“Counterintuitive effects of minimum prices” by dynomight
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The Attorney General of Massachusetts recently announced that drivers for ride-sharing companies must be paid at least $32.50 per hour. Now, if you’re a hardcore libertarian, then you probably hate with the minimum wage. You need no convincing and we can part now on good terms. But what if you’re part of the vast majority of people who like the minimum wage? What if you think the minimum wage is awesome and you want to expand it? That's fine. I won’t try to change your mind! But even so, there are strong reasons to be skeptical about this policy. Because: If you read closely, you’ll see that Massachusetts’ rule is that drivers must be paid $32.50 for hours that they spend driving passengers around. For the time they spend waiting for passengers to request rides, they will still be paid $0. And when you screw around with prices, you [...]

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First published: January 24th, 2025

Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/rjN4So8QezZYo62c2/counterintuitive-effects-of-minimum-prices)

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