
Taxi-Driver Suicides Are a Warning - acdanger
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/06/taxi-driver-suicides-are-a-warning/561926/?single_page=true
======
nickles
According to the linked article [0] there have been 5 taxi driver suicides
over a period of 5 months. Annualized, that is 12 per year, assuming a
constant rate. The article states there are 180,000 taxi drivers in NYC. Given
these numbers, the annualized rate per 100,000 taxi drives is 6.7 suicides.

While each of these deaths is tragic -- and more resources should be dedicated
to preventing future ones -- it appears that the media is promoting a
narrative not supported by statistical evidence. Taxi driver suicides occur at
a lower rate than New York's 8.1 per 100,000 people and even lower than the
national rate (13.26) or the overall male rate (~23-27) [1].

It may seem callous to make these observations; however, discouraging such
narratives is critical to avoiding suicide contagions [2], which are very real
and dangerous phenomena.

[0] [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/27/nyregion/taxi-driver-
suic...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/27/nyregion/taxi-driver-suicide-
nyc.html)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_the_United_States](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_the_United_States)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copycat_suicide](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copycat_suicide)

~~~
nscalf
This exactly. There is an epidemic of suicides and mental health problems in
this country. While I love seeing that people are addressing these problems,
lets not allow simple narratives to muddy the waters.

~~~
xapata
> epidemic of suicides and mental health problems

Especially after all the re-definitions for what "mental illness" means, and
the development of drugs to treat them. I take a cynical view.

~~~
319206781093846
Indeed diagnostic criteria have changed and the number of people who can
afford medical care has increased, so even if it was true that mental health
problems have increased you couldn't compare so easily old and new data. New
diagnostic criteria however don't influence the 'diagnosis' of suicide so, in
my opinion, comparing old and new numbers should be ok.

~~~
xapata
Suicide rates have increased? That's news to me. I'm skeptical.

------
xapata
> We badly want to believe that we still live in a non-zero-sum nation, in
> which good-paying jobs for low-skill workers are abundant, and opportunities
> for advancement are always just around the corner. Instead we have taxi
> drivers who are being driven to suicide because they can’t bear the
> competition from slightly more desperate people who want the little that
> they now have.

It's common sense that, even if "the market" will adjust and those displaced
workers will change skills, that adjustment isn't instantaneous. Thus
unemployment insurance, etc. The trouble is those taxi drivers weren't
employees. The US social contract is almost entirely implemented through the
relationship of employee to corporate behemoth. Since that's dissolved, so too
has the mechanism for softening the impact of economic change.

> And all this is unfolding at a moment when the labor market is the tightest
> it has been since the turn of the century

This "tightness" is misleading, because labor is less collective than last
century. The low unemployment rate has not caused higher wages (in most
fields) like it used to.

------
mike-cardwell
The entire premise/point of this article seems to be that there has been an
increase in the suicide rate, but then offers no evidence to support that.

The closest they come to offering evidence is the statement "Since December,
there has been a rash of apparent suicides among the city’s taxi drivers",
with a link to a NY times article where there is also _no evidence_ of an
increase or any information whatsoever about what the normal rate has been
over the past 20/30 years.

Is this what passes for journalism?

~~~
xapata
No, that's the excuse to write the article. The point seemed to be to discuss
the low-skill labor market. While the excuse was flimsy, the point was well-
made.

~~~
mike-cardwell
People will walk away from that article thinking that the suicide rate among
taxi drivers in NY is high and that it has increased. Both things the article
has not offered any evidence for, and which by the looks of things, are
probably untrue.

~~~
xapata
Funny, my immediate assumption was that it was a bogus claim.

Most "news" about some uptick in a rare thing in a small subpopulation is just
noise. It's like reporting on which city has the highest cancer rate. Of
course it's some tiny town where the small sample size causes some outlier.

------
AnthonyMouse
The true cause of this is cost disease. Housing, healthcare and education have
exploded in cost. So it's no longer possible to work 40 hours at an unskilled
job during the day to pay the cost of getting an education at night, because
you have to work two jobs just to pay for housing and healthcare. Leaving no
time, much less money, to go to school and get out of that situation.

This can't be solved with subsidies. That's half of how we got here to begin
with -- offer to loan students $5000/semester and the price of school goes up
by $6000/semester, because it's easy to sell a ten dollar bill for $14 when
the government is paying the first $5.

We need to reduce actual costs so that people can afford things again.
Increase the housing supply, eliminate medical and insurance bureaucracy,
streamline the process for learning a trade and starting a small business.

So that people can work an unskilled job _temporarily_ , instead of getting
stuck there forever because they have to keep running faster just to stay in
the same place.

------
hprotagonist
_The taxi driver seems gloomy. Salim stares at his face in the mirror as he
speaks, watching the ifrit’s dark lips.

“They believe that we grant wishes. Why do they believe that? I sleep in one
stinking room in Brooklyn. I drive this taxi for any stinking freak who has
the money to ride in it, and for some who don’t. I drive them where they need
to go, and sometimes they tip me. Sometimes they pay me.”

His lower lip began to tremble. The ifrit seemed on edge. “One of them shat on
the backseat once. I had to clean it before I could take the cab back. How
could he do that? I had to clean the wet shit from the seat. Is that right?"_

~~~
peterwwillis
Welcome to driving taxis. People have been dealing with the exact same
problems for about 400 years, since at least the hire coaches of London.
Charles Dickens interviews a cab driver (1860): [http://www.taxi-
library.org/dickens.htm](http://www.taxi-library.org/dickens.htm)

It sucks that taxi drivers are getting screwed by the system they bought into,
but if they can get out from under their debt and get into Uber or Lyft, that
might protect them from some of these problems. But obviously the "getting out
from under the debt" part is pretty difficult.

~~~
mundo
> if they can get out from under their debt and get into Uber or Lyft, that
> might protect them from some of these problems

They've lost their career due to new technology, and the solution is to drive
cars for a company trying to create self-driving cars?

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Torwald
The problems are made by the state with it's unnecessary regulations of the
market.

