Dori: Durkan’s Uber and Lyft tax benefits politicians, not drivers

The more I look into Jenny Durkan’s proposal to tax you and me 51 cents every time we use ride-share services — like Uber and Lyft — the more confused I become.

My wife and I will sometimes take a rideshare to Seattle. And we sometimes take a rideshare from our home north of the city through Seattle, and get dropped off somewhere outside the city. Which of those rides am I going to be taxed for? The ride that ends in the city, or the one that ends outside of the city, or both?

There are so many things that are infuriating about this proposed tax. For one thing, Durkan says this will provide the Uber and Lyft drivers with a living wage. Huh? If the drivers are not making enough money, they’ll stop driving. No one is forcing them to drive. There have got to be many thousands of drivers throughout the city — it’s very lucrative. I personally know a couple of rideshare drivers who make over $50,000 a year doing that full-time. They love it because they can make their own schedule; they’re hustlers who work really hard. This has been a phenomenally successful industry in spite of government, certainly not because of government.

So why is Jenny Durkan really getting involved?

Dori: By doubling cost of Uber, Lyft, Seattle City Council will have blood on its hands

Ding, ding, ding — she says that $56 million of the money will also go to the streetcar project. That is yet another mass transit criminal enterprise. All the streetcar does is gridlock downtown even more to serve an absurdly small number of people. A lot of streetcar companies — and politicians, I’m sure — are getting filthy rich this way. Remember when they accidentally bought the wrong size of streetcars for the tracks? That was a $50 million mistake, yet no one in government got punished for that.

Additionally, $52 million from this tax will go toward affordable housing.

What will the rideshare drivers get? They’ll get $17 million.

That’s $17 million out of $126 million. So this really isn’t about the ride-share drivers having a living wage at all. The public officials are getting a piece of this graft and corruption. Whether it’s in power, control, or actual cash, you know politicians get something out of it.

The other outrage is that if you have a $3 trip to go 15 blocks downtown, now you have to add another 51 cents to the 24-cent-per-trip tax already in place. Now you have a 75-cent tax on your $3 ride — that is a 25-percent tax. Number runners in the mob are the only ones who ever get a 25-percent anything.

An op-ed in the Seattle Times this weekend was headlined, “Small tax on Uber, Lyft rides will help drivers and housing affordability.” Really? A “small tax?” Let’s say you’re one of the growing number of people who tries to live their life without a car in Seattle. Let’s say you use a ride-share three times a day. That’s $1.50 of this new tax per day. That adds up to $450 a year.

Everything is a “small tax” when you’re wealthy. But for the lower-middle class, working class and low-income, $450 is a fortune. To call it anything else is outrageous.

Follow @http://www.twitter.com/dorimonson