Lots of jobs fully need a living wage and are for spare cash mainly. Your son delivering papers certainly doesn’t. I think we need to evaluate in that some.
You’re not at all part of the problem. The problem is entirely concentrated in the employers’ unwillingness to pay workers a living wage. It’s not like they’d start if you stopped tipping; they’d be legally required to backfill some of the shortfall, but not enough that the person could actually survive.
Rest assured. You are not a part of the problem.
Zippy@lemmy.world 9 months ago
1847953620@lemmy.world 9 months ago
“let’s continue to devalue labor because some margin cases might 😱 end up with disposable income derived from a more fair compensation for that value”
afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Oh no some kid might be doing pretty well for a month or so better grind everyone into poverty so boomers like @zippy have it fair
Zippy@lemmy.world 9 months ago
There are a great number of jobs that pay a living wage. Working on a convenience store or Walmart does not need to be one.
And a living wage does not mean you should be able to live alone with your own kitchen and bathroom without roommates. Something past generations certainly need to do. Those single member working families that were paid s high wages typically worked in a mine or a higher paid job. No one could work at the convenience store and support a family alone.
ilinamorato@lemmy.world 9 months ago
So you think the parents of younger employees should subsidize Walmart’s business?
Even if you say that’s fine, there’s a deeper problem.
Let’s look at the most recent census: as of 2022, there are about 20 million people in the US between the ages of 15 and 19. Now that particular range is a little young, but that’s the breakdown the census gives us; and the cohorts on either side are about the same, so we can probably assume pretty safely that there are also about 20 million people in the US between the ages of 16 and 20 as well.
Since the end of the pandemic, about 20 million people in the US are getting paid below the almost-living wage of $15/hr. Cool, problem solved then, right?
Except no. The demographics are all over the place. First of all, not everyone between the ages of 16 and 20 are employed full time; in fact, almost 60% of them are not. Which means that, of those 20 million people making below $15/hr, only about 8 million are kids under the age of 20 who could reasonably expect to be able to live with their parents. Which means that 12 million of the people who are getting paid less than poverty wages for full time work are fully adults. That’s five percent of the US population.
“Ok so get roommates” you say. But the housing stock isn’t set up for that; in order to pay appreciably less in rent, you have to cram more than one person into a space originally only meant for one; often this is not allowed by the property. Plus, when you’re talking about people over the age of 20 (particularly once you approach 25), you’re increasingly talking about people with children; particularly in the demographic that works at a low-wage hourly job. In most cases, including roommates in that scenario would be inconvenient at best; and prohibited or even unsafe at worst.
“No one could work at a convenience store and support a family alone” you say—but again your assertion doesn’t line up with reality. According to a BLS report from 1975, “basic rates for grocery store employees averaged $5.19 on July 1, 1975”—that’s $29.46 in today’s dollars, and about 75% of the median household income across the country. Couple that with the fact that housing prices adjusted for inflation have more than doubled since the 1980s while wages have stagnated (median household income in 1970 was a little over half of the median home price; today it’s less than a fifth), and you see that, yes, a head-of-household could indeed have supported a family on a grocery store worker’s income. It wouldn’t have been easy, they wouldn’t have lived in luxury, but they would’ve been safely lower-middle class.
It’s also important to realize that when it was originally proposed, the minimum wage was intended to be a living wage. Roosevelt said, “It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By ‘business’ I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by workers I mean all workers, the white-collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by living wages, I mean more than a bare subsistence level—I mean the wages of decent living.”
(Sources are CPI, BLS, and the Census Bureau.)
afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world 9 months ago
A living wage means exactly that boomer.
afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Your go to is delivering papers is telling. I will send you a fax about it later.
Zippy@lemmy.world 9 months ago
You do realize this is still a job and it still exists or is it not important enough for your to consider it one?
SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 9 months ago
As someone who has done tipped labor before: the bigger problem is the entitlement of the people who come to expect tips and negatively judge anyone who doesn’t.
1847953620@lemmy.world 9 months ago
I one got shat on for saying I reduce my typical tip of 25%+ down to 15% for waiters who were particularly bad at interactions, in a thread where a bunch of waiters were patting themselves on the back for forcing bad-but-fast interactions that allowed them to give the appearance of service.
Such as avoiding eye contact, ignoring gestures from a distance, and leaving a table fast to give them as little time as possible to put in follow-up requests, or waiting until someone’s mouth was full or with a glass up so they couldn’t elaborate, and some other stuff I don’t care to remember.
I was called “shitty” for “witholding tips”.
SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 9 months ago
That’s so sad, you weren’t even doing a “No tip” just a “reduced tip.” Like, isn’t that how tipping is supposed to work?
I’ve faced it too, coworkers would tell me things like “we have a spray bottle with water so you can look like you’re sweating and working really hard and more likely to get tips.” Cool, because gaslighting people for money isn’t fraudulent or scammy at all??
The entitlement is crazy. I remember literally arguing “it’s not their responsibility to cover the gaps in our pay that our employer refuses to cover” and them acting like I was crazy to expect our employer to pay us a living wage when we could be raking in cash from tips.
Seriously, the tips were insane, but it wasn’t enough for these people. We could be getting enough in tips to be making $30+/hour each night, but apparently that’s not enough and entirely the responsibility of the people who come to our restaurant.
Yeah, I’m pretty convinced that the worst tipping culture comes from the people who act like not getting a tip is fucking blaspheme that should be punished by God himself.
1847953620@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Yeah, like I’ve always tipped the “standard” (15% here) as the minimum in the worst cases, my standard is 20-25% or more depending on the bill and time of service, et cetera; and they still had their panties in a wad over the idea that their brilliant shortcuts weren’t that brilliant and that someone might still see through them or at least appropriately judge their service over them, intentional or not.
afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world 9 months ago
I don’t enjoy restaurants. For travel only. Rather just cook it myself.