‘Government got involved’: Curley explains why Seattle has the most expensive Uber rides in the nation

The most expensive average Uber ride in the country is in Seattle, where a 30-minute ride costs an average of $60, according to a study by NetCredit.

The other cities among the 10 most expensive for an Uber ride are Cheyenne, Reno, New York, San Diego, Baton Rouge, Newark, Anchorage, San Jose, and Portland. Cheyenne, the second-most expensive city for Uber, is still $9, on average, cheaper per 30-minute ride than Seattle.

“You wonder why it’s so much higher. It’s because the government got involved,” KIRO host John Curley said. “The city council doesn’t understand how businesses work. The problem is people can’t afford to live in Seattle. So what do they do about the fact that the city is too expensive? Let’s just raise everybody’s income by just artificially determining that you need to make this amount of money, regardless of what the market will pay and regardless of what the consumer will do.”

Curley argued that most transactional relationships should stay between two parties — the buyer and the seller. When things go awry, a third party is usually involved.

“The third party is the government,” Curley added. “The government comes in and says, ‘You know, it’s a shame that you don’t have enough money to buy that thing, whatever that is, or that service. So what we will do is we will force your employer to pay you more, regardless of your production element. Regardless of your true worth and value in the market. We, the all-knowing city council, will determine that we know what’s best for you.'”

Other app-based workers at risk

The City of Seattle passed an app-based worker minimum pay ordinance that requires these workers, such as DoorDash dashers, to earn at least $26.40 per hour on delivery, before tips, plus $0.74 per mile.

“A third party came in to determine your value, and now the consumer is going, ‘I’m not going to buy a hamburger from DoorDash when the hamburger costs $20, or the chicken wings cost $20, but by the time the fees and everything else are added on it, plus, I have to pay the guy who’s going to deliver it another $20, so $45? Screw it,” Curley said. “Then, the DoorDash guy is sitting there with his thumb up his a**, excuse my French, because the city council has determined that he needs to be paid this. Well, guess what the consumer says, screw that. I don’t need to pay him. So now the DoorDash guy doesn’t make as much money because the third-party has come in to tell you what the value is.”

Joe Wallace, the producer of “The John Curley Show,” shared a post from Seattle Reddit where someone posted about ordering two orders of 10-piece McDonald’s Chicken McNuggets on DoorDash. The total for two is $9.49, plus a $5.99 delivery fee. Then other taxes and additional fees, totaling $14.44, were added on, so for the $9.49 two-pack of 10-piece Chicken McNuggets, it cost the person $29.92.

“So the third party comes in and is just working the controls, supply and demand, supply and demand, and it always comes back to bite them. And here, it’s biting them with Uber,” Curley said. “It bites them with minimum wage. We saw, in California, 18,000 [fast food] jobs were eliminated, and the same thing is happening here. If you look at the restaurants, your favorite restaurant down the street is gone. Why? Because the city came in and said that waiter needs to be paid this amount of money. Then the person who owns a restaurant, who’s working on small margins, has to try to make the difference up. They can’t, and now the waiter who was promised a salary by a third party is out of work, and nobody ever gets caught for this. The city council just keeps doing it, and they’re going to do the same thing with rent control.”

Listen to the full conversation here.

Listen to John Curley weekday afternoons from 3 – 7 p.m. on KIRO Newsradio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.