Here's something that shocked me while I was taking a cab just the other day.

I was on my way to my office at the HDB Hub, and I flagged a taxi by the road.
I didn't have enough cash with me, and I was too lazy to go withdraw some more money from the nearby ATM machine, so I asked the driver if he could charge the fare to my MasterCard.

The driver hesitated. "Er... actually, you can. But do you really have to pay by MasterCard? Can you pay by cash instead?"

I thought his hesitance was because he didn't want to have the hassle of operating the credit card reader; I understand that it can be a pain sometimes to operate it. When the signal's poor, the transaction sometimes can't get through, or the printer might experience a paper jam, and nobody really knows what to do about that when we're waiting for the reciept. I've met with boo-boos like that before in the past, yet I wanted to be sure, so I asked him.

"Not really," he said a little sheepishly, "I actually don't have enough cash with me to pay for my cab rental, and I am already a few days late. I can still charge to your credit card, but if possible, I'd like to be paid in cash."

I agreed and he drove me to the nearby ATM machine, where I withdrew some money for my fare.

But, whoa! What a revelation! Does this mean that this guy is running his job on a deficit?

While I was in my late teens, I used to run low on cash and would squeeze myself really dry trying to pay for my mobile phone bills. Sometimes I don't pay in time, and my line gets terminated until I raise enough money to pay up. So I know how he'd feel. But that was in the past, and I was young without any financial obligations.

Yet here is a middle aged man, well into his 40s, and as I later found out, has 2 kids and a wife to feed, and he doesn't have enough money to pay for his cab rental. If his entire family relies on him for money, what would happen to them if every bit of his profit goes into paying the rent, and none of it goes to his livelihood? It chills me to imagine what life would be like for his family.

I've heard stories before about how the taxi rentals have gone up, and taxi drivers sometimes do not make enough to pay the rental on time. However, I didn't think that they could be as tight with cash at this.

In the past, taxi driving was a viable income alternative for people who wanted to be self-employed. They worked at their own time, and as I understand, can still make as much as S$2000 - S$4000 on a good month. It was also a good backup plan for people who lost their jobs and needed to replace their income in a hurry. So lots of people from different working classes got a taxi license, for those "rainy days". I even knew of ex-directors of companies who are driving taxis today.

Today, in Singapore, there has been a sharp increase in the number of taxis on the road, and over the last few years, more taxi companies have joined in the fray. I take the taxi alot, and its sometimes suprising for me to find taxi drivers who used to have nice cushy jobs in an executive position, now driving people around for a living because the most recent economic crisis came along and took their jobs away.

However, veteran taxi drivers who's been in the trade for more than 10, 20 years have said that driving no longer earned them as much as it used to. I imagine it was because there were so many retrenchees in the last economic crisis, and everyone has decided to become a cab driver to replace their income quickly, that the market share has been split so widely that no one really makes a good living from it anymore.

Here's what taxi driving is possibly like right now: working for really long hours, for really low income.

As it is, the times are a-changing, and what was a good idea in the past may not necessarily be a good idea today. People can stick to the old ways and see what comes. But in this way, they surrender their power to shape their own lives to circumstances, and that can be very frustrating when things don't turn out the way you want it to. Otherwise, they can learn to make new decisions based on new situations happening today. People sometimes call this "adapting to change" :)

And so, I gave the taxi driver my card. "If you want to make an extra $2000-$3000 a month, do give me a call." I told him. I wanted to be of service, to help him out of his situation, so I gave him the offer. But he has to make the decision himself: the rest is up to him.