America Would Happily Pay Uber An Extra $7 Billion

The sky is dumping freezing rain, it’s 11:30 at night, and you’re standing on a street corner 15 miles from home. You open your Uber app and see that the trip is going to cost you roughly $50, as prices are surging 200 percent above normal. But you summon the car anyways. In fact, you might not have hesitated to go as high as $100, just to get dry in that comprising moment.

Economists would call that $50 difference—between what you pay and what you’re willing to pay—a “consumer surplus.” They see it as a hard representation of Uber’s value and utility to you, as if you’ve pocketed $50 in benefits on an otherwise wet and miserable day. (Hooray—kind of.)