From The Fiscal Times:

Unfortunately, the United States is far from immune from this political favoritism, though thankfully the experience is not quite so extreme. The R Street Institute, in an assessment of taxi and car service regulations in 50 U.S. cities, found that every city had laws that hindered equal competition. Shockingly, Washington, D.C., which has a history of taxi corruption, even considered a law that would have required car services like Uber to charge a minimum fare at least five times larger than that charged by taxis. Citing the D.C. Council’s proposal, Mercatus Center Senior Research Fellow Matt Mitchell described it this way: “In a spectacular show of candor, the legislation included language stating that the rationale is to ensure that Uber ‘does not directly compete with or undercut taxicab service.’”

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