By now, as you are reading this article, I had to end my partnership with Uber. I wouldn’t say it was much of a partnership as Uber calls it. I’d say it was more along the lines of “how can we, Uber, stuff our pockets even further while at the same time take from our drivers pockets without them having the sense to figure out what we are doing to them” partnership.
To conclude, Uber provides a great service. But, if they’re going to succeed with respect, taking care of the very thing that makes Uber a business is necessary. The partnership. So, if you’re an Uber consumer, TIP YOUR DRIVER! Even if at first he declines like he or she is told to do by Uber. Drivers are getting the scraps left over from Uber’s greedy pockets and deceptive practices.
I got used to the constant stream of peppy emails from the local support team. As time went on and I had questions, I noticed that getting a straight answer from Uber was a chore. There was also a distinct dictatorial tone in their replies. A kind of “This is the way it is” tone. It was clear that despite their breezy, “we appreciate your input/feedback. Please let us know if you have any questions” at the end of emails, they were definitely not interested in engaging with their drivers about how things worked.
“All Uber’s marketing and driver training material made claims that the tip was included and not to tip or receive tips. But they were always dismissive of drivers asking for clarification and transparency. Things like ‘how much of the fare is the tip’ are ignored,” this driver said. “As a passenger too, if you write support and ask how much of the fare is the gratuity they won’t respond. I believe this is an immoral strategy on their behalf to keep themselves artificially cheaper than their competition, like Lyft and Sidecar, who allow tipping through the app.”
Posted 2014/09/19, 6:47 pm
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Category: Crony Capitalism, Forward! ·
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“Let’s take a step back,” [James] Altucher says. “What’s the other American religion? Owning a home.” For years, the government encouraged home ownership for all citizens. “So we got more and more loans that were considered subprime, and look what that did. The idea, the religion of home ownership for all, turned into a national nightmare, a national apocalypse instead of a religion. The same thing’s going to happen here.”
Over the past quarter-century, the total cost of higher education has grown by 440 percent. “Like many situations too good to be true,” Louis Lataif, the dean emeritus of Boston University’s School of Management, wrote in February for Forbes, “like the dot-com boom, the Enron bubble, the housing boom or the health-care-cost explosion–the ever-increasing cost of university education is not sustainable.”
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But if college is neither a luxury good nor an investment, what is it? For [Peter] Thiel, the commodity college most closely resembles is the humble insurance policy. Americans have become terrified, he says, of what will happen to their children if they don’t send them to college. The recession, widening income inequality, growing job insecurity, the uncertain future of the welfare state, the increasing costs of health care–all have deepened the anxieties that made college such an attractive option for a rising middle class in the first place. “I think that’s the way probably a lot of parents think about it. It’s a way for their kids to be safe, to be protected from the chaos. You’re paying for college because it’s an insurance policy against falling out of the middle class.” The larger question this raises, he says, is, “Why are we spending ten times as much for insurance as we were 30 years ago? And does that tell us something has gone really badly wrong with our country?”
Since 1978, the price of tuition at US colleges has increased over 900 percent, 650 points above inflation. To put that number in perspective, housing prices, the bubble that nearly burst the US economy, then the global one, increased only fifty points above the Consumer Price Index during those years. But while college applicants’ faith in the value of higher education has only increased, employers’ has declined. According to Richard Rothstein at The Economic Policy Institute, wages for college-educated workers outside of the inflated finance industry have stagnated or diminished. Unemployment has hit recent graduates especially hard, nearly doubling in the post-2007 recession. The result is that the most indebted generation in history is without the dependable jobs it needs to escape debt.
What kind of incentives motivate lenders to continue awarding six-figure sums to teenagers facing both the worst youth unemployment rate in decades and an increasingly competitive global workforce?
“Bad Education,” by Malcolm Harris, n+1, April 25, 2011
