the added spice of larger tax if the inventory was empty the entire time. If we can make housing affordable again, I think the need for higher salaries is less of an issue.

• Revamp the food stamp system and make it universal to everyone. This ties into universal basic income, but I think if everyone was part of a food stamp program, it would make it less stigmatized and there would be a wider offering of choices available. This could be very cool.

• Aside from the usual tax billionaires/term limits/socialize healthcare ideas, it seems that we have an issue where things can get out of hand from people who are greedy. I don't know how to solve this problem, but I feel like if there was some website that showed what companies are owned by who, we could vote with our dollars and level the playing field. I hate that I found out after years the gym I belong to is owned by some nutjob and I've been patronizing him. If there was some visibility into where my money was going, it might educate people where their money is going.

I am not saying people don't deserve a living wage. Raising the minimum wage helps solve short term problems, but from what I see, doesn't help fix the high cost of living. The cost of living needs to be lowered somehow, and I was curious what people thought on this. I don't think the money to subsidize the workers are going to come from the CEOs salaries...

I don't think it's the wrong question. Profits exists in every society and many countries are capitalist or have their own flavor of capitalism. If the idea is to create a system where those who excel are rewarded, then profits need and should exist. In a capitalist economy, this drives better products, better services, etc. Additionally, the opposite of profit (loss), serves as a great metric to determine whether something is worth doing. If the customer wants a pure gold toilet, but only has $50 to spend, your going to offer them spray paint instead of the real thing.

There are some bad apples that abuse profits, and disproportionately hoard all the value, but I'm looking to discuss my original question.

What a horrifying reality.

I would say regulated capitalism in a nutshell. Raw capitalism wants to pay workers as little as possible for as much production as possible.

Especially if it's a service. Maybe if your service business can't generate enough revenue to pay your employees then it's a service that doesn't need to exist?

Normally I wouldn't give a shit. But for these P2P businesses the unit economics for the business to be profitable requires passing on that expense to the end customer.

I'm not going to pay an extra $10+ dollars or whatever for my meal when I'm already tipping, paying tax, and service charge.

So I'm saying while it sounds awesome to pay people more, in this case it will just cause these services to go away.

Everyone down voted me like I'm defending the companies, but that's not my intention. It's more that these services as they are won't exist, so everyone loses. The employees lose the job and their customers lose the service. The company goes out of business too but that's not the issue I care about. We will effectively all lose delivery services except those willing to pay a lot for it, which stifles demand and makes the problem worse.

Anyway... I'm totally willing to hear counterarguments and certainly on the side of the workers, but the knee-jerk downvote and talk about how everyone needs a living wage isn't helping dive into the nuance of how these businesses operate and make money and what impact this decision will have on the business model.