Maybe we should not have tips? There is no actual need or advantage to giving people tips, and there are plenty of countries where tipping is not common (including some where cash is still favored over electronic payments). Why not just pay people a fair wage that they can live on?
I wish there was a list of Bay Area restaurants that don't require tipping. I discovered one last Friday and look forward to returning for the good food, service, and fair wages.
Sadly this one only covers Sweden but you can look up what restaurants have signed the contract with the union. This guarantees fair wages and working conditions. The law in Sweden is pretty free so there exists unions that are supposed to talk to the companies and get an agreement on what is fair both ways.
Ah it's the Japanese chain taking its operational playbook from HQ (I think, though it'd be interesting if hey deliberately made a decision to exclude tipping)
I'm impressed by the pervasiveness of the belief that people won't, for the most part, try to do good work simply for the sake of taking pride in their work. It's such a remarkably pessimistic way to regard other people.
In the US, employees must still be paid minimum wage. Depending on the state, an employer may count tips toward this amount. If an employee reports $0 in tips, the employer must pay them $7.25/hr. While I would like to believe that what you say is true, I find it hard to be true.
I think the bigger issues are at play whether it's is the fact that minimum wages need to be adjusted, a more modern solution is needed to replace minimum wages, whether a job in question is simply suitable for a human to perform (in this case a doorman, they don't really have them where I live so I don't know their purpose), or maybe children (even adults) need to be taught better money management skills.
I personally think that an area for quick improvement would be helping folks with managing their money. Anecdotally, I know people who haven't paid more than the minimum on student loans because they that they will automatically be forgiven in 20 years. On a $40k loan, they have easily squandered away a down payment on a house or money they could have otherwise put in their 401k.
That is interesting. As I understand it now, the way tips are factored into wages, it benefits the employee more so than the employer. Society loses because the employee is supposed to report tips so they are taxed, the employer loses because they still have to pay minimum wage, and the employee wins because they are paid minimum wage and get their tips tax free.
Maybe I'm just being dense, but how would this elimination be beneficial?
> As I understand it now, the way tips are factored into wages, it benefits the employee more so than the employer. Society loses because the employee is supposed to report tips so they are taxed, the employer loses because they still have to pay minimum wage, and the employee wins because they are paid minimum wage and get their tips tax free.
Employers of workers in customarily tipped jobs can and do use tips as a performance metric, so if the employer has to top up your tips to minimum wage, it probably also means you are also losing your job. This also motivates overreporting tips.
>...and the employee wins because they are paid minimum wage and get their tips tax free.
Not tax free. Your employer reports 8% of your total receipts to the IRS as income. It's likely less than you make in tips, but you still pay some tax.
1. 7.25 is not enough to live on. And the ability to pay less with the assumption that there will be tips does not make it better. Especially considering that in many states you can require tip-pooling, effectively removing the stated point of tips in the first place (to motivate better service). Nor does this really address the problem of tipping as a cultural phenomenon, it just doesn't really need to exist.
2. The "teach better money management skills" has really nothing to do with this problem, but is continually trotted out as some sort of solution. If you don't have enough money, there's no "managing" it. This isn't an avocado toast problem, it's a wage issue.
Additionally, the incentives are a moving target. For example, with the federal government threatening to end forgiveness plans, can you blame someone for not taking advantage of the option with the potential they will be stuck with the bag, plus interest? Same goes for home ownership incentives, charitable giving incentives, and so on. If the incentive could be gone one day due to the massively complicated and political game that is the tax code, I can hardly blame someone who doesn't have money for a financial adviser for not taking advantage of those programs.
I made no claim that $7.25/hr is a livable wage. That is the current federal minimum. Employers are required to pay the minimum, if they aren't, they're breaking the law.
Money management is certainly no silver bullet, however, it plays a role. If you net $13k/year then you have to manage that money so you don't spend more than $13k/year. Most would agree that it is extremely tough to live on $13k/year. No matter the difficulty the money still has to be managed.
In my student loan example, if you have a loan schedule of 30 years @ 6% you will pay $46k in interest on a $40k loan when only paying the minimum of $240. That same loan if paid off @ $440/mo, nets you $33k over that time period. Here you would manage your money so that you can pay as much as possible on that loan as often as possible.
Making more money doesn't solve money issues, it just covers them up. Saying that there nothing to be done because the amount spent is greater than the amount earned seems rather foolish. I'm not saying that in any given situation there exists an outcome where you can manage spending less than you earn, but managing money wisely will always improve the situation.
$7.25 is not meant to be enough to live on. People were not meant to make a living flipping burgers. Its an entry level job. Minimum wage is where you start, not where you end.
The problem is that calculating such an amount is more than tricky. Consider that inflation changes "constantly" or whether newly enacted bills are factored in. From my quick research, it appears as though the affordable care act made the assumption that minimum wage already factored in mandatory health insurance.
Now consider what does it mean to say a person is "living." Are you living if you have a roof over your head and food in your stomach? Is the food being considered, the same meal morning noon and night, or a variety of foods? If you are making minimum wage are you eligible for SNAP (a.k.a.food stamps)?
What about access to the Internet, OTA television, radio broadcasts, or entertainment of some sort? Biologically none of these are needed to live, but I bet an argument could be made.
I agree with you that no one should work for minimum wage, always the maximum. I think simply raising the minimum wage amount is treating symptoms of bigger issues.
I waited tables while in college and made $2.10/hr +tips, which usually gave me $80-90 after tipping-out the bar/'bussers.' I also currently frequent a few bars, and these folks normally net $200+/shift. The lack of guaranteed wages, also allows them to under-report their earning WRT taxes.
Tipping in the service industry in the US is part of the culture, which has been historically difficult to change by declaration.
>In the US, employees must still be paid minimum wage. Depending on the state, an employer may count tips toward this amount. If an employee reports $0 in tips, the employer must pay them $7.25/hr. While I would like to believe that what you say is true, I find it hard to be true.
Sure this is technically correct according to the way the law is written but it ignores the reality which is that a large group of criminals ignore the law on a daily basis and face no consequences. Wage theft is MASSIVE and widespread across America especially for low wage workers, who often rely on tips (but it even effects high wage workers too!). More money is stolen in the US through wage theft than all other methods combined. Business owners (especially small business owners) steal from their employees by not paying them when they quit (oh I guess we just lost your last paycheck, sorry, we'll get it to you soon I promise), stealing tips, intimidating employees into not reporting wages under the minimum, refusing to pay legally mandated overtime or refusing to allow legally required breaks or a variety of other ways owners can use their power to illegally extract unpaid labor from their employees.
The solution is to abolish tips and require business owners pay their workers fair wages, or help the workers bargain collectively to ensure this themselves.
Not in the US, but these have happened to me in my last three jobs (mostly in Dunedin, New Zealand):
* steal from their employees by not paying them when they quit
* intimidating employees into not reporting wages under the minimum
* refusing to pay legally mandated overtime
* refusing to allow legally required breaks
I'm owed between $20,000 and $40,000 by two (New Zealand) employers in particular, who refused to pay for or record my extra hours worked, and one of them threatened me with physical harm if I went to the government watchdog.
One of them was a small business, the other a multimillionaire. It was the latter who paid less than the minimum every day I worked, and demanded I work as many free hours as he could force me to. It's not just physical harm with him, because he also promised to destroy my reputation around town if I so much as stepped out of line.
Yeah, I'm a sucker for not resigning on the spot. I know.
>In the US, employees must still be paid minimum wage. Depending on the state, an employer may count tips toward this amount. If an employee reports $0 in tips, the employer must pay them $7.25/hr. While I would like to believe that what you say is true, I find it hard to be true.
You are beyond naive if you really think that because these laws are on the books they’re not being routinely and widely flouted or ignored.
If you really find it hard to be true that employers will try to spend less on employees, you’re not capable of participating in this discussion because you lack even basic familiarity with the real world.
Yeah, I had a few thousand dollars in unpaid overtime withheld by an employer; the Department of Labor helped me file a complaint, assigned me a representative, ignored all of my phone calls, and I never heard from them again.
I tried to get a labor lawyer to intervene but the total losses weren't enough for them to bother litigating. They sent a demand letter and it was ignored.
Next option would have been small claims but I didn't have the time or inclination to fight it anymore at that point. I can't imagine a waitress would fare much better.
As long as a shady employer keeps their take below $10k, it seems they are untouchable.
I'm sorry to hear about your experience, but I don't think that it represents the nation at large. Here is why...
According to the most recent census data I could find (2015), there are approx. 27M businesses in the US[1]. Assuming half those businesses are wage thieves, that would mean 13.5M businesses are currently in violation of the the law. The DOL can place a $10k sanction on the business owner for a first infraction[2]. This would then mean that the US gov't stands to make $135B by placing sanctions on these businesses. To catch each business, let's say it costs the DOL $2500/business. After looking into each and every business, they would run a total of $67.5B. Now they have made $67.5B after all expenses have been made. To put that in perspective, the US gov't has put aside $9.7B for the DOL in 2018[3]. As you might figure on your own, $67.5B is nearly 7 (6.9587628865979381443298969072165 if you want to be super accurate) times the DOL's 2018 budget. Now if you mean to tell me that the gov't is going to leave that sort of money on the table, then you and I need to figure out how we benefit from this.
You might well be thinking something along the lines of "The gov't is inefficient, etc. There is no way they could reclaim all that." You're right this is definitely a perfect world scenario, but even if they could only claim 1%. That still makes up a 10th of next years DOL budget. For the gov't , these numbers only get better as more businesses commit these crimes.
Now we have to look at this from the perspective of a business. Again there is only roughly 27M in the US. To make it fiscally responsible to take the $10k bet of sorts the business must save at least $10k/violation, obviously. For the sake of this argument let's say violations are handed out per person per month. ((404)7.25)+(((3024)-(404))(7.251.5)) = $7250, that is how much you make at minimum wage including overtime... If you worked literally every hour of every day for a month (30 days, technically). So if we assume the business thinks a person is going to report the violation, they are better off just paying minimum wage upfront. Let's reel this in a bit and say you work 40/wk/mo in overtime. ((404)7.25)+((404)(7.25*1.5)) = $2900. So now the business definitely comes out ahead. They would risk $7000 by trying to save, what, $1000? Remember, this is an extreme case, not everyone is going to work 80 hours a week. Even if a business isn't more likely to hire another person to cover your 40 hours of overtime a week, they can only save $580/mo compared to the $10k/violation.
I know that there are businesses that will literally do anything under the sun to make a buck, but I find it hard to believe that even half of businesses would go against some of the math above.
Instead of just making guesses about what the hypothetical payoff would be for a business, why not look at actual data?
A report from the Economic Policy Institute[1] found that minimum wage violations affected 17% of workers in the states surveyed (the ten most populous in the US) and averaged $3,300 per worker who was affected.
It's not that it would cost companies more. It's that companies would have to charge more up front.
Even if customers end up paying the same price in the end they are not thinking about the cost of the tip when ordering their food. They are just looking at the price on the menu.
Well, sure. But that feels like a bit of a dismissal of the issue. New tech has enabled our much more convenient cashless society, but it's left a gaping hole for certain members of that society. It doesn't seem unreasonable that tech might also think about ways to fix that problem too, rather than deferring the awkward stuff to someone/anyone else.
Tipping is a non-issue and I am more than happy to dismiss it; other developed nations get by without tipping, we can as well. New technology always forces some professions to change, and changing from a tip-based system to just having a higher base salary does not sound so terrible. Tips are nothing more than a way for business owners to justify paying their workers less.
I agree that there are problems with a cashless society. I just do not see the end of tipping as one of those problems.
I am sure that all the doormen, bartenders and the like out there will be very reassured to hear that them earning less money is a non-issue you are more than happy to dismiss.
> changing from a tip-based system to just having a higher base salary does not sound so terrible
Of course it doesn't. But that isn't what's happening. Instead, they get paid the same base salary and don't get tips. And the profound disinterest in problems like this is why more and more people resent Silicon Valley rather than look up to it.
It is not a tech problem and blaming the tech industry will not solve it. Employers should not be allowed to underpay their employees, regardless of what form of payment is commonly used. Blame lawmakers who refuse to raise the minimum wage and who continue allowing restaurants to pay below minimum wage because their waiters receive tips.
Why do people expect tech companies to fix this problem? Tech companies did not invent tipping and tech companies did not create a system where certain professions rely on tips.
Other industrialized countries are doing fine without tipping, and some of those countries still rely on cash. What do you think doormen and bartenders in those countries do?
I'm not suggesting that tech has to fix the problem, but that it should at the very least be interested in helping others solve the problem. Blame lawmakers? Absolutely. Why not actively lobby lawmakers, and work with them to change the law?
> tech companies did not invent tipping and tech companies did not create a system where certain professions rely on tips.
No, but they did break the existing model whereby workers received tips, without thought how for what an alternative looks like. And it happens time and time again, like enabling the gig economy without considering what happens to the benefits and job security of those forced into it. And each time the industry as a whole throws up its hands and says "society needs to fix it" rather than engaging proactively.
Like I said, people resent Silicon Valley. Maybe not the majority yet, but it's on the rise. Before long Silicon Valley will replace Wall Street in many people's perception, as it helps to concentrate wealth to the haves and away from the have-nots. Those of us working in the industry ought to be concerned about that.
A new technology can have many impacts on society. Are tech companies supposed to hold back on new ideas until every possible stakeholder has had a chance to weigh in? Is every negatively impacted stakeholder entitled to some kind of solution before new technologies are deployed?
The reason the tech industry will almost certainly not wind up with the negative image that financial companies suffer with is that people actually like the things new technologies do. People prefer Orbitz to dealing with travel agents. People prefer email to postal mail. People prefer downloading to buying CDs, and they prefered CDs to vinyl, and they preferred recorded music to buying sheet music and learning how to play an instrument. Despite decades of complaints by all these various affected stakeholders, people still have a positive opinion of the tech industry, because at the end of the day they see tangible improvements in their lives.
> Are tech companies supposed to hold back on new ideas until every possible stakeholder has had a chance to weigh in?
I did not propose this strawman at any point. I merely said that tech companies should be actively engaged in solving the follow on problems from their creations, not that they shouldn't be allowed to create things.
Why should tech companies be engaged in solving every follow-on problem? That is not how a market-based society like ours works, and it was a spectacular failure when we tried that approach with railroads (the history of Amtrak and Conrail is informative).
There are a few limited cases where it makes sense to force companies to deal with negative impacts of their technology -- environmental pollution comes to mind. For the most part, society simply has to adapt to change, because change is the story of human progress. Some jobs may be lost, some people may be inconvenienced, but saddling every innovator with the responsibility for those negative outcomes (yes, that is what it means to demand that they be "actively engaged" in finding the solution) will only serve to freeze our society in time.
"Hey! We created this great, convenient new method of paying for things, you should sign up to process all your payments through it"
"Wow, looks fantastic. I'm signed up. One problem, though: you can't tip people through it like you used to be able to."
"Oh, goodness, yes, that's a problem alright. A real bug in the system. Someone should do something about that. Anyway, I've got to go, good luck getting that fixed!"
Crossing the Atlantic does not mean it cannot be fought. In communist France, they organized a couple of strike-like episodes this year [1]. And I really hope this recent "auto-entrepreneur" status which is mostly used to bypass temporary worker laws eventually get repelled entirely.
The solution is not tipping, the solution is applying the law and closing loopholes.
Maybe we should keep cash and stop trying to kill it? So many think there is no value to a physical, untraceable, my-transaction-is-not-necessarily-logged money, so sad :/
That said, what makes you think having a cash-oriented society guarantees tipping? There are industrialized nations that still rely on cash but where tipping is not ingrained in the culture; my experience in Japan was that if I left a tip people would assume I had made an error in my arithmetic or forgot my change.
I agree that privacy is a problem with going cashless. Let's ignore tipping and instead focus on an actual problem.
Cash provides for people in a lot of ways that digital money can't or never will. Tipping, getting paid under-the-table, drug purchases... can digicash benefit all these people? Those groups should stay with cash, the amount of OpSec required for digital alternatives is too much...
Yes, digicash (more properly called "ecash" among researchers) is useful in every example you listed: it is anonymous and supports offline payments (i.e. direct payments between two parties).
Normal cash is also much easier to use, doesn't rely on any software needing to be installed (or a computer/network access in general) and offers a decent amount of deniable plausability too.
Why the obsession with replacing everything with technology when sometimes the old system works fine?
Cash cannot be used to pay websites/etc., and having a single method of paying is more convenient than having two methods. So the growth of online ordering essentially pushes people to use electronic payments of some kind, and as the number of online purchases increases so does the pressure to use electronic payments generally. Don't confuse ease-of-use in specific situations with ease-of-use generally.
The importance of this cannot be overstated. For a long time, cash tipping functioned as a tax dodge for a sizable number of people. In theory, anyone who receives tips is obligated to track and report them. In practice, it's very easy to dramatically under-report and the odds of an audit are minimal.
What cashless tipping does here is take away the ease of under-reporting.
My ability to choose whether to tip less for bad service is a way to encourage servers to give good service.
My experience traveling is that places like France with legally mandated tip amounts have very inconsistent service quality. It can be good, but it can also be very bad. And when a server decides to make your service bad, there is nothing that you can really do about it and nobody will care.
My experience in Japan was that the service quality was even better than in America, and if I left a tip they assumed I did not know how to do arithmetic or that I forgot my change. Culture is probably the more important factor in the quality of service, not the ability of customers to leave or refuse a tip.
Cultures differ even among "industrialized countries," so it makes little sense to compare them. Given your comments in this discussion, it is clear you have never worked in the service industry and you have little empathy for their issues.
In fact, my first job was a typical summer job in the service industry: I scooped ice cream at an ice cream store. There was a tip jar and our tips were pooled and divided by the hours we worked -- it was not much but it was something.
I would not have complained if there were no tips and our salaries were increased a bit to compensate.
No, I do not have a lot of empathy for people who are unwilling to accept change or who think that a company that introduced some new technology should be held responsible for how that technology personally affected them. I have no interest in freezing society in time and only allowing new ideas that have no negative impact on anyone to be put into practice.
> do not have a lot of empathy for people who are unwilling to accept change
As if you are going to change the tipping culture in the US?
I use cash because there are less fees to small business, and I like privacy. You are obviously free to participate in FB or whatever privacy-compromising activity you want
That may be. But it is still incredibly frustrating to have to reward the waiter for a terrible experience and literally have nothing that you can do about it.
That said, if Trump's proposed revision of regulations around tipping go through, I'm going to probably greatly cut back on tipping. It is one thing to reward the waiter. It is quite another to believe that the money is going to the owner of the restaurant.
"My steak arrived cold? Try paying your rent this month now!"
Unless you are an uncaring psychopath you should pay servers in the US for bad service as well - everyone should be paid for the labor they do. If they aren't doing an adequate job they should be reprimanded or fired. That's not your job though, that's their boss's job. You don't know if they are just having an off day or the problem you had was caused by someone else.
Furthermore, most places pool tips so you're probably docking the pay of a really good server.
But if I take my clothing to a drycleaner, and my clothing comes back torn due to their incompetence, I'm not expected to pay for the drycleaning. Ditto if the valet damages my car.
The fact that someone put time in does not entitle them to my money. If I receive something of value, I give something of value. If this makes me a person that you do not wish to know, then I'm happy that I don't know you because you sound like an unpleasant person for me to be around.
The difference, of course, being businesses account for mistakes in their profit margins as a cost of doing business and purchase insurance for large losses. A server is an employee.
And to that: a server is very rarely personally responsible for a bad experience. Restaurant service is a team effort and the service you get merely reflects how well management functions.
A small business usually does not have insurance for this, and the cost of making it right comes out of the owner's pocket.
Also while I can't speak to why other people don't tip, the reasons why I (very occasionally) don't are usually under the server's control. Even if the immediate cause of my unhappiness was not under their control, they had the option of acknowledging the problem and offering an apology. It takes a lot to lose my tip.
Not that I disagree with your sentiment, but you're only able to do this because this class of service providers can't effectively challenge your decision to withhold payment. If the damage is debatable (or pre-existing), the valet isn't going to sue you for his $10 tip.
Compare it to the business world, where if you ship a pallet of widgets and a few of them get damaged, you can't just tell UPS "you broke my shit, I'm not paying you." No, they delivered your shit, however subpar, so they expect payment for the trouble. If you keep withholding based on principle you'll find yourself blacklisted and have your account sent to collections.
If you get bad service, whether it's a rude waiter, cold/incorrect food or something else, the best and fairest course of action is to bring it to the manager's attention. They're usually pretty savvy about the real cause. But tipping a small amount just makes a waiter hate you.
If the contract has, "This is what I pay", I am willing to pay that. I agreed to it, it would be dishonest to do otherwise.
If there is no contract, I am free to choose whether or how much I pay. I err on the side of generosity. But if you spill my drink on my clothing, then fail to serve my child, then I see no reason why I should voluntarily reward your incompetence.
Incidentally even if there is a contract, you would be amazed at how much leeway there turns out to be if you have a problem.
For example if your restaurant gave me steak with Brussel sprouts served with it, I'll send it back because I'm allergic to cooked Brussel sprouts. I'm willing to pay for the meal even though I can't enjoy it, but you'd be amazed at how many restaurants will take it back, and offer me a different meal for free.
If the new tires that you just installed immediately spring a leak and I complain, you'd be amazed how many tire shops will replace them for free.
And so on. If you have a real problem with what you received, and you're polite about it, frequently establishments will try to make it right.
That's been my experience overseas as well. In fact, I feel that the service in the U.S. is generally worse than the service I get overseas. For instance, it's not uncommon for it to take half an hour between deciding to get the check and finishing the transaction (I've taken to asking for a check mid-meal now). You also get waiters who are unhappy if you don't order enough or don't order alcohol, as well as a territorial nature when it comes to tables that can lead to inefficiencies.
So in addition to worse service, you get stick with the unnecessary burden of having to calculate a tip at the end instead of simply getting a bill and paying for it. If you're paying cash it can be difficult to end up with the exact change you need to pay the tip you want, and if you're splitting the bill it can lead to frustrations when different people want to tip different amounts (or some people calculate the tip wrong).
The amount of the bill (everyone knows that a server who carries filet mignon works three times as hard as a server who carries an omelette and a cocktail is five times harder to pick up from the service bar than a soda - facts of life)
Guilt.
Their upbringing.
The server's gender and race (really)
How attractive the server is.
Their mood.
The weather.
The noise level of the restaurant.
If the they were touched by the server.
In practice, once you actually study this stuff, tips have very, very little to do with the quality of service received. Specifically, its around 2% of the tip amount.
Service can be really inconsistent and also bad in the US too.
Above all restaurant service is a team effort and the service you receive is merely a function of the quality of management. Its insanely unemphatic to believe your server deserves a dock in pay for things out of their control.
Only if those providing better service are more attractive, more flirty (works only for the attractive, I suspect), touch their customers more, draw smiley faces on the bill, or participate in the various other things that do actually affect the tip.
But that's true in general. Attractive people have lots of advantages.
I wonder if anybody has ever done a study with a group of waiters where on alternate days they alter the quality of service they provide but nothing else. Are their tips constant?
Harassment is definitely a huge issue: there are tons of sleazy men who will harass wait staff secure in the knowledge that while their behavior is technically illegal most tipped employees are going to put up with it rather than miss on a big chunk of their income.
> My experience traveling is that places like France with legally mandated tip amounts have very inconsistent service quality. It can be good, but it can also be very bad.
My experience in France, is, in fact, quite different from yours. I found the same bell curve of service that I see in the US.
If anything, the waiters in France were LESS irritating than in the US in that they tended to not interrupt you unnecessarily.
Exactly. I quit a job where I was paid minimum plus tips, but it's not enough. The restaurant should pay more than minimum wage.
Profits should be split, regardless of how tips are handled.
They try to keep the cost of food at 30%, as is common in business. COG around 1/3 or less.
So when we have a really busy night, there is excess profit relative to the amount of tips.
Assuming tips are a constant percentage of sales, the amount we earn extra is proportionate to sales.
But there is a certain minimum number of sales the owner must reach to break even. At a certain volume, profit accelerates further, but tips are still relatively constant.
So my desire would be for a restaurant to split excess revenues more equitably in addition to whatever baseline wage they set.
> The restaurant should pay more than minimum wage.
Perhaps, but it sounds more like that your minimum wage isn't set to be a living wage[1].
That's the important part - minimum wages should be set so that someone who is working full time (~40 hours/week) should be getting enough income so that they can afford a modest standard of living for themselves and a family too.
> minimum wages should be set so that someone who is working full time (~40 hours/week) should be getting enough income so that they can afford a modest standard of living for themselves and a family too
Can I ask... Why? Shouldn't a "minimum" wage provide a "minimal" lifestyle rather than a modest lifestyle? And why should one be able to support a family on a single minimum wage?
Because single mothers exist, so supporting a family on one income is needed to ensure a minimal amount of suffering happens to children who didn't ask to be poor, and have no way of opting out of poverty.
Better for the people paying the wages and the other consumers of those people's goods and services, and for workers who are employable only at particularly low wages.
"modest" doesn't mean driving Teslas and eating out every night.
It means being able to afford the basics: housing, food, healthcare, transport, and still being able to have enough left over to build a 'rainy day' (emergency) fund.
And the reason "modest" rather than "minimal" is because one is living, the other is effective slavery.
People who cannot afford for one moment to stop are people who are on the edge of disaster.
Any (additional) misfortune that strikes - whether by their own actions or not - could send them from "surviving" to now being forced into debt, which while it might provide temporary relief, almost certainly means they are now in a downward cycle.
With a living wage, even if misfortune does drive them into debt - there's at least a better opportunity for them to work their way out.
>There is no actual need or advantage to giving people tips.
Sure there is. In tipped professions, tips go directly to the waitstaff the day they are earned. It's what makes being a waiter a fantastic starter job when you move to a new city, say, or get kicked out of your home by an abusive spouse, or just need to make money without waiting 2-3 weeks for your first paycheck. It also reduces the opportunity for your employer to cheat you out of wages earned: you settle your tips at the end of the night, in full view of everyone, instead of receiving a deposit or paycheck that may take weeks to "correct."
And employers could also arrange to pay employees more frequently. And employers could hand out checks “in full view of everyone”. Nothing requires tipping.
Nope. Our tips were pooled, and we didn't receive them until the end of the week. They had employment taxes taken out, and were also split up with busboys, dishwashers, line cooks, managers etc. This was in California in the 90's.
So the idea that tips reward performance is a joke. If I was excellent one night, a coworker who was terrible would get a boost (in average) while my take was lowered.
Tips are just a way to trick people thinking items are less expensive than they really are. It's like service fees on your bills. Those should be included in the monthly price of the package, but since that's the price they get to advertise, they want it to appear as low as possible. It's like food prices on a menu. You have to pay an additional 20% fee over the listed prices.
Its time to pay people a living wage, and stop the tipping culture. I hate carrying cash, and It bothers me that I have to carry $1 bills for the tipping extortion.
Im resentful that I have to pay for things as well as bribe the workers. Its disgusting.
> I hate carrying cash, and It bothers me that I have to carry $1 bills for the tipping extortion.
I don't carry cash either, but I just tip with a credit card. If you don't accept tips with card, you don't get tipped. 90% of the time, there's a tip line on the credit card receipt.
But I do agree that we need to increase wages and kill tipping culture.
I'm aware of donations through apps like GoFundMe, but does there exist any services for making digital donations to homeless people I might encounter on the street? I've thought about how the lack of cash is affecting these people, quite a lot but haven't encountered any solutions.
The problem with that is a lot of those stores will kick the homeless person out. We used to buy meals for homeless people on the street when we were getting fast food in college. Oftentimes they were afraid to come into the McDonalds with us, even though we were taking them in, because they had been kicked out in the past. There's no way they would have gone in to use a gift card.
Sadly this problem /can/ only be solved by coordinating funding at the national level.
I'm still for localities experimenting with what the most effective use of those funds are, but when it's cheaper to ship the problem somewhere else that's what's going to happen.
I would /prefer/ a focus on diagnosing and correcting lacking medical treatment (including mental health) and re-integration in to society as a real person.
I've had this problem from the other side. I haven't been to the bank to withdraw cash in years. Usually I got all the cash I needed by splitting bills with friends, where I paid on the card and got cash, or Chinese New Year money.
But since having kids (and the invention of Venmo and its ilk), we've stopped going out with friends and splitting checks and when we do it's all digital, and now I have to give the New Year money instead of get it.
We have a house cleaner every couple of weeks that I like to tip, and lately it's been a struggle to find cash lying around for the tip. Also when I get a haircut they give a big discount for cash, and that's been a struggle too. Like the girl in the article, I just forget to go to the cash machine, it's not a priority until the time comes.
I may have to visit the ATM for the first time in a few years this holiday season to give holiday tips.
I just make a habit of having a couple of hundred in cash at home and periodically pull out a $20 or $40 a week as needed and refill before it gets low. Just always try to have a couple of hundred around.
We used to do that too, but that couple hundred came from the meal splitting and New Year money. :) Now I actually have to remember to stop a bank when they're open, because the ATM only gives 20s, and I need 5s and 10s, but since no one uses cash I have no where to break the 20s anymore.
No, you can ask the cashier for cash back however you like and normally they will comply if they have enough in their drawer. Also, I got $100 at safeway in the self checkout and the machine gave me twenty $5 bills. It was hilarious. I felt like I had hit the jackpot.
Potentially, although do remember that card processing fees are rather high for small businesses, and every transaction that they don’t have to lose 3% or 5% of or whatever is extra money they can keep.
Unless jedberg is referring to a 3% discount as a big discount, then I think it's quite obvious that it's due to tax evasion, which would allow the merchant to provide deeper discounts. This is common in cash businesses.
Well it's $12 instead of $15, so 20% off. But keep in mind that for a small merchant, besides the 3% processing fee, there is also a base fee, and when you talk about a haircut for $15, the base fee eats up a whole lot of the profit.
The standard maximum rate is 2.9% + 30 cents. Looks like they're losing over $2 per transaction for doing business in cash, unless, they make us for this cough somehow.
No? I mean, we used to just always have it around, but now we don't. But I can't think of a single emergency that would require cash to solve that credit or venmo can't.
A lot of these jobs that they're bemoaning the loss of tips for, also aren't all that necessary. If establishments want to give off the impression they're upper class, they ought to pay these "professions" considerably more considering they obviously have the money. Otherwise, opening doors and operating elevators are things I'm content to do on my own.
The ostensible purpose of the doorman is to add a layer of security. Someone who is always there watching, looking for people who don't belong, receiving packages and securing them, etc. They are basically a crime deterrent.
So is the elevator operator to an extent (although that one is really more just for impression of being fancy).
>The ostensible purpose of the doorman is to add a layer of security. Someone who is always there watching, looking for people who don't belong, receiving packages and securing them, etc. They are basically a crime deterrent.
Sounds like a pretty important job. I imagine a building would want to compensate such a person pretty well in order to help keep the building secure and functioning smoothly. As they say, you get what you pay for.
Is it really worth tipping someone to open a door or press a button in an elevator? I never understood the need for this position, let alone why anyone would ever tip them.
There are plenty of older buildings with manual elevators (as in direct control of the motor), and they're a bit tricky to line up with the platform accurately. I regularly visit two buildings with such elevators and only one has an operator on staff. If people are being paid to 'operate' modern automatic elevators it is indeed quite silly though.
When I was a kid, we tipped the postal worker and several other "service workers" that didn't need it the way food service does. It's just a nice eway of saying "thank you for your work". The purely logical among you will say "That's what a wage is for" but that's not the point. Kind of like how I don't get Christmas gift because I can't afford socks.
And that is fine as long as there is no obligation. But most American restaurants if you don’t tip to the formula they treat you like you’re robbbng them.
Things are different in America - restaurants get a special exemption under labor law [1] that allows them to pay wait staff about 25% of the minimum wage required for all other professions. The social understanding is that patrons are obligated to make up the difference via tips - you have to pay to use their services.
The system sucks but that's how it is, if you don't want to tip then you can always eat at McDonalds or other establishments without wait staff.
So in the name of changing labor laws, we should cause tens of thousands of people to lose their jobs, effectively. For something like that to work, labor and consumers would have to be on the same page, and do something like a national week of no tipping, which would still hurt only the workers, not the businesses.
The legal understanding is that the employer will make up wages if tips fall short of minimum wage.
The social understanding is that the merchant doesn't need to advertise higher prices, and the merchant and the employee get to evade taxes. The customer gets to feel like they're a big shot, rewarding people for "serving" them. In reality, it's just a big old loophole around paying taxes and having to account for the actual cost of things, while spreading around the real costs onto a collective that doesn't have enough incentive to work together to stop it.
Basic price obfuscation strategy, and it works well.
I'm reminded of a family friend telling me a story about how last year they were on day trip somewhere and a power outage happened to occur in whatever one-shop town out in the boondocks they were visiting and only one old Grandma had cash to pay for a drink or snack while the power was out, everyone else basically had to starve through lunch waiting for the power to come back on.
That's on the business. I used to be a cashier, and during power outages, we had an old carbon copier that we could use to copy credit cards and note the amount, and then enter it in manually later. You lose the instant approve/deny, but we'd also copy ids.
The impression isn't strictly necessary -- it's for convenience and, if needed, solid proof the physical card was there. At most you write down the license number on the carbon paper. If you lose the machine you can hand-write the card number just as easily.
Think about how an online transaction works -- punch in the number, no ID needed. Believe it or not that didn't start online ;)
Source: took "offline" payments when a retail store's power went down many many years ago.
You're probably too young to remember, but back in the bad old days, we'd write stuff by hand. It didn't feel laborious because it was all we knew. We'd copy name, address, license number and expiration date, and eyeball that the person in front of us looked close enough to the picture.
Hah. The last power outage in San Diego they lost vast amounts of food because none of the businesses could transact AT ALL. They no longer have backup systems that are unpowered.
That sounds silly. "Pen and paper" worked for many, many years and I guarantee that it can still work. What you're implying is that people couldn't add up the numbers?
There is no way we will rid this society of tips. People will need to be paid more to compensate. And not many capitalist want to to give more and earn less. I was just in New York yesterday. Upon seeing the doormen dressed like the guy in Home Alone, I realized that there are people who still want you dressed in a monkey suit for no logical reason. I doubt they're willing to pay them more. I'm certain someone can make the doorman a device that will allow them to easily receive tips via chip card. I've seen boy scouts who use stripe.
At my buddy's old place in Brooklyn the security door for the building broke. It had been broken for about 24 hours before my friend discovered a prostitute giving a john a BJ in the stairwell.
Doormen keep prostitutes from giving BJs in your stairwell, among other things.
>Doormen keep prostitutes from giving BJs in your stairwell, among other things.
I don't mind having to step over a dude getting a blowie in the stairwell if it saves the Chinese food delivery guy from having to stand in the cold and saves me from having to put on a jacket to go get my Chinese food.
Stuff like prostitution and drug dealers would only be 10% of the problem they are if people would stop being bothered by them out of habit.
I have actually almost entirely stopped using Uber after they made tipping part of the app. I've worked in a place with tipping, and my experience directly corroborates those links.
Saying we need less comments of some sort does not equate to saying "screw them!"
I can't DV, so you all can create an aggressive environment on HN if you want, but it won't help you IRL if you say this. If you want to create a toxic environment for discussion, that is up to dang.
You can't get downvoted by drivers for refusing to tip. They don't find out if you tipped until after they've rated you, unless you actually tell them, "I'm not tipping you."
Maybe the types who have an apartment with a doorman in Manhattan don't. But I (a "millenial") often go to bars and restaurants that are cash only.
Eventually, I found it was easier keep budget my "entertainment" in cash. Visually being able to see how much I have, how much I'm taking out helps. Being able to see that amount grow if I'm frugal one month feels good too.
I have friends who claim they get value from "points". But unless you're working towards a spending minimum for a sign up bonus, I've found the amount you make (2-5%) from using your credit card is less than the savings from thinking critically about which cash purchases to make.
Anecdotally, New Yorkers (of all varieties) carry some cash most of the time. There are just too many places that do not accept cards in NYC for people to go cashless. My friends in Denver and LA almost never seem to have cash, and are always surprised that it is a problem when they visit NYC.
New Yorker here, I can't really think of any place that doesn't take cards. Some bodegas have minimums, e.g. $5 or $10, but even those are rare and I typically pay for everything by card and carry no cash.
Off the top of my head I can think of: JG Melon (1 Michelin Star), Grimaldis, Tile Bar, McSorleys, Alta, Lil Frankies, Peter Luger (1 Michelin Star), Artichoke Basilles.
Plus at least 2 more restaurants in my neighborhood that I like and are somewhat popular with tourists. And my barber. Really, it just comes down to the fact that I never know if I'll end up somewhere that doesn't take cards, so I prefer to have it. The bodegas where I work are also serious sticklers for the $10 credit card minimums.
In LA, pretty much every bar takes plastic. I rarely carry cash on me; only when someone doesn't have Venmo or I need to get quarters for the laundromat do I need to obtain actual cash. Whenever I got out to eat with people, cards are used 90% of the time and the bill gets split between cards. It's not that paying with cash is a faux pas, but it is slightly weird and an inconvenience when the person doesn't have quite enough cash on hand.
I do so out of convenience and because everything I buy is basically on-record. Points are BS.
I've stopped budgeting entirely because I found that it reinforces the idea that money needs to be spent. Even if I tried to keep this in mind, I would often end up spending more because I would create spending limits that were higher than necessary. What I instead do is I hardly pay attention to how much money I have at a given time. With a vague idea of the amount in my checking account, I found I'm much less likely to find reasons to spend money. When I do check my statement every few times a month, I'm always astonished how much money I have left over. That almost never happened when I did everything consciously. But that's my own twisted psychology at play.
If more people carried cash, we might see fewer muggings because anyone with just cards can just call their bank and have them turn off all the cards if they get stolen.
> If more people carried cash, we might see fewer muggings because anyone with just cards can just call their bank and have them turn off all the cards if they get stolen.
I don't think it makes much of a difference. People used to carry cash almost exclusively and muggings still happened with regularity. The difference between now and then is that your cellphone is the first object removed from your person (which will later get fenced at a recycle-your-phone kiosk and shipped overseas), followed by a quick rifling through of your wallet looking for cards.
For debit cards, a gun gets thrust in your face, a PIN is demanded (if you aren't abducted and taken to the ATM altogether) and you get pistol whipped while they withdraw $500. It used to be done on a succession of ATMs but I don't know if the FIs impose caps on ATMs withdrawals now.
Thieves know cards can be deactivated so they'll make like Bain Capital and load them up with as much debt as possible before busting out. The primary goal is converting your plastic currency (debit or credit) into something that can't be terminated remotely (such as cash or prepaid gift cards) before you have a chance to make those calls.
I carry very little cash, certainly not enough to be tipping people in cash on a regular basis. What usually happens is maybe 1-2 times a year my wife or I will get a few hundred dollars out of the ATM, split it up, and that will be enough to get us through six months or more. I just checked and currently I have three dollars on me. I can't remember the last time I encountered a place that was cash only, though I'm sure they exist.
Contrary to your last point, I actually find that using credit cards for everything makes it FAR easier to keep a handle on our spending, which in turn keeps things more reasonable. Having a single place where we can see almost all of our cash flow is very useful.
In Ottawa, I know very few people who regularly carry cash. I easily haven't made a cash transaction in 6 months.
When I went to the States (NYC), I was surprised at how hard it is to get around without cash (restaurants, hairdressers, tolls, all cash-only or EZPass) and eventually caved in and took out money for the trip. I think America is just slightly behind the times in terms of cashlessness.
> But I (a "millenial") often go to bars and restaurants that are cash only.
Where do you live? I'm in North Texas, and very few places are cash-only. I avoid those places. Even most of the hole-in-the-wall Asian restaurants who were too cheap to get a credit card reader finally gave in when Square became a thing.
I started carrying cash when I moved to Manhattan, because so many bodegas, street vendors, etc only accept cash for small amounts. Its convenience here far outweighs anywhere else I've lived.
I try to have cash, but honestly another trip to an ATM is just something that falls out of my daily schedule.
So yeah, I support cash transactions (and spend cash as a way to give the restaurant I like a way to avoid CC fees) but very often I don't have any or enough, and need to use CC.
Cash is easier to split, too unless you want to use Venmo or something (does everyone have Venmo?).
I carry cash, but very rarely use it, so my wallet has $20s, $50s, and a $100 or two. Too much for a tip, unless it's for dining out. I still try to tip waiters and bartenders cash.
I don't abuse cards or rush to a minimum spend to get benefit from cash back bonuses. I use two different 2% cash back cards for groceries and food, respectfully, and pay off in full each month. in fact, these cards still give the bonuses without even carrying balance to statement close, though not all do (amex comes to mind). I have never accrued interest or fees by using the card on everyday purchases towards cash back benefits. many people are apprehensive to do this and I totally understand why, especially those who don't feel they have self control around spending habits
it is worth it for me, i do have to stay vigilant but it keeps me in check with my budget at the same time. then at the end of the month I will have some extra money to pay for generous tips or a cup of coffee, or to put back in my checking/savings account. it works great for me.
I never use cash unless I am buying marijuana (Washington state but not all stores allow cards at this time). having to manually track my cash spending actually has the opposite effect on frugality awareness for me, because I may forget to notate it, or will be more impulsive because I won't have to see it right away on any bank statements/spend tracker apps
Obviously everyone has their own preferences. Figured I would share my contrary pov!
Anecdotally, I’m a millennial with an apartment in Manhattan. I never carry cash, and generally avoid cash-only places. In fact with some notable exceptions, I rarely see cash-only places. Even food trucks have Square readers. The only times I carry cash are when I go to the barber, since you generally can’t tip with card.
The 'cashless society' is starting to show another dark side here in Sweden in that several banks have started to close accounts for organisations [1] which don't "agree to the bank's ethical foundation" (the Swedish word is "Värdegrund" [2]). While there still are banks willing to take these organisations as customers this is a development in the wrong direction. It does not matter whether you agree with the "ethical foundation" these "banned" organisations have, the important fact is that they operate within the bounds of the law of the land. This used to be the deciding factor to separate 'good' from 'bad', legal from illegal, allowed from disallowed. Cash does not care about politics, it is - by law - as valid for a communist as it is for a priest or a libertarian. This currently does not go for the services provided by banks to enable transactions in a cashless society as can be seen by the Swedish example; there is no compulsion for those banks to take up anyone or any organisation as a customer. In a polarised society like Sweden where the pressure to abide by the "ethical foundation" is very strong this leads to extra-judicial sentences on those who do not abide by or agree to those ethical foundations.
Had those organisations been shunned because of their stance on, say, religion, those banks would be accused of discrimination. Discrimination based on political orientation however is currently not protected by law. If the "cashless society" is to succeed this probably will have to change, doing anything else will only lead to even more segregation where "left-wing" financial institutions refuse to do business with "right-wing" customers.
In short, in a land ruled by law it is the law which should be the boundary between what is allowed and disallowed. As long as an individual or an organisations abides by the law their ideological standpoint should be irrelevant to financial service companies.
If only there was a way for society to go cashless, but not to rely on central authorities to decide who has money and who doesn't... Oh, wait.
Joke aside, you just described why blockchain ideologists hope the future will be a global, decentralized system. So no one can unilaterally deny access to your money.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but by design block chain is also non-anonymous. So if you want to, say, give money to Donald Trump, everyone could know you gave money to Donald Trump.
This is the kind of reason I hate tipping culture: I never knew that you were supposed to tip the Elevator Man.
Now, I've only encountered an elevator man once in my life in the US. But still. It never occurred to me that he should be tipped.
And that's my main problem, the ambiguity. There's no consistency in who should get tipped and how much is a decent amount. And that kind of opaqueness always hurts everyone involved but a few lucky ones.
I’m bothered by the need to carry cash just for tips, kind of like how quarters function solely as special magic tokens for parking meters. Starbucks, for instance, does not have tipping activated on their electronic check out… Who knows why? I tip with every coffee I get, except when I’m unable to because of payment technology.
If you pay Starbucks with their stored-value card linked to their phone app you can tip with it. If you enable notifications from the app you can get a reminder to enter the app and check off the tip amount. You also have 2 hours to change the tip.
A lot of the arguments for getting away from tips are for servers.
There's already a solution in place to handle cashless tips for them. They aren't responsible for the transaction fee a lot of processors pass onto the gig economy. It works relatively well, even in the event of loss of internet or power.
The laws of averages work out for an average server, I worked for 5 years in the restaurant industry and two years of that was 100% waiting tables. I averaged $24-$26K between those two years in two different states and 4 different cities. Both of those states are at the US minimum wage of $2.13/hr (for restaurant waiters).
I worked about 30-40 hours a week. We're talking ~$12-$13/hr average. It's was definitely much better than any minimum wage position I could have had.
Anecdotally, the servers I knew who complained most about the wage were also the least responsible ones with their money. We worked at a restaurant that gave you your tips at the end of the night and to many peers, the urge to spend that cold hard cash was too strong. Those responsible but just underpaid were underpaid either way; they still could usually keep it together at $12-$13/hr, still a good wage for someone relatively just getting started career-wise.
Whatever wage you made from the $2.13/hr usually just covered your taxes. Most of my deposited paychecks were less than $10 every other week.
I know that this isn't what other countries do, but it does work and keeps most families and individuals out of the poverty level. The requirements for work are relatively undemanding and most people who want a job serving get a job serving.
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[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 228 ms ] threadSadly this one only covers Sweden but you can look up what restaurants have signed the contract with the union. This guarantees fair wages and working conditions. The law in Sweden is pretty free so there exists unions that are supposed to talk to the companies and get an agreement on what is fair both ways.
I found it here: https://www.reddit.com/r/EndTipping/
I think the bigger issues are at play whether it's is the fact that minimum wages need to be adjusted, a more modern solution is needed to replace minimum wages, whether a job in question is simply suitable for a human to perform (in this case a doorman, they don't really have them where I live so I don't know their purpose), or maybe children (even adults) need to be taught better money management skills.
I personally think that an area for quick improvement would be helping folks with managing their money. Anecdotally, I know people who haven't paid more than the minimum on student loans because they that they will automatically be forgiven in 20 years. On a $40k loan, they have easily squandered away a down payment on a house or money they could have otherwise put in their 401k.
However, I'd like to start with two labor patches (in the same set).
Tips should still be allowed, but they should be for truly exceptional things, and not a hidden cost of buying something.That is interesting. As I understand it now, the way tips are factored into wages, it benefits the employee more so than the employer. Society loses because the employee is supposed to report tips so they are taxed, the employer loses because they still have to pay minimum wage, and the employee wins because they are paid minimum wage and get their tips tax free.
Maybe I'm just being dense, but how would this elimination be beneficial?
Employers of workers in customarily tipped jobs can and do use tips as a performance metric, so if the employer has to top up your tips to minimum wage, it probably also means you are also losing your job. This also motivates overreporting tips.
Not tax free. Your employer reports 8% of your total receipts to the IRS as income. It's likely less than you make in tips, but you still pay some tax.
2. The "teach better money management skills" has really nothing to do with this problem, but is continually trotted out as some sort of solution. If you don't have enough money, there's no "managing" it. This isn't an avocado toast problem, it's a wage issue.
Additionally, the incentives are a moving target. For example, with the federal government threatening to end forgiveness plans, can you blame someone for not taking advantage of the option with the potential they will be stuck with the bag, plus interest? Same goes for home ownership incentives, charitable giving incentives, and so on. If the incentive could be gone one day due to the massively complicated and political game that is the tax code, I can hardly blame someone who doesn't have money for a financial adviser for not taking advantage of those programs.
I made no claim that $7.25/hr is a livable wage. That is the current federal minimum. Employers are required to pay the minimum, if they aren't, they're breaking the law.
Money management is certainly no silver bullet, however, it plays a role. If you net $13k/year then you have to manage that money so you don't spend more than $13k/year. Most would agree that it is extremely tough to live on $13k/year. No matter the difficulty the money still has to be managed.
In my student loan example, if you have a loan schedule of 30 years @ 6% you will pay $46k in interest on a $40k loan when only paying the minimum of $240. That same loan if paid off @ $440/mo, nets you $33k over that time period. Here you would manage your money so that you can pay as much as possible on that loan as often as possible.
Making more money doesn't solve money issues, it just covers them up. Saying that there nothing to be done because the amount spent is greater than the amount earned seems rather foolish. I'm not saying that in any given situation there exists an outcome where you can manage spending less than you earn, but managing money wisely will always improve the situation.
The problem is that calculating such an amount is more than tricky. Consider that inflation changes "constantly" or whether newly enacted bills are factored in. From my quick research, it appears as though the affordable care act made the assumption that minimum wage already factored in mandatory health insurance.
Now consider what does it mean to say a person is "living." Are you living if you have a roof over your head and food in your stomach? Is the food being considered, the same meal morning noon and night, or a variety of foods? If you are making minimum wage are you eligible for SNAP (a.k.a.food stamps)?
What about access to the Internet, OTA television, radio broadcasts, or entertainment of some sort? Biologically none of these are needed to live, but I bet an argument could be made.
I agree with you that no one should work for minimum wage, always the maximum. I think simply raising the minimum wage amount is treating symptoms of bigger issues.
Tipping in the service industry in the US is part of the culture, which has been historically difficult to change by declaration.
Sure this is technically correct according to the way the law is written but it ignores the reality which is that a large group of criminals ignore the law on a daily basis and face no consequences. Wage theft is MASSIVE and widespread across America especially for low wage workers, who often rely on tips (but it even effects high wage workers too!). More money is stolen in the US through wage theft than all other methods combined. Business owners (especially small business owners) steal from their employees by not paying them when they quit (oh I guess we just lost your last paycheck, sorry, we'll get it to you soon I promise), stealing tips, intimidating employees into not reporting wages under the minimum, refusing to pay legally mandated overtime or refusing to allow legally required breaks or a variety of other ways owners can use their power to illegally extract unpaid labor from their employees.
The solution is to abolish tips and require business owners pay their workers fair wages, or help the workers bargain collectively to ensure this themselves.
* steal from their employees by not paying them when they quit * intimidating employees into not reporting wages under the minimum * refusing to pay legally mandated overtime * refusing to allow legally required breaks
I'm owed between $20,000 and $40,000 by two (New Zealand) employers in particular, who refused to pay for or record my extra hours worked, and one of them threatened me with physical harm if I went to the government watchdog.
One of them was a small business, the other a multimillionaire. It was the latter who paid less than the minimum every day I worked, and demanded I work as many free hours as he could force me to. It's not just physical harm with him, because he also promised to destroy my reputation around town if I so much as stepped out of line.
Yeah, I'm a sucker for not resigning on the spot. I know.
You are beyond naive if you really think that because these laws are on the books they’re not being routinely and widely flouted or ignored.
If you really find it hard to be true that employers will try to spend less on employees, you’re not capable of participating in this discussion because you lack even basic familiarity with the real world.
I tried to get a labor lawyer to intervene but the total losses weren't enough for them to bother litigating. They sent a demand letter and it was ignored.
Next option would have been small claims but I didn't have the time or inclination to fight it anymore at that point. I can't imagine a waitress would fare much better.
As long as a shady employer keeps their take below $10k, it seems they are untouchable.
According to the most recent census data I could find (2015), there are approx. 27M businesses in the US[1]. Assuming half those businesses are wage thieves, that would mean 13.5M businesses are currently in violation of the the law. The DOL can place a $10k sanction on the business owner for a first infraction[2]. This would then mean that the US gov't stands to make $135B by placing sanctions on these businesses. To catch each business, let's say it costs the DOL $2500/business. After looking into each and every business, they would run a total of $67.5B. Now they have made $67.5B after all expenses have been made. To put that in perspective, the US gov't has put aside $9.7B for the DOL in 2018[3]. As you might figure on your own, $67.5B is nearly 7 (6.9587628865979381443298969072165 if you want to be super accurate) times the DOL's 2018 budget. Now if you mean to tell me that the gov't is going to leave that sort of money on the table, then you and I need to figure out how we benefit from this.
You might well be thinking something along the lines of "The gov't is inefficient, etc. There is no way they could reclaim all that." You're right this is definitely a perfect world scenario, but even if they could only claim 1%. That still makes up a 10th of next years DOL budget. For the gov't , these numbers only get better as more businesses commit these crimes.
Now we have to look at this from the perspective of a business. Again there is only roughly 27M in the US. To make it fiscally responsible to take the $10k bet of sorts the business must save at least $10k/violation, obviously. For the sake of this argument let's say violations are handed out per person per month. ((404)7.25)+(((3024)-(404))(7.251.5)) = $7250, that is how much you make at minimum wage including overtime... If you worked literally every hour of every day for a month (30 days, technically). So if we assume the business thinks a person is going to report the violation, they are better off just paying minimum wage upfront. Let's reel this in a bit and say you work 40/wk/mo in overtime. ((404)7.25)+((404)(7.25*1.5)) = $2900. So now the business definitely comes out ahead. They would risk $7000 by trying to save, what, $1000? Remember, this is an extreme case, not everyone is going to work 80 hours a week. Even if a business isn't more likely to hire another person to cover your 40 hours of overtime a week, they can only save $580/mo compared to the $10k/violation.
I know that there are businesses that will literally do anything under the sun to make a buck, but I find it hard to believe that even half of businesses would go against some of the math above.
[1]: https://www.census.gov/data/tables/2015/econ/susb/2015-susb-...
[2]: https://webapps.dol.gov/elaws/elg/minwage.htm#Penalites
[3]: https://www.dol.gov/sites/default/files/FY2018BIB_0.pdf
A report from the Economic Policy Institute[1] found that minimum wage violations affected 17% of workers in the states surveyed (the ten most populous in the US) and averaged $3,300 per worker who was affected.
[1] http://www.epi.org/publication/employers-steal-billions-from...
Even if customers end up paying the same price in the end they are not thinking about the cost of the tip when ordering their food. They are just looking at the price on the menu.
I agree that there are problems with a cashless society. I just do not see the end of tipping as one of those problems.
> changing from a tip-based system to just having a higher base salary does not sound so terrible
Of course it doesn't. But that isn't what's happening. Instead, they get paid the same base salary and don't get tips. And the profound disinterest in problems like this is why more and more people resent Silicon Valley rather than look up to it.
Why do people expect tech companies to fix this problem? Tech companies did not invent tipping and tech companies did not create a system where certain professions rely on tips.
Other industrialized countries are doing fine without tipping, and some of those countries still rely on cash. What do you think doormen and bartenders in those countries do?
> tech companies did not invent tipping and tech companies did not create a system where certain professions rely on tips.
No, but they did break the existing model whereby workers received tips, without thought how for what an alternative looks like. And it happens time and time again, like enabling the gig economy without considering what happens to the benefits and job security of those forced into it. And each time the industry as a whole throws up its hands and says "society needs to fix it" rather than engaging proactively.
Like I said, people resent Silicon Valley. Maybe not the majority yet, but it's on the rise. Before long Silicon Valley will replace Wall Street in many people's perception, as it helps to concentrate wealth to the haves and away from the have-nots. Those of us working in the industry ought to be concerned about that.
The reason the tech industry will almost certainly not wind up with the negative image that financial companies suffer with is that people actually like the things new technologies do. People prefer Orbitz to dealing with travel agents. People prefer email to postal mail. People prefer downloading to buying CDs, and they prefered CDs to vinyl, and they preferred recorded music to buying sheet music and learning how to play an instrument. Despite decades of complaints by all these various affected stakeholders, people still have a positive opinion of the tech industry, because at the end of the day they see tangible improvements in their lives.
I did not propose this strawman at any point. I merely said that tech companies should be actively engaged in solving the follow on problems from their creations, not that they shouldn't be allowed to create things.
There are a few limited cases where it makes sense to force companies to deal with negative impacts of their technology -- environmental pollution comes to mind. For the most part, society simply has to adapt to change, because change is the story of human progress. Some jobs may be lost, some people may be inconvenienced, but saddling every innovator with the responsibility for those negative outcomes (yes, that is what it means to demand that they be "actively engaged" in finding the solution) will only serve to freeze our society in time.
"Hey! We created this great, convenient new method of paying for things, you should sign up to process all your payments through it"
"Wow, looks fantastic. I'm signed up. One problem, though: you can't tip people through it like you used to be able to."
"Oh, goodness, yes, that's a problem alright. A real bug in the system. Someone should do something about that. Anyway, I've got to go, good luck getting that fixed!"
Actually getting your hands on cash money is surprisingly hard in my country though, ATMs are rapidly vanishing.
The solution is not tipping, the solution is applying the law and closing loopholes.
[1] http://www.lemonde.fr/economie/article/2017/08/26/en-colere-...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digicash
That said, what makes you think having a cash-oriented society guarantees tipping? There are industrialized nations that still rely on cash but where tipping is not ingrained in the culture; my experience in Japan was that if I left a tip people would assume I had made an error in my arithmetic or forgot my change.
I agree that privacy is a problem with going cashless. Let's ignore tipping and instead focus on an actual problem.
Cash provides for people in a lot of ways that digital money can't or never will. Tipping, getting paid under-the-table, drug purchases... can digicash benefit all these people? Those groups should stay with cash, the amount of OpSec required for digital alternatives is too much...
Why the obsession with replacing everything with technology when sometimes the old system works fine?
How is that more convenient? You've a pipe dream if you think one option is more convenient for everyone
Are you a GNOME UI designer?
Just think about how a great a deal tips are for waiters. 10-20% of gross revenue is huge.
What cashless tipping does here is take away the ease of under-reporting.
My experience traveling is that places like France with legally mandated tip amounts have very inconsistent service quality. It can be good, but it can also be very bad. And when a server decides to make your service bad, there is nothing that you can really do about it and nobody will care.
I would not have complained if there were no tips and our salaries were increased a bit to compensate.
No, I do not have a lot of empathy for people who are unwilling to accept change or who think that a company that introduced some new technology should be held responsible for how that technology personally affected them. I have no interest in freezing society in time and only allowing new ideas that have no negative impact on anyone to be put into practice.
As if you are going to change the tipping culture in the US?
I use cash because there are less fees to small business, and I like privacy. You are obviously free to participate in FB or whatever privacy-compromising activity you want
That said, if Trump's proposed revision of regulations around tipping go through, I'm going to probably greatly cut back on tipping. It is one thing to reward the waiter. It is quite another to believe that the money is going to the owner of the restaurant.
Unless you are an uncaring psychopath you should pay servers in the US for bad service as well - everyone should be paid for the labor they do. If they aren't doing an adequate job they should be reprimanded or fired. That's not your job though, that's their boss's job. You don't know if they are just having an off day or the problem you had was caused by someone else.
Furthermore, most places pool tips so you're probably docking the pay of a really good server.
But if I take my clothing to a drycleaner, and my clothing comes back torn due to their incompetence, I'm not expected to pay for the drycleaning. Ditto if the valet damages my car.
The fact that someone put time in does not entitle them to my money. If I receive something of value, I give something of value. If this makes me a person that you do not wish to know, then I'm happy that I don't know you because you sound like an unpleasant person for me to be around.
And to that: a server is very rarely personally responsible for a bad experience. Restaurant service is a team effort and the service you get merely reflects how well management functions.
Also while I can't speak to why other people don't tip, the reasons why I (very occasionally) don't are usually under the server's control. Even if the immediate cause of my unhappiness was not under their control, they had the option of acknowledging the problem and offering an apology. It takes a lot to lose my tip.
Compare it to the business world, where if you ship a pallet of widgets and a few of them get damaged, you can't just tell UPS "you broke my shit, I'm not paying you." No, they delivered your shit, however subpar, so they expect payment for the trouble. If you keep withholding based on principle you'll find yourself blacklisted and have your account sent to collections.
This steak is nice, but it's not $17 nice. I think I'll just pay $14 for it.
These new tires for my car don't ride as well as the old ones. I think I'll only pay $50 for them, instead of the $75 asking price.
It was a nice concert, but I don't think it was really worth the $90 I paid. I'm going to pay $50.
There was a bit too much traffic on the bridge today. I'm going to only pay 75% of the usual toll.
If the contract has, "This is what I pay", I am willing to pay that. I agreed to it, it would be dishonest to do otherwise.
If there is no contract, I am free to choose whether or how much I pay. I err on the side of generosity. But if you spill my drink on my clothing, then fail to serve my child, then I see no reason why I should voluntarily reward your incompetence.
Incidentally even if there is a contract, you would be amazed at how much leeway there turns out to be if you have a problem.
For example if your restaurant gave me steak with Brussel sprouts served with it, I'll send it back because I'm allergic to cooked Brussel sprouts. I'm willing to pay for the meal even though I can't enjoy it, but you'd be amazed at how many restaurants will take it back, and offer me a different meal for free.
If the new tires that you just installed immediately spring a leak and I complain, you'd be amazed how many tire shops will replace them for free.
And so on. If you have a real problem with what you received, and you're polite about it, frequently establishments will try to make it right.
So in addition to worse service, you get stick with the unnecessary burden of having to calculate a tip at the end instead of simply getting a bill and paying for it. If you're paying cash it can be difficult to end up with the exact change you need to pay the tip you want, and if you're splitting the bill it can lead to frustrations when different people want to tip different amounts (or some people calculate the tip wrong).
People tip based on the following:
The amount of the bill (everyone knows that a server who carries filet mignon works three times as hard as a server who carries an omelette and a cocktail is five times harder to pick up from the service bar than a soda - facts of life)
Guilt.
Their upbringing.
The server's gender and race (really)
How attractive the server is.
Their mood.
The weather.
The noise level of the restaurant.
If the they were touched by the server.
In practice, once you actually study this stuff, tips have very, very little to do with the quality of service received. Specifically, its around 2% of the tip amount.
https://www.vox.com/2014/7/17/5888347/one-more-case-against-...
Service can be really inconsistent and also bad in the US too.
Above all restaurant service is a team effort and the service you receive is merely a function of the quality of management. Its insanely unemphatic to believe your server deserves a dock in pay for things out of their control.
(pdfs):
http://scholarship.sha.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?artic...
http://scholarship.sha.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?artic...
There are also issues where tipping can be biased due to racial or gender discrimination. Racial discrimination (I don't have a gender study handy): https://psmag.com/economics/racism-black-restaurant-waiters-...
I wonder if anybody has ever done a study with a group of waiters where on alternate days they alter the quality of service they provide but nothing else. Are their tips constant?
My experience in France, is, in fact, quite different from yours. I found the same bell curve of service that I see in the US.
If anything, the waiters in France were LESS irritating than in the US in that they tended to not interrupt you unnecessarily.
They are also the first ones to moralize people about how tipping is a must and if you don't tip, that poor waiter will be unable to make a living.
NO! The ones that get away easy in this whole scheme are the owners that have now no responsibility to pay their employees correctly.
Source: Most people i know who earn tips, are the ones who rather refuse or minimize a tip to someone else (central europe).
Profits should be split, regardless of how tips are handled.
They try to keep the cost of food at 30%, as is common in business. COG around 1/3 or less.
So when we have a really busy night, there is excess profit relative to the amount of tips.
Assuming tips are a constant percentage of sales, the amount we earn extra is proportionate to sales.
But there is a certain minimum number of sales the owner must reach to break even. At a certain volume, profit accelerates further, but tips are still relatively constant.
So my desire would be for a restaurant to split excess revenues more equitably in addition to whatever baseline wage they set.
Perhaps, but it sounds more like that your minimum wage isn't set to be a living wage[1].
That's the important part - minimum wages should be set so that someone who is working full time (~40 hours/week) should be getting enough income so that they can afford a modest standard of living for themselves and a family too.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_wage
Can I ask... Why? Shouldn't a "minimum" wage provide a "minimal" lifestyle rather than a modest lifestyle? And why should one be able to support a family on a single minimum wage?
Also, modest = minimal by the original standards.
Historical context: https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/minimum_wage
It means being able to afford the basics: housing, food, healthcare, transport, and still being able to have enough left over to build a 'rainy day' (emergency) fund.
And the reason "modest" rather than "minimal" is because one is living, the other is effective slavery.
People who cannot afford for one moment to stop are people who are on the edge of disaster. Any (additional) misfortune that strikes - whether by their own actions or not - could send them from "surviving" to now being forced into debt, which while it might provide temporary relief, almost certainly means they are now in a downward cycle.
With a living wage, even if misfortune does drive them into debt - there's at least a better opportunity for them to work their way out.
Sure there is. In tipped professions, tips go directly to the waitstaff the day they are earned. It's what makes being a waiter a fantastic starter job when you move to a new city, say, or get kicked out of your home by an abusive spouse, or just need to make money without waiting 2-3 weeks for your first paycheck. It also reduces the opportunity for your employer to cheat you out of wages earned: you settle your tips at the end of the night, in full view of everyone, instead of receiving a deposit or paycheck that may take weeks to "correct."
So the idea that tips reward performance is a joke. If I was excellent one night, a coworker who was terrible would get a boost (in average) while my take was lowered.
Im resentful that I have to pay for things as well as bribe the workers. Its disgusting.
Companies aren't going to do it out of the good of their hearts
I don't carry cash either, but I just tip with a credit card. If you don't accept tips with card, you don't get tipped. 90% of the time, there's a tip line on the credit card receipt.
But I do agree that we need to increase wages and kill tipping culture.
People should just do their job because they're being compensated fairly.
Maybe this will be one good thing about robots.
But I suspect the real answer is something closer to "starving and dying". :(
I'm still for localities experimenting with what the most effective use of those funds are, but when it's cheaper to ship the problem somewhere else that's what's going to happen.
I would /prefer/ a focus on diagnosing and correcting lacking medical treatment (including mental health) and re-integration in to society as a real person.
But since having kids (and the invention of Venmo and its ilk), we've stopped going out with friends and splitting checks and when we do it's all digital, and now I have to give the New Year money instead of get it.
We have a house cleaner every couple of weeks that I like to tip, and lately it's been a struggle to find cash lying around for the tip. Also when I get a haircut they give a big discount for cash, and that's been a struggle too. Like the girl in the article, I just forget to go to the cash machine, it's not a priority until the time comes.
I may have to visit the ATM for the first time in a few years this holiday season to give holiday tips.
“discount” ;) Nice euphemism for tax evasion.
So is the elevator operator to an extent (although that one is really more just for impression of being fancy).
Isn't that the job of a receptionist? They should definitely be getting paid more if these are all their responsibility.
Not typically, though a receptionist in a place without a doorman or might do some or all of them.
Sounds like a pretty important job. I imagine a building would want to compensate such a person pretty well in order to help keep the building secure and functioning smoothly. As they say, you get what you pay for.
"Hey, I've never seen you before, what is your business here?"
"That's right, you haven't seen me before." Slips them $100 and walks by.
The system sucks but that's how it is, if you don't want to tip then you can always eat at McDonalds or other establishments without wait staff.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipped_wage_in_the_United_Stat...
Or you can simply eat at that establishment and not leave a tip.
This needs to happen in Congress.
The social understanding is that the merchant doesn't need to advertise higher prices, and the merchant and the employee get to evade taxes. The customer gets to feel like they're a big shot, rewarding people for "serving" them. In reality, it's just a big old loophole around paying taxes and having to account for the actual cost of things, while spreading around the real costs onto a collective that doesn't have enough incentive to work together to stop it.
Basic price obfuscation strategy, and it works well.
You know, the kind where you slide the thing across and you don't have to plug it in?
Think about how an online transaction works -- punch in the number, no ID needed. Believe it or not that didn't start online ;)
Source: took "offline" payments when a retail store's power went down many many years ago.
So, even if you had cash, they couldn't take it.
On a side note do we even need door men?
At my buddy's old place in Brooklyn the security door for the building broke. It had been broken for about 24 hours before my friend discovered a prostitute giving a john a BJ in the stairwell.
Doormen keep prostitutes from giving BJs in your stairwell, among other things.
I don't mind having to step over a dude getting a blowie in the stairwell if it saves the Chinese food delivery guy from having to stand in the cold and saves me from having to put on a jacket to go get my Chinese food.
Stuff like prostitution and drug dealers would only be 10% of the problem they are if people would stop being bothered by them out of habit.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2012/09/05/study...
http://scholarship.sha.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?artic...
I have actually almost entirely stopped using Uber after they made tipping part of the app. I've worked in a place with tipping, and my experience directly corroborates those links.
I can't DV, so you all can create an aggressive environment on HN if you want, but it won't help you IRL if you say this. If you want to create a toxic environment for discussion, that is up to dang.
Maybe the types who have an apartment with a doorman in Manhattan don't. But I (a "millenial") often go to bars and restaurants that are cash only.
Eventually, I found it was easier keep budget my "entertainment" in cash. Visually being able to see how much I have, how much I'm taking out helps. Being able to see that amount grow if I'm frugal one month feels good too.
I have friends who claim they get value from "points". But unless you're working towards a spending minimum for a sign up bonus, I've found the amount you make (2-5%) from using your credit card is less than the savings from thinking critically about which cash purchases to make.
Plus at least 2 more restaurants in my neighborhood that I like and are somewhat popular with tourists. And my barber. Really, it just comes down to the fact that I never know if I'll end up somewhere that doesn't take cards, so I prefer to have it. The bodegas where I work are also serious sticklers for the $10 credit card minimums.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/27/your-money/credit-cards-e...
I do so out of convenience and because everything I buy is basically on-record. Points are BS.
I've stopped budgeting entirely because I found that it reinforces the idea that money needs to be spent. Even if I tried to keep this in mind, I would often end up spending more because I would create spending limits that were higher than necessary. What I instead do is I hardly pay attention to how much money I have at a given time. With a vague idea of the amount in my checking account, I found I'm much less likely to find reasons to spend money. When I do check my statement every few times a month, I'm always astonished how much money I have left over. That almost never happened when I did everything consciously. But that's my own twisted psychology at play.
If more people carried cash, we might see fewer muggings because anyone with just cards can just call their bank and have them turn off all the cards if they get stolen.
I don't think it makes much of a difference. People used to carry cash almost exclusively and muggings still happened with regularity. The difference between now and then is that your cellphone is the first object removed from your person (which will later get fenced at a recycle-your-phone kiosk and shipped overseas), followed by a quick rifling through of your wallet looking for cards.
For debit cards, a gun gets thrust in your face, a PIN is demanded (if you aren't abducted and taken to the ATM altogether) and you get pistol whipped while they withdraw $500. It used to be done on a succession of ATMs but I don't know if the FIs impose caps on ATMs withdrawals now.
Thieves know cards can be deactivated so they'll make like Bain Capital and load them up with as much debt as possible before busting out. The primary goal is converting your plastic currency (debit or credit) into something that can't be terminated remotely (such as cash or prepaid gift cards) before you have a chance to make those calls.
Contrary to your last point, I actually find that using credit cards for everything makes it FAR easier to keep a handle on our spending, which in turn keeps things more reasonable. Having a single place where we can see almost all of our cash flow is very useful.
When I went to the States (NYC), I was surprised at how hard it is to get around without cash (restaurants, hairdressers, tolls, all cash-only or EZPass) and eventually caved in and took out money for the trip. I think America is just slightly behind the times in terms of cashlessness.
Where do you live? I'm in North Texas, and very few places are cash-only. I avoid those places. Even most of the hole-in-the-wall Asian restaurants who were too cheap to get a credit card reader finally gave in when Square became a thing.
So yeah, I support cash transactions (and spend cash as a way to give the restaurant I like a way to avoid CC fees) but very often I don't have any or enough, and need to use CC.
Cash is easier to split, too unless you want to use Venmo or something (does everyone have Venmo?).
it is worth it for me, i do have to stay vigilant but it keeps me in check with my budget at the same time. then at the end of the month I will have some extra money to pay for generous tips or a cup of coffee, or to put back in my checking/savings account. it works great for me.
I never use cash unless I am buying marijuana (Washington state but not all stores allow cards at this time). having to manually track my cash spending actually has the opposite effect on frugality awareness for me, because I may forget to notate it, or will be more impulsive because I won't have to see it right away on any bank statements/spend tracker apps
Obviously everyone has their own preferences. Figured I would share my contrary pov!
Had those organisations been shunned because of their stance on, say, religion, those banks would be accused of discrimination. Discrimination based on political orientation however is currently not protected by law. If the "cashless society" is to succeed this probably will have to change, doing anything else will only lead to even more segregation where "left-wing" financial institutions refuse to do business with "right-wing" customers.
In short, in a land ruled by law it is the law which should be the boundary between what is allowed and disallowed. As long as an individual or an organisations abides by the law their ideological standpoint should be irrelevant to financial service companies.
[1] http://www.friatider.se/nordea-st-nger-ner-nationalisters-ko...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%C3%A4rdegrund
Joke aside, you just described why blockchain ideologists hope the future will be a global, decentralized system. So no one can unilaterally deny access to your money.
Now, I've only encountered an elevator man once in my life in the US. But still. It never occurred to me that he should be tipped.
And that's my main problem, the ambiguity. There's no consistency in who should get tipped and how much is a decent amount. And that kind of opaqueness always hurts everyone involved but a few lucky ones.
In Northern Europe it's it something we do. Unless we want to.
There's already a solution in place to handle cashless tips for them. They aren't responsible for the transaction fee a lot of processors pass onto the gig economy. It works relatively well, even in the event of loss of internet or power.
The laws of averages work out for an average server, I worked for 5 years in the restaurant industry and two years of that was 100% waiting tables. I averaged $24-$26K between those two years in two different states and 4 different cities. Both of those states are at the US minimum wage of $2.13/hr (for restaurant waiters).
I worked about 30-40 hours a week. We're talking ~$12-$13/hr average. It's was definitely much better than any minimum wage position I could have had.
Anecdotally, the servers I knew who complained most about the wage were also the least responsible ones with their money. We worked at a restaurant that gave you your tips at the end of the night and to many peers, the urge to spend that cold hard cash was too strong. Those responsible but just underpaid were underpaid either way; they still could usually keep it together at $12-$13/hr, still a good wage for someone relatively just getting started career-wise.
Whatever wage you made from the $2.13/hr usually just covered your taxes. Most of my deposited paychecks were less than $10 every other week.
I know that this isn't what other countries do, but it does work and keeps most families and individuals out of the poverty level. The requirements for work are relatively undemanding and most people who want a job serving get a job serving.