In “New York restrictions on Uber will increase inequality?” I wondered about how the profits from this new government regulation would be distributed.
Now I’m wondering about the cars themselves. Taxis were capped in NYC for decades (leading to the $1 million medallion price). The result was that taxis were plentiful in rich parts of Manhattan and scarce in poorer and outlying neighborhoods. I wonder if the same thing will happen with Ubers now that they’re capped. Manhattan and hipster Brooklyn will be packed with Ubers while folks who live elsewhere… can walk.
Readers: Does the above make sense?
And then Uber’s pricing algorithms will impose permanent congestion prices in the outer boroughs. Oh wait..
I was just in NYC, and that’s exactly the sentiment many people had — that the net result of this cap is going to be less or no service to the lower income areas.
Uber is very popular in the borrough of Queens among working people. “Uber-Pool” brings the cost to get home comfortably and promptly to five dollars. This competes with $2.75 to use the hot smelly late subway. And then there is walking. Walking is free, safe, and improves your health. A New Yorker will walk miles every day.
A recent editorial in the WSJ that made this point as well.
OT
https://www.thecut.com/2018/08/what-my-divorce-cost-me.html
“Despite the persistent myth that men get fleeced in divorce proceedings, statistics show that women are much more likely to take a financial hit if their marriage ends — particularly if they have children. According to a study by Stephen Jenkins, a professor at the London School of Economics, fathers see an income boost of about 30 percent after getting divorced, on average, while mothers experience a 20 percent drop. Although divorce laws vary, the “divorce gap” remains pernicious — as evidenced by this 49-year-old marketing director in Brooklyn. Here, she talks about how her divorce got so expensive, and why there isn’t much she could have done about it.”
@Lyle Women more likely to file for divorce because they want to be poor? Same reason they happy to date guys with no money?
Lyle: The 10 lb. brains of the economics PhDs are no doubt registering high on the IQ scale. However, think about the implications of their conclusion. A guy is married to a 50-year-old woman. They have two challenging teenage children together. He can walk down to the courthouse, sue for a no-fault divorce, and use the resulting 30 percent income boost to go on vacations with 30-year-old women.
We don’t see this happening, neither in the U.S. nor in the UK where the research was done. http://www.realworlddivorce.com/MiddlesexMay2011 shows that “Among the 144 cases in which children were involved, women were 3.14 times more likely to sue their husbands than vice versa.” (Massachusetts) https://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/relationships/10357829/Why-do-women-initiate-divorce-more-than-men.html says “It’s undeniable that women request the great majority of divorces in the UK … the woman was the party granted (therefore initiating) the divorce in 66% of cases that year. It used to be an even higher share: 69% in 2001, and a whopping 72% at the start of the 1990s.”
So if the economists are correct regarding the numbers they’ve discovered that men wouldn’t be willing to switch from an old sex partner to a young sex partner even if given a 30 percent boost in spending power as a financial incentive. This contradicts “America, Home of the Transactional Marriage” (https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/08/marriage-rates-education/536913/ ) certainly.
How could academics come to conclusions like this? http://www.realworlddivorce.com/History looks at a 1985 book (from the early days of no-fault) that concluded that “divorced women and the minor children in their households experience a 73 percent decline in their standard of living in the first year after divorce. Their former husbands, in contrast, experience a 42 percent rise in their standard of living.” This conclusion was reached by ignoring the income of the woman’s new sex partner(s): “In other words, if a divorced woman had a second marriage with a physician earning $700,000 per year, Weitzman would have counted this Beverly Hills resident as ‘poor.'”