Monday, August 27, 2018

Dispatch 6: Ocasio-Cortez Claims Solidarity with Cab Drivers -- While Campaign Buys Rides from Uber


Dispatch 5
From: The Committee to Flip Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
To: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
Subject: Ocasio-Cortez Claims Solidarity with Cab Drivers -- While Campaign Buys Rides from Uber
Prepared by: Robert Wenzel
Date: August 26, 2018

New York Socialist Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez once blamed ride-sharing giant Uber for leading a yellow cab driver to suicide. Her campaign then took $4,000 worth of Uber rides, reports FOX News.

She has frequently criticized the ride-hailing company for what she sees as underpaying its drivers, decrying their pay as
“exploitation” if they don’t get at least $15 an hour.
She directly blamed the company for the suicide death of Doug Schifter, a driver in his 60s, who killed himself with a shotgun amid financial difficulties caused by the flooding of the streets of New York City with alternative and cheaper options than taxis.

“NYC's fourth driver suicide. Yellow cab drivers are in financial ruin due to the unregulated expansion of Uber. What was a living wage job now pays under minimum,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote.

What she distorted in her tweet was that the high price Schifter had to pay for a New York City yellow taxi medallion was what really got him in financial trouble. The high priced taxi medallions were the result of government central planning which limited the number of yellow taxis in the city, making a license (the medallion), before Uber, extremely expensive. In 2013, a taxi medallion was sold for $1.3 million.

Now that Uber and Lyft have created a workaround via app to provide taxi service to many more riders (including apparently Ocasio-Cortez's campaign team), the price of taxi medallions has plunged to under $250,000. So if Schifter bought and financed a medallion for over $500,000, he was in the hole for probably more than $200,000.

But it should be remembered the crazy price for medallions was all caused by the city government central planning restrictions on taxis in New York City in the first place.

If there were no restrictions, Doug Schifter could have owned his own taxi without having to pay any license (medallion) price, that is, zero, rather than the massive price that put him underwater to the likely tune of hundreds of thousands.

Does Ocasio-Cortez not understand the central planning aspect that plays a key role in the financial pressures on yellow taxi cab owners and ultimate suicides?

Robert Wenzel is Editor & Publisher of
EconomicPolicyJournal.com and Target Liberty. 

More about Wenzel here.



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