You may have missed it, but my grandparent's comment - and my reply - were regarding driverless cars. There is no driver making $7/hour in an autonomous driverless car. (Off-topic aside: no taxi driver makes $7/hour). There's a reason an easy trip costs $50-80 in a taxi, and it has nothing to do with human labor or maintenance of the car. A driverless vehicle will not have to make $100+/hour to make up for maintenance costs.
Nor do driverless cars have to make up for "idle time". The only legitimate counter argument as to why a taxi should earn as much as they do is that they sit around not making any money for 10-60 minutes at a time. However, that goes away with driverless cars, and any excuse to charge exorbitant prices the way taxis do completely vanishes.
The real question is why work for so little money? The federal minimum wage is $7.25, tipped employees can make less per hour but only if the tips exceed the minimum wage for that time, but that isn't the real wage floor consider Walmart[0] has a minimum wage of $10.00 nationally and the average time between hire and promotion(with raise) is 3 months with an average fulltime compensation of $13.38 an hour. Construction labor, house cleaning, call centers and even dishwashing in non chain restaurants tends to pay similarly, I really don't know why anyone would make the minimum wage for any extended period of time, nor how employers offering it manage to find anyone given the competition.
I think the issue is I and my peers never really received any education about how to make it in the world (outside of simply "go to college"). If you are working a minimum wage or low paying job you really have two jobs the second being constantly searching for and applying to better opportunities.
Also I suspect another issue is the cliffs for government benefits. If you work between 45 - 60 hours a week for $12 - $13 an hour like I did a few years ago you aren't exactly well off yet programs like Obamacare will fine you for not buying health insurance that you can't really afford. Similarly free clinics will turn you away and I wasn't able to find a single aid program that you would qualify for except about $20 a month in food stamps. I figured out the costs once and there are a great many situations where a rational actor would simply work less or for less money and do better economically.
Yep, wages don't amount to everything. I don't know how Walmart is nowadays, but a few years ago I had a few friends working at one being stiffed an hour or two underneath the weekly "full time" amount so they didn't need to keep up with certain benefits. And making them work unpaid overtime and bullying them into not reporting it or clocking in.
People bring up legal recourse for these situations, but realistically, it's very scary when you're in that scenario and have to actually deal with getting underpaid or not getting paid for a while but having your dignity.
About the tipped wages mentioned a couple comments up, from my experience working delivery, that's a great way to get yourself fired. Because I guarantee you all the employees won't go in together on saying it, you're basically telling the management "I don't get tipped as much as everyone else" which is great grounds for poor performance, it's a catch-22.
Nor do driverless cars have to make up for "idle time". The only legitimate counter argument as to why a taxi should earn as much as they do is that they sit around not making any money for 10-60 minutes at a time. However, that goes away with driverless cars, and any excuse to charge exorbitant prices the way taxis do completely vanishes.