2020年10月1日 星期四

On Tech: An Uber wage experiment worked

New York shows that Uber drivers can have higher wages without triggering an Armageddon.

An Uber wage experiment worked

Kiel Mutschelknaus

Seattle and California are among the places trying to ensure higher pay for Uber and Lyft drivers. But the companies and some drivers have said that proposed regulatory changes might put many drivers out of work, force the services to shut down or make many rides unaffordable.

This fight reflects one of the important questions about Uber and Lyft: Can governments rein in some of the harm of these services without wiping out what many people like about them?

In one case, the answer appears to be yes.

New York City’s transportation commission two years ago made new rules that guaranteed a minimum wage for drivers of Uber, Lyft and similar services. Among the worries was that drivers and passengers could wind up worse off, because the rule changes would increase fares and drivers would lose work.

Some of those fears have come to pass on the margins, but the rules so far have largely accomplished what the city intended: Drivers in New York have made more per hour and for each trip on average, people haven’t been significantly discouraged from riding with Uber or Lyft, and even the companies have most likely done better.

That was the conclusion of Michael Reich, a labor economist at the University of California, Berkeley, whose work was instrumental in the New York regulatory changes and has analyzed data on about 500 million trips made in 2018 and 2019 that Uber, Lyft and other companies shared with the city.

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“The lesson from New York is that, when regulators changed rules for the whole industry, drivers were paid more, companies earned more and passengers on the whole did fine,” Reich told me.

If Reich’s conclusions about New York apply elsewhere — and he said they most likely do, with caveats — it shows that governments can ensure higher wages for drivers without making everyone worse off.

There were downsides to New York’s changes. Uber and Lyft drivers earned more for the time they worked, but there were fewer open positions for newcomers and not all drivers could work whenever they wanted. This made some drivers unhappy.

Also, prices for some rides did go up. Reich said he expected a 5 to 10 percent increase in fares across the board, with a resulting 10 percent increase in driver pay. That’s about what has happened, he said. (Reich is crunching fresh data to assess the effect of the coronavirus pandemic.)

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Uber has said that costs for rides increased mostly in lower-income neighborhoods. Keep in mind that higher fares are good for Uber and Lyft, because they generate more profits for the companies.

New York is unusual. Reich said fares could increase more in other places that were trying tactics to increase driver pay. But he doesn’t believe the worst-case scenarios that companies like Uber have sketched out.

One reason it’s hard to write rules for Uber and Lyft is that they know everything about what drivers make and passengers pay, but almost everyone else is in the dark. New York demanded data from the companies, and spoke extensively to drivers to find out what their wages and expenses were, said Meera Joshi, who was commissioner of the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission when it made the rule changes.

“Without the ability to double check, then all the public and lawmakers are left with are unfounded statements about what happens when they pass this law,” Joshi told me. “I hope other cities see it as a model.”

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Hooray for normal phones

You’ve heard me say before that smartphones are like refrigerators.

Many of us can’t imagine how we would manage without them. But there aren’t extremely wealthy appliance companies persuading us to regularly replace our fridges with $2,000 models that have gyroscopic heart emoji butter dishes or whatever flashy feature most mortals don’t use. That is what phone companies do, and it’s a disservice to us.

That’s why I was a little bit giddy on Wednesday when Google introduced new models of its smartphone and said, essentially, You don’t need gyroscopic heart emoji butter dishes.

Google opted for restraint over wow. The new Pixel intentionally lost some higher-end features to bring the starting cost down to $700. Last year’s model cost $800 or more. Google also introduced a more basic new model, starting at $500.

Yes, these don’t have all of the bells and whistles of top-of-the-line iPhones or Samsung phones, and some people want that. But most of us have more phone than we need and don’t use fancy things.

Google “decided to stop trying so hard,” as a Washington Post tech columnist put it. (This was a compliment, I’m pretty sure.)

The company didn’t pick the highest-end screens or computer chip for its new smartphone, and it went with a fingerprint sensor rather than more expensive parts for unlocking the phone with your face.

Especially in the middle of a pandemic that has left millions of people without jobs, a middle-of-the-road phone feels like a relief.

Now, look, what Google is doing is clever marketing spin — a phone for normals! — in the service of a useful product idea. I do still want smartphone manufacturers to shoot for the moon, partly because inventions for expensive phones will trickle down to the masses later.

So if you want that gyroscopic butter dish, go for it. But I’m glad that both Apple and Google are starting to devote more attention to plenty-good-enough smartphones that are intended for the rest of us.

Before we go …

  • Stuck between two superpowers: Companies in Taiwan are essential to producing many of the world’s smartphones and computer chips. But my colleague Ray Zhong writes that Taiwan’s role as an important cog in global technology has been complicated by political fights between the United States and China.
  • That burrito delivery costs more than you think: Consumer Reports found that food delivery companies are obfuscating their service fees, courier tips or food costs in ways that make it hard for people to know what they’re paying and how they’re helping — or not — local restaurants. (My colleague Brian X. Chen has also written about hidden fees for food delivery services.)
  • The only music critic who matters, if you’re under 25: Anthony Fantano runs a YouTube channel where he dishes his opinions on songs and albums, and has helped musicians get attention. My colleague Joe Coscarelli wrote about how Fantano dragged the rather musty art form of reviewing records into the modern age.

Hugs to this

This doctor does Play-Doh surgery with her kid and I AM HERE FOR IT.

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2020年9月30日 星期三

The T List: Five things we recommend this week

JW Anderson x Moncler, perfume for the home — and more.

Welcome to the T List, a newsletter from the editors of T Magazine. Each week, we’re sharing things we’re eating, wearing, listening to or coveting now. Sign up here to find us in your inbox every Wednesday. You can always reach us at tlist@nytimes.com.

Stay Here

Hotel Les Deux Gares Opens in Paris

From left: a bedroom at Hotel Les Deux Gares in Paris with a vividly contrasting palette; a showy hotel bathroom in a bright 1930s-era suite.Benoit Linero

By Aimee Farrell

T Contributor

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The new Hotel Les Deux Gares in Paris’s 10th Arrondissement is a riotous collision of French and British style. The 40-room property, set in a 19th-century Haussmann building between Gare du Nord and Gare de l’Est, is the fourth offering from the Touriste hospitality group — and by far the boldest. The bedrooms are breezy and colorful: There are striped headboards with mismatched curtains; the walls are painted in olive greens and pale pinks with contrasting ceilings and trims; the bathrooms feature bright primary-toned tiles. “I love the fantasy of hotels,” says the English artist Luke Edward Hall, whom Touriste’s founder, Adrien Gloaguen, enlisted to design the interiors. “In the back of my head, the space was the home of a bohemian Paris collector that’s been opened up to guests.” Finding inspiration in Wes Anderson’s 2014 film, “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” he dialed up the theater, fearlessly playing with both prints (leopard and toile) and periods. In the hotel’s Art Deco-inspired corners, antique French Empire tables are topped with lights and lampshades displaying Hall’s sketches. His eclectic vision of French hospitality continues across the street at Café Les Deux Gares, a traditional bistro that includes a cherry-red bar and a trompe l’oeil tortoiseshell ceiling by the artist Pauline Leyravaud. Rooms start at $152 per night, 2, rue des Deux Gares, Paris, France, hoteldeuxgares.com.

Eat This

The Healing Properties of Moringa Powder

Maruyama Jones Farm’s moringa powder and capsules.Misa Maruyama

By Cathy Erway

T Contributor

Growing up on the Kekaha Sugar plantation on Kauai, Hawaii, Misa Maruyama Jones always enjoyed tasting the moringa leaves in her cup of tinola, a soothing chicken-and-green-papaya soup that her Filipino neighbors would make. “Eating neighbors’ home cooking at weekend parties was a part of life,” she says, noting how the delicate leaves were usually harvested from a backyard tree. The moringa tree — also known as malangguy — is native to South Asia but arrived in Hawaii thanks to Filipino immigrants who went to work the sugarcane and pineapple fields throughout the first half of the 20th century. Despite its longstanding reputation in Hawaii for possessing healing benefits, though, moringa has only recently become the object of a health-food craze on the mainland. Now, its leaves are crushed into powder and taken as supplements. These products, says Maruyama Jones, were initially unrecognizable to many locals as the same plant. However, some chefs have embraced the powdered form, sprinkling it over scallop crudo, miso ramen or furikake salmon. And Maruyama Jones believes that moringa seeds and capsules helped save her father’s life when he was battling cancer four years ago. This inspired her and her husband, Geoff, to start their own moringa farm in 2016 on the Big Island, in Kailua-Kona — Maruyama Jones Farm, where products including moringa-seed oil and moringa-leaf matcha tea are sold. From $15, maruyamajonesfarm.com.

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See This

Julia Phillips’s Sculptures at Matthew Marks

Julia Phillips’s “Mediator” (2020)© Julia Phillips, Courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery.

By Madeline Leung Coleman

T Contributor

The most disturbing part of Julia Phillips’s work is what she leaves out. The German sculptor, who divides her time between Chicago and Berlin, molds ceramics into devices that conform to the curves of the human body. Though mounted so as to suggest interaction, these are not inviting objects. “New Album,” an exhibition of Phillips’s work now on view at Matthew Marks, features, for example, what appears to be a pair of black binoculars, angled downward and mounted on a stainless-steel stand. Its ends are glazed in a blotchy salami pink, the rims of the eye holes left ruptured and bumpy. At the back of the gallery, two clay plates, each shaped to cover the back of someone’s head, ears, neck and shoulders, stand on poles. One is angled as if to push the head forward, forcing the unseen wearer to look to the floor; the other would crank the head back, exposing the tender dip of the throat. Phillips’s use of negative space implies a subtle sort of violence. “I’m not interested in designing torturous elements or actual functional elements,” the artist said in Berlin in 2018. “I’m interested in making sculptures that are kind of a mind game.” Inspired by Black feminist thought and the power relations embedded in colonialism, Phillips hopes viewers will “finish” these empty devices with their imagination — and ask themselves whether they would be the doer, or the done-to. “New Album” is on view at Matthew Marks through Oct. 17, 2020, at 523 West 24th Street, New York City. Reservations are recommended, matthewmarks.com.

Covet This

JW Anderson’s Moncler Collection Has Arrived

Two nylon puffer jackets with embossed dots, nylon scarves with spikes and floppy hats in nylon lègere. The look in black is accessorized with a nylon mini bag with spikes.Courtesy of Moncler

By Thessaly La Force

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Out this week is the highly anticipated JW Anderson collection from Moncler’s Genius, an ongoing collaborative series between the Italian-based brand and various designers, such as Simone Rocha, Richard Quinn and Matthew M. Williams of 1017 ALYX 9SM. “I’m from Northern Ireland,” Anderson explained of his interest in Moncler over Zoom, “so I’m very used to the cold.” Many of the collection’s 31 looks (around 180 pieces in total) were references to Anderson’s own prolific archive as a designer for his namesake brand (he is also the creative director of Loewe) — details such as floppy, wide-brimmed hats and oversize chains for the handle of a bag might look a little familiar — but all are rendered in Moncler’s signature nylon material to keep out the frost. “I’ve always loved puffers,” he added. “I love the shape they create. I’ve always wanted to play with it in my own collections. There’s nothing better than volume. It boosts the theatrics, and you can build character out of it and create a kind of abstraction.” Not one to shy away from bold colors, Anderson chose to work with canary yellow, silky pink, red and a bright sky blue for many of the items. A long vest printed with mallards and other pond fauna, with matching boots and bag, also stands out. Anderson acknowledged it was his way of exploring nostalgia: “I was thinking of summer camp, and a kid’s sleeping bag.” Both playful and dramatic, Anderson’s cerebral collection promises to not just keep you warm but make you think. moncler.com.

Try This

Frederic Malle’s Perfume Spray Bottle for the Home

Editions de Parfums Frédéric Malle Cafe Society Perfume Gun.Courtesy of Frédéric Malle

By Iva Dixit

“In perfume, when you work for the home, you want reassurance, comfort, cleanliness and luxury,” said the fragrance impresario Frédéric Malle as we commiserated over our mutual fidgetiness with life under quarantine. Malle’s recently resurrected room spray Perfume Gun, a hefty objet of smooth ceramic — cheekily made to emulate a bottle of Windex — is just the indulgence now that many of us are spending our working hours at home. It comes in two scents, both taken from Malle’s popular line of candles: Cafe Society and Jurassic Flower. The former is an earthy tribute to the 1950s Paris of Malle’s childhood, reconstructed from his fond memories of evenings at his parent’s Rive Gauche apartment, the air tinged with a Guerlain home fragrance that is no longer manufactured. The latter is extracted from the white flowers of the magnolia tree, offering a summery citrus scent graced by notes of peach and apricot. Before the pandemic, I would spray Malle’s perfumes on myself as a form of armor before stepping out into the world. Now, spritzing my living room with Cafe Society each morning is a private ritual, like invoking an invisible talisman that promises to ward off the restlessness of this seemingly endless stretch of indoor confinement. $195, fredericmalle.com.

From T’s Instagram

#CraftingWithT: Painted Lampshades

The designer Cressida Bell paints a stem onto a leaf using opaque black paint. You can use a black felt-tip pen for this, if you find it easier.Nicole Bachmann

Although the vast majority of the changes brought on by the pandemic have been difficult, if not heartbreaking, some slivers of sunlight have made this unnerving period rewarding in small ways. When we have less to do in the outside world, our interior world can become richer, and we can develop skills we’ve always wanted to explore. With this in mind, we present the first installment of #CraftingWithT, a new series of crafty how-tos, for which we call upon expert makers in the hopes of providing not only instruction but a temporary respite from the noise of the world. First up is a column on painting a lampshade — a project that will only occupy an afternoon but yield a tangible result, one that will add instant flair and cheeriness to any room. Your guide will be the London artist, textile designer and lamp and shade decorator Cressida Bell, who descends from a long line of members of the Bloomsbury Group, the early 20th-century philosophical and aesthetic movement led by British artists, writers and thinkers, and whose hand-painted shades bear certain Bloomsbury signatures — bright colors and modern, pared-down forms — mixed with her love of naturalism and whimsy. Check out Bell’s step-by-step guide on how to recreate one of her signature motifs on tmagazine.com, and follow us on Instagram.

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