I sympathize with the barista here, but mindset that customers need to cover 10 to 20% of his income is symptom of decades of brainwashing of employees and customers alike. In this case NPR is part of this brainwashing. I will not tip someone for doing their job. I will only tip when I feel it is needed based on the service provided.
I’m really disappointed in this article. Tipping culture needs to go away. It is disingenuous on all fronts. The customer gets lied to about the price of something. The company gets to subsidise their workforce to the detriment of the employees. And some employees will not file their earning correctly and commit tax fraud. If companies paid a living wage with benefits the employees would be much better off and the public wouldn’t be left holding the bag. NPR should have done an article about the real costs of tipping culture on the public. Tipped employees get shit for minimum wage, no health benefits, and will not be able to contribute/pull from the full benefits of social security later in life. And the public will be continually stuck trying to fix this stupid problem all because of greedy ass companies skimming as much money as they can from us.
Lol, this guy is worried about workers not paying their taxes.
Yes actually I am. When the worker cheats on their tip taxes then the company also doesn’t pay their percentage of social security taxes for the worker. The company frickin loves this btw because they pay less and the liability for accurate reporting lies on the worker. So the worker gets double cheated and will eventually receive less of their benefits than they should.
In 1960 businesses paid 52% per corporate income tax over $25,000. In 2020 they paid 22% for all income. https://taxfoundation.org/historical-corporate-tax-rates-brackets/
Corporate income taxes made up 23.2% of the U.S. governments income in 1960 while individual income taxes made up 44.0%. But in 2018 corporate income taxes only made up 11.3% of the U.S. government’s income where Individuals paid 49.8%.
But please, tell me again how endless programs borrowing against social security and rich people refusing to pay their share are okay but a waitress not reporting the $50 she made in cash tips is the real problem.
Let me make this real simple for you. When a worker does not report their tips properly they cheat themselves out of the full benefits of their social security. They also cheat themselves out of the percentage match that their employer should be paying into social security. Everyone who gets paid under the table is cheating themselves out of the full compensation they should be receiving for their labor. The rich don’t need to cheat us if we cheat oversleves. This is why we need financial literacy in schools.
Holy bootlicker batman, that’s why we’re saying tips need to go, employers need to just pay them a decent hourly wage.
And again, if the corporations lobbied for the tax burden to be moved from themselves to the poor, who stole from who first?
My guy they’re not a bootlicker you’re just completely missing their point. They aren’t defending corporations. Just pointing out one way in which the tradition of tip workers not reporting fully is actually beneficial for corporations.
But it’s true that point isn’t really relevant in the larger picture.
I disagree, he hasn’t shown that the amount of unreported tips each year is substantial enough to even affect social security. Especially in a world where more and more transactions are completely cashless. You know what makes a bigger difference? Undocumented migrants that work under the table.
According to https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2020/08/20/key-findings-about-u-s-immigrants/
“7.6 million immigrant workers are unauthorized immigrants,”
And https://immigrantdataca.org/indicators/median-hourly-wage
“in 2019, the median hourly wage […] $13 for undocumented immigrants”
So $13 x 40 hours x 52 weeks x 7.6M workers = $205B of untaxed income
According to https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/02/how-much-do-waiters-really-earn-in-tips/385515/
“Nationally this adds up to as much as $11 billion in unreported (and untaxed) income.”
Let’s also talk about wage theft because https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/owed-employers-face-little-accountability-for-wage-theft/
“According to one estimate from the nonprofit think tank Economic Policy Institute, reported and unreported wage theft could amount to as much as $50 billion per year owed to workers.”
So tell me again how workers are the ones causing the problems.
If you read my original comment I specifically stated that tipping culture needs to end. You are having an argument with yourself at this point.
See: https://kbin.social/m/[email protected]/t/211224/-/comment/883504
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We need to revise the federal minimum wage, because it is obviously VERY VERY far behind a living wage as it was intended to be, and remove any caveats regarding tip based positions allowing a lower hourly wage. I’ve seen estimates that out the minimum anywhere between $23-$33 an hour if it kept up with inflation and/or productivity so anything less is just plain criminal.
I say we should advocate for indexing the federal minimum wage to inflation because doing it based on CPI is sure as shit not working anymore.
That’s a good way to send inflation out of control. Minimum wage laws are certainly outdated, but if we tied them to inflation it would be a death spiral. Prices go up, wages go up, which pushes prices up more, so wages go up. Not to mention other factors that cause higher inflation that aren’t directly tied to wages would also push prices and wages up, it would get out of hand real fast.
NPR had the audacity to use a picture of a worker protesting for a living wage in this article. They completely miss the point of the protests and overall labor movement if they think it’s a customers responsibility to pay workers right.
I mean, it IS. Restaurants need to price their menus so that everything is covered in the price I HAVE to pay. That includes a liveable wage for the employees. Whatever I give on top is up to me and a small gesture of gratitude if the employee is exceeding my expectations.
What I give on top shouldn’t be there to pay the liveable wage. It should actually be on top of that. You know, what a tip was originally meant to be.
Look, I know it’s idealist, but corporate profits are at an all time high. C-level execs make hundreds to thousands times what their lowest level employee does. It’s disgusting. The greed and their assumption that we will just let them continually be more greedy is disgusting. Maybe they don’t need all that. They can actually pay their employees better. They choose not to because we have barely any social nets in this country, what does exist can be really hard to get, and people have to eat and have a home. They prey on desperate people, hide behind the idea that minimum wage is "supposed to be for teenagers, and refuse to entertain the notion that they are the problem.
Corporate exec salaries don’t have anything to do with the rest of payroll, though.
I have a very hard time believing that.
If you think big corporations subtract money from the employees payroll and add it to the C-suite salaries, you don’t really understand the financials of a big corporation.
I agree that execs make too much money, but it’s really not a mutually inclusive thing. CEOs can make the same amount of money they currently are, and people can make a living wage. It’s the legal requirement of perpetual growth that’s ultimately to blame.
No, I know it’s not mutually inclusive. I just think that profit is going somewhere. It’s not just hanging out in the ether. Maybe it’s not execs, sure. Maybe it’s someone else. But someone is absolutely taking the money that every day employees should be getting.
During the pandemic, my family just stopped eating out except for special events. A habit we have kept to consciously, even today. Between the severely degraded standards of service, extreme increase in prices, and the “tip everyone” mentality (atop of now a 20% tip is bare minimum now?) the only service I use on a regular basis is a haircut.
Since we’ve stopped eating out we have learned how to cook a lot of great food we never would have eaten or learned to cook, lost weight, become healthier in our food choices. It’s solved a lot of problems for us. Also, we are able to actually save a significant portion of our income now instead of blowing it at restaurants and coffee shops.
People don’t need to eat out, and the food service industry is seeing now that people are voting against current practices and prices with their wallets. People are reprioritizing what is important and what is not. Adapt or die out, it’s pretty simple.
NPR like most American manipulation media is controlled by the rich. So this article is once again showing their true colors.
I read this article too and I don’t see where npr is saying this is ok. They are giving these workers a platform to express their side of it but what the workers are really saying is that they are being exploited financially. This main guy being interviewed says he loves doing this but the laws are allowing the business to subsidise his wages based on customer kindness. That is clearly not ok, the tipped minimum wage is clearly not ok.
“If there is some means of tipping that’s available to you, that should signal to you that workers there aren’t being paid enough,” says Schenker.
How about employers pay a decent wage - one where tipping isn’t necessary, we move to universal healthcare and we stop tipping altogether?
I think everyone is getting pretty sick of tipping. Workers hate the uneven wages and being beholden to customers. Customers hate the escalation in tipping amount, social anxiety and hidden prices. I wish businesses would just abolish the practice but that isn’t happening
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Literally all of the money in the business comes from customers. You pay with a tip or you pay in the price of the product.
It always astounds me that you guys want to put a capitalist middle man between you and the wages of the people that serve you.
It astounds you that we’d like for people’s income to be based on a predictable source rather than the customer’s whims? This works fine in other nations; no reason it can’t work in the US.
we’d like for people’s income to be based on a predictable source
Predictably with a margin taken out of it and reduced as much as possible.
