Ben Gilbert: belief

Transcript context

…History repeats itself over and over again. But the reality is, they were not employees. They were essentially independent contractors. By the day, they get charged 25¢ a day for a uniform rental fee. They got charged 10¢ a day for a "brass polishing fee," and then they also had to buy their own gasoline. I think I've seen that brass polishing fee on my Uber receipts from time to time. Totally, it's amazing. This is 1907. They strike, and this is the beginning of the illustrious history of labor issues in the taxi industry. We fast forward a couple of decades, moving quickly here. Something else that is going to get mirrored again later on in the episode. In 1929, the stock market crash happens and the Great Depression begins. Now what happens when this happens? In the Great Depression, people all over the country lose their jobs. They're looking for work, part time work, anything to make some money to get by. What is a relatively flexible, easy to start, low amount of training job that you can do especially in New York City? You can become a cab driver. This becomes the backup job for a lot of these people who lost their jobs on Wall Street or in other industries in the stock market crash in the Depression, so much so that car dealers can't sell cars to people who are buying them for their personal luxury transportation vehicles. They start marketing cars to these newly unemployed as job creators. Buy a car, get a job. You can start driving your own taxi cab.…

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