[cpkpad]

Boston is one of the original Uber markets. The market is as saturated as it gets. I talk to drivers. They're much better off. It's like night and day. Driving for medallion owners was sub-minimum wage, they'd sometimes lose money, and the shifts were insanely long. A driver on their 14th hour driving a given day wasn't a safe driver.

At least in Boston, a medallion loan or an individual medallion owner driving a cab are a complete myth and fabrication. A medallion costs $700,000. No one with three quarters of a million dollars is driving a cab. Investors buy medallions and lease them out. Poor immigrants lease medallions and cabs, and scrape by. Medallion owners, calling themselves small business owners, aren't even required to provide minimum wage or basic health care. It's a horribly exploitative business, and I'm glad to see it go under.

Subsidies or bailouts for medallion owners seem like a horrible idea to me, at least in a town like Boston. In a city where lower-class individuals owned medallions, it would be another story.