Monday, January 16, 2017

Surcharge Or Tax?

The Atlanta airport, run by the City of Atlanta is making honest operations of Uber and Lyft but requires a $2.35 "Security Surcharge" for the honor. The publicly aired propaganda claims this is for those services that "use private background checks instead of a state fingerprint check."

This is kind of BS that only a government bureaucracy can toss out and one must wonder if they think the public will believe it or they just don't care. Probably the latter because the lie is so easily exposed.

During the negotiations it was revealed that medallion wielding cabbies don't have these state checks either but somehow they don't represent sufficient security risk to warrant this "surcharge." And just what additional cost is incurred by the airport when the Uber driver does a pickup? And why is that cost based on the number of passengers? And how is that risk mitigated when it is a drop-off? The answers to these questions make no sense because the fiction around justifying this "surcharge" is just that. A fiction.

And politicians wonder why there is so little public trust in government.