It’s basically an artifact of how pay is set. The USA has a system where pay for certain professions is adjusted only by a new law. Since in capitalism the capital class has power over policy and the working class does not, the tendency is to resist increasing salary.
Now for most workers this would simply be untenable, but for jobs that get part of their income through tips the workers can make up the difference by increasing the portion of their income they receive through tips.
So over time the tip rate has increased. It’s actually an interesting proxy for how fucked capitalism has become in the USA. The higher the percentage of cost that workers need to receive semi-formally through tipping, the more the imbalance between capital and labor.
Still doesn’t make any sense. We all know how the tipping system works, it’s fucked but that’s not the point here.
A fixed % of a restaurant bill in the 70s, 80s or 90s should give hospo workers the same amount of money adjusted to inflation so if 10% was good enough money then, it should be now too.
Hell, I could argue that prices have gone up at inflation rates (that’s pretty much the definition ofvinflation) while salaries have remained stagnant, so a fixed % of an inflated restaurant bill makes hospo workers the only ones that actually have their income adjusted to inflation. Everyone else (salaried) gets a well below merit increase year on year.
And that’s even before you take the socially accepted tip from 10% to 25 or 30%
Imagine in 1979 that 30% of the cost of a meal went to server salaries. Imagine that now it is 15%. Either the server takes a 15% pay cut or that money gets paid directly by the customer as extra tip.
Honest question, are servers paid a fixed amount of the cost of a meal by their employer, or you are just implying that their fixed amount went down adjusted to inflation like it happened to all other industries?
Most people who get a tip are paid by the hour by their employers in the US (and everywhere else that I know). Tips are a portion of the cost of the meal, usually.
So where your saying, in your previous comment that the hour pay hasn’t gone up at all, or it has gone up bit not at the same rate as inflation? That sucks (but then again all workers seem to be impacted by that problem lately, agree that servers might be more impacted due to low wages)
Got it, it sucks. Really 35 million people need to fight to abolish tips, and get this mess fixed including having minimum wage indexed to inflation or at least reviewed periodically and adjusted.
We all love to bash the capitalist here and blame the employer, but really tha change needs to be demanded by the people affected, the workers, or it will never happen.
It’s basically an artifact of how pay is set. The USA has a system where pay for certain professions is adjusted only by a new law. Since in capitalism the capital class has power over policy and the working class does not, the tendency is to resist increasing salary.
Now for most workers this would simply be untenable, but for jobs that get part of their income through tips the workers can make up the difference by increasing the portion of their income they receive through tips.
So over time the tip rate has increased. It’s actually an interesting proxy for how fucked capitalism has become in the USA. The higher the percentage of cost that workers need to receive semi-formally through tipping, the more the imbalance between capital and labor.
Still doesn’t make any sense. We all know how the tipping system works, it’s fucked but that’s not the point here.
A fixed % of a restaurant bill in the 70s, 80s or 90s should give hospo workers the same amount of money adjusted to inflation so if 10% was good enough money then, it should be now too.
Hell, I could argue that prices have gone up at inflation rates (that’s pretty much the definition ofvinflation) while salaries have remained stagnant, so a fixed % of an inflated restaurant bill makes hospo workers the only ones that actually have their income adjusted to inflation. Everyone else (salaried) gets a well below merit increase year on year. And that’s even before you take the socially accepted tip from 10% to 25 or 30%
Imagine in 1979 that 30% of the cost of a meal went to server salaries. Imagine that now it is 15%. Either the server takes a 15% pay cut or that money gets paid directly by the customer as extra tip.
Honest question, are servers paid a fixed amount of the cost of a meal by their employer, or you are just implying that their fixed amount went down adjusted to inflation like it happened to all other industries?
Most people who get a tip are paid by the hour by their employers in the US (and everywhere else that I know). Tips are a portion of the cost of the meal, usually.
So where your saying, in your previous comment that the hour pay hasn’t gone up at all, or it has gone up bit not at the same rate as inflation? That sucks (but then again all workers seem to be impacted by that problem lately, agree that servers might be more impacted due to low wages)
The federal wage for tipped workers in the USA has not changed since 1991. It remains at $2.13 per hour.
Most states have a higher minimum, but 15 states use the federal value:
https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/state/minimum-wage/tipped
The population of those states is about 107 million people, so this is for about a third of the overall US population.
Got it, it sucks. Really 35 million people need to fight to abolish tips, and get this mess fixed including having minimum wage indexed to inflation or at least reviewed periodically and adjusted. We all love to bash the capitalist here and blame the employer, but really tha change needs to be demanded by the people affected, the workers, or it will never happen.