This is old news from Monday which I didn't have time to blog about.
Of course I can't help thinking about those people I know who have taken up driving a cab. Some of them are my neighbors. I often thought it must be they have lost their jobs. At least this is true for Gintai the good blogger.
What do 100,000 taxi licences mean? My gut feel is that the number will grow bigger. Taxi driving is a safety net of sorts for many people. We have read some of their stories in the media. Very few started driving a cab as their first job. Lots of licence holders see it as unemployment insurance. It is very short term thinking and naturally you don't make long term plans when you are not even financial secure in the short term. I bet almost none of them imagine that driverless cars will eventually feature on our roads and we wouldn't need professional drivers then. All these drivers would be older and what would they do? Go into the security business? Even there intelligent CCTVs would reduce the number of people needed. I think they will all end up looking to the government for help. And what is the government doing? Wasting time on scenario planning?
To me at the very least all these taxi licence holders should keep themselves fit and healthy. Without health nobody can lend you a helping hand.
I have the feeling many take on a taxi licence so they can have the use of a car while making some income from it. Must be a lucrative alternative to pay all those hefty road tax, COE and whatever they impose to make people who really need a car find it impossible
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