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There should never be an obligation to tip. The whole point of tipping is that it's not obligatory. I get that we've messed that up for a lot of professions, li

• ethanbond 10y ago
  If it's not obligatory to tip then it should be obligatory to pay people a living wage, in any context.
  • riboflava 10y ago
    Living wage destroys the ability for people to make a little extra on the side with part-time gigs.
    • selestify 10y ago
      Why would that be?
    • alkonaut 10y ago
      How is that? A part time job would pay a part of a living wage.
    • gingerrr 10y ago
      You realize that "living wage" is only a price floor for labor, not a price ceiling, right? It is a guarantee that people are paid at a minimum the amount necessary to support themselves, with various definitions excluding or including that person's family situation from consideration. Instituting a living wage would in no way prevent you from working extra and being paid extra for that work. I'm inclined to believe you haven't actually researched what a living wage is or would entail to enact, because the inaccuracy of the claim you're making is egregious.
      • greenshackle 10y ago
        Maybe what they meant is that without a wage floor people working for extra cash could take the job for below-living wage rate, outcompeting people who are looking to support themselves fully with the job. (I don't endorse that point of view, just trying to make sense of their claim.)
        • gingerrr 10y ago
          That makes more sense, thanks for clarifying. Appreciate it!
      • haneefmubarak 10y ago
        I think what the parent is getting at is that by instituting a price floor, you prevent people from providing services whose utility is below the price floor. In other words, if someone wanted to do extra work that wasn't worth much money (but might add up over a longer period of time), they are now unable to do said work because no one will be willing to pay them for it. Basically, when setting a minimum wage, you end up picking between two groups of labor: those who work for some extra money (think high schoolers and retirees who would like some extra spending money and don't mind doing menial tasks that may not generate much value to earn in) and those who work to live (think unskilled laborers who do laborious work and feel they are insufficiently compensated for it). A lower wage favors the former group because they are able to offer the services for less (and the quantity of labor demanded will increase if the price goes down) while a higher wage favors the latter because they can demand more money.
        • gingerrr 10y ago
          Got it, didn't realize that was the argument. Thanks much. I hadn't heard this decision point framed so clearly in terms of the two kinds of labor each side ends up favoring, that's a great example.
          • riboflava 10y ago
            I don't know if I'd be so charitable to call my counter-assertion to the assertion I replied to an argument, but the replies to your reply are indeed representatives of the argument chains that lead to the assertion, and I agree they are phrased well, probably better than I would have. More tangentially I'm now wondering how often leaving an assertion that's the obvious output (if you've seen it before anyway) of an idea framework ends up with other people doing the backward chaining algorithm to give an explanation for you...
    • zanny 10y ago
      Living wage is not defined in terms of absolute money made from a job. Its defined in such that if you are spending your time working for something, it should be at least enough to survive off if you did it 40 hours a week.
      • dragonwriter 10y ago
        Right, but a living hourly wage requirement that applies universally without exceptions prevents someone with a full-time job that pays a living wage (or perhaps much more than that) from doing side jobs that have a price which would provide mutual benefit to both them and the person paying for them, but only do so at a wage below what would, on its own, be a living wage. This is a real issue (and it applies to regular old minimum wages even they aren't living wages); its among the arguments for why Basic Income would be a better minimum-quality-of-life support than minimum wage guarantees for the working plus welfare for the nonworking, since it doesn't stop any mutually-beneficial work from being done merely because the market clearing price is below an artificial threshold. OTOH, even people who recognize that the restriction on some work that it implies is a problem think its a cost worth paying for a living wage guarantee given that its harder to get support for (and, arguably, beyond the level of the economy now to support) a Basic Income at a sufficient level in the near term.
    • jsmith0295 10y ago
      The term itself is sort of ridiculous as well, since most advocates for it want a $15 an hour minimum wage, which is nearly twice what I lived on for quite a while, and is far above the median purchasing power amongst all people. And to be blunt, most of the people I worked with for less than $8 an hour were barely worth what they were being payed then. At $15 an hour there is just no way they would be able to find enough employment
      • riboflava 10y ago
        Yeah I could take issue with the term too. At least with minimum wage (which has the same issues wrt a price floor, like many forms of work not being worth the minimum $x/hr the law requires) it's the same at the city/state/federal level you live in so you can properly account for it, and in the ideal case is enough to "live" on so proponents are happy. "Living wage" is inherently more subjective. I can live almost anywhere in the US at that place's minimum wage or less -- if I live like a college student, or a bit worse. It's not enough to support a family on. But too often a living wage gets set at some high price it takes to rent a studio apartment alone in your area and eat out every night, and maybe even support a child. It's just a nebulous term. I live in the Seattle area where $15/hr is the minimum wage now for the city proper. Sure certain businesses still have another year or two to implement it, and other businesses another 5 or so years, but I'm looking forward to seeing the results over time and how well they match various parties' predictions when the law was passed.
    • jsmith0295 10y ago
      The term itself is sort of ridiculous as well, since most advocates for it want a $15 an hour minimum wage, which is nearly twice what I lived on for quite a while, and is far above the median purchasing power amongst all people. And to be blunt, most of the people I worked with for less than $8 an hour were barely worth what they were being payed then. At $15 an hour there is just no way they would be able to find enough employment
  • hourislate 10y ago
    I think the USSR tried a living wage. After 80 years of a living wage they had to line up every morning for their stipend of a loaf of Bread and a Bar of Soap. While I believe people should be paid fairly, it would be difficult to implement and carry out successfully as history has proven.
    • gleenn 10y ago
      I believe you're conflating 'living-wage' with communism. Those are pretty different animals.
    • Sacho 10y ago
      Russian people were dirt poor because the USSR spent a majority of their economic fruits to subsidize strategic communist allies in order to keep them loyal. A lot of the other communist bloc countries were pretty well off until this subsidy stopped.
  • imgabe 10y ago
    Adults should be capable of deciding for themselves if a given wage is sufficient to meet their expenses.
• et-al 10y ago
  We need to tip in America because the prevalent attitude here is "I don't get paid enough for this shit." It's not so much about paying people a living wage, as much as changing the way people view their jobs and obligations. Everyone wants to change the world, but how many people will actually pick up a stray piece of trash and throw it in a bin?
  • runako 10y ago
    If only that were remotely true. In many/most states, the minimum wage for a variety of jobs is not in the range of "livable". For example, minimum wage for restaurant jobs in Georgia is $2.13/hour [1]. They actually don't "get paid enough for this shit," so their attitude actually matches reality. Tipping is a necessary component of the compensation if we want to continue our practice of letting certain employers have exemptions from labor laws. EDIT: $2.13/hour is $340.80 per month, if you are given enough hours to make full-time. Taxes etc. come out of that (you will probably see some of that money again when you file your taxes, for all the good it will do then). (Yes, I know the employer is supposed to top-up the staff to e.g. $7.25/hr. That does not always/usually/ever happen.) You are correct that paying people more than a pittance changes how they view their jobs. [1] https://www.dol.gov/whd/state/tipped.htm https://www.dol.gov/whd/state/tipped.htm
    • et-al 10y ago
      I waited tables a decade ago. If I recall correctly, it was $2.95 + tips and I believe with a 4% tip-out. So your 15% tip became 11% real quick. So I hustled. I'm not saying that we should continue to screw over people who rely on tips as living wage. What I'm saying is that if one wants to have the overwhelmingly warm service Americans expect in restaurants, we need to keep tipping. After all, we've heard anecdotes about service in Europe being poor. Yes yes, they don't tip in Asia, and service is excellent. Don't forget the social fabric is different there.
      • andreasvc 10y ago
        > What I'm saying is that if one wants to have the overwhelmingly warm service Americans expect in restaurants, we need to keep tipping. Except you do not give any argument for why that is the case, but just hand wavingly claim it. Why exactly wouldn't it work if tips were abolished, all the prices on the menu are raised to match the average income from tips, and salaries raised to make up for tips? I don't see why good service would only be possible with tipping.
• jonahx 10y ago
  as a practical matter, i don't believe it's possible to have "optional" tipping that doesn't create obligation (even if that would be desirable). either you create a cultural norm where tipping isn't allowed or expected, which Uber has effectively done, or you have a situation like restaurants, where the tip may as well be part of the price, unless you're cool being the asshole who doesn't tip, which most people aren't. if tipping is an option, through a kind of cultural game-theoretic pressure, the situation will always devolve into the restaurant norm. at least that's how it is in the states, and short of massive cultural changes i don't see that changing.
  • chrisseaton 10y ago
    > if tipping is an option, through a kind of cultural game-theoretic pressure, the situation will always devolve into the restaurant norm. at least that's how it is in the states In the UK tipping in restaurants is optional and, while it sounds really weird to say this, I don't think the waiters and waitresses seem to care either way. I don't get a different reaction from them if I tip or if I don't. They don't seem elated if I tip a lot or disappointed if I tip a little. Nobody seems to care and this situation seems stable as it's been this way as long as I've been an adult.
    • res0nat0r 10y ago
      I think it is because they aren't getting paid $2.13/hr like servers in the USA are.
      • ghurtado 10y ago
        But this is a bit of a chicken and egg problem, isn't it? You could just as easily argue that the wages are so low because tipping is pretty much a given.
        • icebraining 10y ago
          It's actually enshrined into law - restaurants are allowed to pay less than minimum wage because of tipping. It's a perversion of the whole norm, since it effectively turns tipping into a subsidy to the restaurant owner. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipped_wage_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipped_wage_in_the_United_Stat...
• deleted 10y ago
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• panglott 10y ago
  The ultimate problem with tipping restaurant service workers is that servers are legally allowed to be paid sub-minimum wage. The restaurant offloads their obligation to pay their employees onto the customer, and if the customer doesn't tip then the server will not be paid anything for the work. Under these conditions, customers have a moral obligation to tip servers, but that doesn't mean the system isn't a mess. Servers get no benefits, back staff get no tips, but servers get cash and the opportunity to underreport their tax burden.
  • relaytheurgency 10y ago
    That is not true at all. Read the law. In a situation where a server's tips do not boost their hourly wage to the federal minimum wage, the employer is obligated to compensate them up to that level. So in a situation where, say, a server was never tipped, the employer would have to pay them $7.25 an hour just like any other food service worker who makes minimum wage.
    • duaneb 10y ago
      This really only works if people know about it. If they don't, they won't complain when they're making below minimum wage.
    • xapata 10y ago
      As if managers never break the law. Plenty of managers pool the tips and take their cut from the pool. Illegal? Sure. What can anyone do about it? Only quit.
      • imgabe 10y ago
        Quit and report the manager to the labor board. There are whole government departments, federally and in each state, dedicated to prosecuting people who do things like this. If people stop letting them get away with it, they'll stop doing it.
        • xapata 10y ago
• saisun1988 10y ago
  At least in India, tipping isn't that bad. We have Uber drivers who are OK to let go a couple of bucks for lack of change.