> So for instance this $3/hour earnings just did not make sense as there would rapidly approaching 0 drivers of > 'x months' experience driving for Uber, whereas drivers that have been doing it for years are hardly unicorns.
There is a lot of room for drivers to optimize their driving so that they end up making more than average by choosing times and locations to drive that will get them a larger portion of their time giving rides, rides at a higher speed, rides with higher surge multipliers, etc. The more experienced drivers could be making significantly more than the average amount, while less experienced drivers who haven't learned these tricks yet are earning less.
> For the wage gap take as an assumption that companies were genuinely able to pay women less for doing the exact same quality and quantity of work as men. Well what would happen? We already live in a world where big companies relentlessly squeeze every penny they can from minimizing labor costs. The notion that people are intentionally paying more to men just to be around more men defies belief, to put it mildly.
There are multiple problems with this sniff test. First, it makes the same fallacy as the economist who sees a twenty dollar bill on the ground and then says that there couldn't really be a twenty dollar bill on the ground because someone would already have picked it up. Markets are not perfectly efficient and any conclusion based on that assumption is nonsense.
Second, the companies aren't choosing to pay men more just because they are men. They are paying them more because men have higher existing wages which gives them more bargaining power. It is irrational on an overall basis but it is rational on an individual basis, so no individual company has an incentive to change.
There is a lot of room for drivers to optimize their driving so that they end up making more than average by choosing times and locations to drive that will get them a larger portion of their time giving rides, rides at a higher speed, rides with higher surge multipliers, etc. The more experienced drivers could be making significantly more than the average amount, while less experienced drivers who haven't learned these tricks yet are earning less.
> For the wage gap take as an assumption that companies were genuinely able to pay women less for doing the exact same quality and quantity of work as men. Well what would happen? We already live in a world where big companies relentlessly squeeze every penny they can from minimizing labor costs. The notion that people are intentionally paying more to men just to be around more men defies belief, to put it mildly.
There are multiple problems with this sniff test. First, it makes the same fallacy as the economist who sees a twenty dollar bill on the ground and then says that there couldn't really be a twenty dollar bill on the ground because someone would already have picked it up. Markets are not perfectly efficient and any conclusion based on that assumption is nonsense.
Second, the companies aren't choosing to pay men more just because they are men. They are paying them more because men have higher existing wages which gives them more bargaining power. It is irrational on an overall basis but it is rational on an individual basis, so no individual company has an incentive to change.