Posted by aspenmayer 3 days ago
Like "No Tips".
Pay your employees, pay your taxes.
No nonsense on dividing tips between people that I did not interact with, minimum tipping, or with automated machines.
Tipping also means that if I want to know how much I'll spend in your restaurant I will have to decide how much I tip even before I walk in.
This is all just tax evasion with extra steps, enabling exploiting of people that have less contractual power.
Now that I have given up on that battle I do scale my tip for how good the service is.
In my area, the min wage is somewhere around $15/hr. Anything less than 20% tip on top of that $15/hr is considered stingy. The restaurants that do a service charge instead of tipping add 22% and sometimes a 4% fee to pay for employee health insurance.
Anymore, we really only dine out for special occasions or a monthly visit to our favorite spot.
If tipped employees are just earning that standard minimum wage and nobody tips them, then they just get the minimum wage. I can see situations where they'd be pretty mad -- there are a lot of restaurants where tipped employees make more than the standard minimum wage.
All of that said, I believe that tipping is horseshit and should go away. But I can't protest it by refusing to tip unless I want to punish the wrong people.
It is true that in some contexts, a good waiter elevates the experience. But in most restaurants the waiter adds nothing to my experience. If anything they're a hindrance. So I'm very much in favor of forced tip sharing with the people who actually made the food I enjoyed.
Absolutely. As a brit used to waiters and waitresses in the UK and Europe generally leaving me alone until I ask for something, I find the constant fawning interruptions from American service staff cringe-inducing.
A refreshing aspect of US culture is the lack of a historical class system and associated cultural baggage that we have in the UK. So I find it so strange that once you step into a restaurant you are forced into this weird servant/master cosplay where you dictate the server's livelihood based on how you happen to be feeling that day and the resulting whim of your pen writing on the tip line.
Japan?
Japanese people are offended, so don’t do it there. People in other places tend to be flattered, so you can, occasionally. But the idea that you should pay your employees a living wage has been a well established principle since the 19th century.
And yet, in today’s America that’s the major economic policy of the leader of the Republican Party.
A actual far left policy would be a collectivised or cooperative workplaces that don't rely on tips to subsidies salaries.
You have too much partisanship on your mind.
Harris (Democratic party leader) endorsed it: https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/12/politics/taxes-on-tips-elimin...
But it also expands the idea that the customer/buyer has financial power over the server by encouraging a tipping culture.
Donald Trump and his sons have repeatedly said that don't pay on contracts when they view the work is poorly done or insufficient, in response to claims of non-payment.
Encouraging tipping makes such "payment discretion" easier.
After all, the government taking ownership of industries matches common definitions of Socialism.
> Charter of Labour, 1927
> He recognised private enterprises as the most efficient, gaining him support from rich industrialists.
> The charter also stated that the state could take control of, manage or encourage enterprises that were considered inefficient.
Socialism isn't "what I like" and "things I don't like aren't socialism", it's a much more generic term.
Hell, even back in 1931, people knew the Nazi party was using false branding. You can see it with this anti-Hitler editorial cartoon [0], where Hitler is changing the emphasis of the party-name to schmooze up to different audiences.
Or remember that Night of the Long Knives [1] in 1934, where the Nazis murdered the "socialists."
[0] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jacobus_Belsen_-_Das...
It is a tale as old as time.
While doing so in an awful manner, the current administration is definitely getting things done.
I primarily blame Democrats for the current situation for they have been doing just an awful job of getting anything done or standing up to opposition, they are ineffective cowards and invited the current situation with their incompetence.
I agree with you that Democrats have been ineffective in opposing Republican policies but I think you've come to the wrong conclusion. When someone gets robbed I don't primarily blame them for being ineffective at securing their home, I blame the person who robbed them. Why wouldn't you primarily blame Republicans for pushing bad policies instead of Democrats for being bad at blocking them?
When government is doing a terrible job it loses the consent of the people and gets overthrown, usually by monsters. This is the problem with Democrats, they think they should continue to win, that they deserve to continue to win regardless of how they perform. Because they're right it is morally correct for them to continue winning.
THAT'S NOT HOW THE WORLD WORKS.
It is historically objectively true that governments failing to address the concerns of their people are replaced, usually by authoritarian autocrats. It's a pretty straightforward mechanism.
Democratic leaders in the party corrupted the process to put Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden on the presidential ticket. Democratic leaders in Congress failed to show any leadership, failed to address any problems, failed to stand up or take any sort of action that addressed meaningful problems in this country.
They created the environment for the right to fall off a cliff into extremism.
Instead of defending democracy they sat back and watched.
You've got hundreds of millions of people in this country, extremists are always going to exist. You can't pretend that they don't exist or hope and moralize and blame them for existing when their ideas get popular.
The ideas of the extreme right got popular because the ideas of the center and the left failed to convince enough people.
When my castle falls I'm not blaming the invading army, there's always going to be a new one testing my defenses. I'm blaming the castle guards.
This isn't the case of a poor defenseless victim of a senseless crime. This is the experts who should know better falling asleep at the wheel and intentionally ignoring reality because of their selfishness and stupidity.
1. Democrats in power could never do anything because Republicans could always block by virtue of having majority somewhere.
2. Republicans blocked everything they could, simply because the Democrats were in power.
3. Democrats then get blamed for not doing anything.
4. the current administration is getting something done, yes. Some things are down the wrong path and shouldn't be done. Some things are debatable but perhaps the right path but doing them in a stupid manner.
PS: supreme court isn't helping.
1. In 2016 Democrats choose a candidate based solely on internal party politics rather than to win an election, get routed by Trump
2. In 2024 Democrats choose a candidate based solely on internal party politics (letting Biden run) rather than to win an election, get routed by Trump
3. In 2025 Democrats try their best to put up a candidate for New York mayor based on internal party politics rather than to win an election
Gee, wonder what the pattern is here.
> supreme court isn't helping.
Similar patten here. How did the SC end up like this? If the roles were reversed, would R have done the same as D?
> 4. the current administration is getting something done, yes. Some things are down the wrong path and shouldn't be done. Some things are debatable but perhaps the right path but doing them in a stupid manner.
You really believe that if only D currently had a majority somewhere, the current gov wouldn't be doing most of the stuff it's doing?
1.5 In 2020 Democrats [did whatever and won the election].
So it's not all bad.
But yes, while my comment didn't go over their faults, the Democrats have plenty of their own too. But being blamed for doing nothing when you don't have the power is hardly their fault.
Ultimately, people in US politics on both sides are playing stupid games and winning stupid prizes.
In opposition Democrats are utterly failing to prevent the Republican agenda anywhere near the way Republicans prevented the Democratic agenda.
I would say it's embarrassing how badly my party has done but that underrates how I think their incompetence has put an extremely real risk of the republic falling into our imminent future.
For the millionth time:
In the US, our democracy is purposely built to give the minority party almost zero power. If you have less than half the votes in both houses, you can't do anything, full stop.
Go look at how often Democrats have actually won votes. Americans choose not to vote for democrats and then blame them for not having power.
It's ignorance.
Republicans have run this country for 90% of the past 50 years. The public institutions failing have been purposely meant to fail by purposeful sabotage by republican politicians, who openly describe their tactics and publicly boast about "starve the beast", and people STILL blame democrats.
It takes way more time, effort, and public goodwill to build up or reform US government institutions, by design than it takes to tear everything down.
If you are still blaming democrats, you are part of the problem. Blame the politicians who have been voted in, democratically given the reigns of power, and have used that power for 50 or more years to make things worse.
Add to that, republicans have held the majority of State governments for the past 20 years.
It's utterly INSANE the lengths people will go, the stupid rhetorical lies they will tell themselves just to not have to say "The republicans have actively harmed this country for 50 years"
The US system intentionally does not give the minority party any power.
No, it's not. Emphatically, demonstrably not.
Ignoring your other stuff about attempting to make the tired "Nazis were socialists, it's in their name, see?" argument, which is just Wolfgang-Pauli-levels of "not even wrong", the "z" in Nazi comes from the German pronunciation of "National".
https://chroniclesmagazine.org/society-culture/the-strange-o...
> The Z in Nazi is for "sozialistische" === socialist
by pointing out the Nazis were not, in fact socialist. They executed socialists and communists, but called themselves socialist in the same way the DPRK and PROC call themselves republics.
"not socialism" is nonsense by people who really like socialism, nazism was just a different flavor of socialism and saying otherwise has been part of the propaganda in favor of socialists for a century.
You can be nice and have a socialist society, but it's also a lot easier to have a dictator rise to power in a socialist society because it's easier to hijack the collectivist mindset into a collective with extreme loyalty to an autocrat. You just have to make them angry and afraid.
There's absolutely no good reason to ever make the statements you've made, outside of trying to make Nazis look better.
Nothing you said there is true.
> Were the Nazis socialist? https://www.britannica.com/story/were-the-nazis-socialists
Answer: "No."
> Were the Nazis socialist? https://www.abc.net.au/religion/nazism-socialism-and-the-fal...
Answer: "Any analysis of the electoral platforms, internal party dynamics and political actions of the Nazis between 1921 and 1945 makes this clear [that the Nazis were not socialist]. Perhaps the German Workers Party - the party of around 100 members led by Anton Drexler that preceded the Nazi Party (NSDAP) - might have sought to cobble authoritarian anti-capitalism (which is not the same as socialism) onto biological racism. The early, pre-Nazi party that Hitler joined toyed with forms of market control to benefit small businesses and to halt ostensible "foreign" - that is, Jewish - control over markets. But such dalliances would not last long."
> Were the Nazis socialist? https://www.csun.edu/~vcmth00m/NazismSocialism.html
Answer: "This is standard propaganda for Fox News and the Tea Party. . . . "National Socialism" includes the word "socialism", but it is just a word. Hitler and the Nazis outlawed socialism, and executed socialists and communists en masse, even before they started rounding up Jews. In 1933, the Dachau concentration camp held socialists and leftists exclusively. The Nazis arrested more than 11,000 Germans for "illegal socialist activity" in 1936. . . . In the 1930s and even beyond, nazism, in sharp contrast to socialism, was strongly supported by leading capitalists."
> Were the Nazis socialist? https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/02/05/right-need...
"The Nazis hated socialists."
Essentially, the name comes from a few socialists long before Hitler came to power, and the name just stuck even as non-socialists took over (early 30s) and began doing despicable things. It's a bit like saying "Johnson and Johnson is a company comprised of two individuals with the same last name" rather than acknowledging that's just the original name, long before it was rendered inaccurate.
Parent poster's explicit "two decades back" scale is entirely reasonable for the phenomenon they are pointing out.
American hypocrisy never fails.
And US still needs to protect x86/MS as best NSA source :) There is even "intel" right in the name ! ;) Also business and best and cheap compute cpus. I guess they need a bit of help until some patents go off...
And do not forget foundry with "photonics" tech cooperating with military...
Lack of wild and dumb capitalism is not automatically socialism.
And belive me: socialism is the TRASH - replacing private ownership destroy value and sensibility of any action.
Conservatives like it, because it is effectively a de minimus exemption on taxes, simplifying the tax collection process, and liberals like it because it results in more progressive taxes, with tip earners overrepresented amongst low-income earners.
A few lines of tax code means millions of people don't have to worry about unpredictable withholdings due to significant changes in tips from day to day, month to month, and year to year.
Also, what's sloppy about it? It's just a deduction for up to a maximum amount from tips, for a specified list of occupations, with the maximum decreasing as income increases above a specified level. That's pretty simple, as far as tax code goes. What do you think would be a less sloppy way of implementing it?
Yes. And a big round of applause to welcome Mr. Zohran Mamdani.
If I'm missing something help me out.
> Following the Civil War and the abolition of slavery, formerly enslaved Black workers were often relegated to service jobs (e.g., food service workers and railroad porters). However, instead of paying Black workers any wage at all, employers suggested that guests offer Black workers a small tip for their services. Thus, the use of tipping to pay a worker’s base wage, instead of as a bonus on top of employer-paid wages, became an increasingly common practice for service sector employment. In the early 20th century, these employers, who shared a common goal of keeping labor costs down and preventing worker organizing, formed the National Restaurant Association (NRA). Over the past century, the NRA has lobbied Congress to achieve these goals, first by excluding tipped occupations from minimum wage protections entirely, and later by establishing permanent subminimum wages for tipped workers (One Fair Wage 2021).
Even worse example would be "Why can't I tip a police officer? ;)"
(0) which is to say, much higher (1) a propaganda term if there ever was one. work one shift as a waiter and tell me it take no skill afterwards! (2) $2.13 barring state-level increases over the federal minimum, to satisfy the pedants
When my grandpa was in the hospital towards the end of his life, the nurses let him lay in his own piss for half a day before doing anything about it. We gave them an envelope with a generous "tip", and after that they started paying much closer attention to my grandpa.
Many people give a few thousand USD cash to the midwife and the doctor after delivering their baby.
Service industries have an advantage in being short cycle interactions, so even small amounts of social gratuity can be effectively monetised. There're also much more public so other people can see our generosity / stinginess.
It sounds like a win for the employee, "ah but you don't need to pay tax on your tips". But in reality it's government saying "The company you work for owes you nothing, take it from the customer".
