I Had A Random Thought...

[Twig]

nevermind i don't care

[syntheticgerbil]

Yes.

 

The reason you are supposed to do that is you have entered into a social contract to do that by eating in a waitered restaurant in a society where that's how those employees get paid. If you were in a place where the waitstaff was paid a living wage and you were not tipping, would you complain that they didn't earn their pay if the food was bad? Would you ask the manager to dock their pay for spilling a drink?

But then I'm paying to perpetuate the wage problem as tipping being a given and not actually being a thing to acknowledge good service. I'm already annoyed I'm conditioned to just tip for adequate service, and I figure that's enough. Like this all came up with takeout receipts and stuff and I give a minor amount even for that even though there's no point. And again they still get the minimum wage made up should they fall below. People don't have to work as waitstaff if they don't want either. Unless you work somewhere super fancy, it doesn't sound like a particularly lucrative job anyway.

 

Also if something goes wrong, I have docked tips or not paid at all if really bad. I don't make a ton of money myself, even worse in recent times, and like I said bad waiters generally get more money than people who work slightly above minimum wage at jobs that are often harder.

 

Also tne place I hate tipping is Alamo Drafthouse. The food is way too expensive and bad and it's not like the servers actually do anything a regular waiter would do since they can't talk if the movie and just take your order off a piece of paper, but it's set up in such a stupid way. Also don't tell my cousin, she's a waitress at a Drafthouse in town.

[Badfinger]

I don't like tipping culture, but the way to change it isn't by taking it out on the people who depend on the tips. You can't put pressure on the people who are being squeezed. Ownership has already offloaded all the risk in the transaction. Thank god people who fall below get minimum wage! That's a livable sum, as we all know.

[Mangela Lansbury]

Thank god people who fall below get minimum wage! That's a livable sum, as we all know.

 

I have never heard of this happening to any of my server friends, even when they work 30 hour weeks and bring home basically nothing.

 

In theory, this is a thing. In practice...

[Dewar]

And I don't get it! It's true because it is. I can picture the configurations of four points on a plane in my head and I know that it's true. From there I can extrapolate that it's true for five and six and etc. I don't need a proof for that.

 

Can you picture a configuration of points in 8 dimensional space and know what information is true as well? The point of the simple proofs that you have to do in math class is to then be able to generalize up to more complicated situations that are not so easily visualized. I mean I get that you don't want to learn to do proofs, that's fine because I don't really want to spend the time to draw either, but there is a purpose to them.

[Dewar]

I have never heard of this happening to any of my server friends, even when they work 30 hour weeks and bring home basically nothing.

 

In theory, this is a thing. In practice...

 

It might depend on the state laws, rather than federal minimum wage laws. In Washington tipped minimum wage is the same as regular minimum wage so a lot of this discussion is moot. Not only that, but we've got a massive plan just starting to get the minimum wage up to $15. http://www.eater.com/2015/3/31/8300981/seattle-minimum-wage-law-15-restaurants-suttonomics

[Twig]

I don't know or care what 8 dimensional space would even be, so I can't even begin to imagine the point if worrying about it. U:

Probably a cop out of me to say but hey.

[Cordeos]

I am listening to the audiobook Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China its a look at the boom years in China and the people who benefited. at one point the author is on a bus tour of Europe with a Chinese tourist group. One person in the group is a college student who keeps using the phrase "Oh my Lady GaGa!". I just wanted to share that because I found it hilarious.

[syntheticgerbil]

I don't like tipping culture, but the way to change it isn't by taking it out on the people who depend on the tips. You can't put pressure on the people who are being squeezed. Ownership has already offloaded all the risk in the transaction. Thank god people who fall below get minimum wage! That's a livable sum, as we all know.

They don't fall below minimum wage, they will make at least minimum wage by law if the tips do not cover it.

 

This is not to say that our minimum wage in this country is fair, because I don't think so at all, but waiters are still in the same boat as everyone else working wage slave jobs, they just get paid in a ridiculously bad way. If the federal minimum wage were raised to like $10-15/hr. in some places in the country that might pay out better than actually getting tips and hopefully we could do away with this obligatory tipping.

[Griddlelol]

They don't fall below minimum wage, they will make at least minimum wage by law if the tips do not cover it.

 

This is not to say that our minimum wage in this country is fair, because I don't think so at all, but waiters are still in the same boat as everyone else working wage slave jobs, they just get paid in a ridiculously bad way. If the federal minimum wage were raised to like $10-15/hr. in some places in the country that might pay out better than actually getting tips and hopefully we could do away with this obligatory tipping.

 

I didn't know that. That's pretty interesting. 

 

I lived on a minimum wage contract for about 18 months, and I was lucky enough to have my dad there to provide a roof over my head and food to eat. My minimum wage was all bonus pay, but I don't know how someone could live on that without help. It's pathetically low.

 

I've had this conversation with a friend of mine who's an accountant, and he provides a compelling reason as to why minimum wage is so low in some cases. People with no experience or skill are not worth more. If minimum wage was higher, he asserts that unemployment would be higher too. 

I don't know how realistic that is, I know nothing about economics so it sounds like a decent explanation to my lay ears. My counter argument (well half-assed counter argument) was that minimum wage should have a mandatory increase over time to account for the increase in experience and skills new workers get. His argument was that the increase numbers would be arbitrary and unfair because different people blah blah, I don't remember the rest. 

[syntheticgerbil]

I can see how raising could be a bad thing but it's not fair for people who didn't have parents that were already wealthy and could not go to college or whatever and not be able to afford their own place, groceries, etc. (alone) even though they may work like 50 hours a week. If you aren't skilled enough to be in a career job you basically require someone else to be in your life to help pool money, whether it's a roommate, best friend, your family, or spouse. I think that's sad because it makes it so you can't build up your life or create savings without already having a bunch of anchors in your life in the first place. I don't really have these problems but while going back to school it's hard to not feel like a big mooch sometimes, like I failed, even though I'm trying to fix it.

 

So I guess really even if it makes bad economic sense, raising the minimum wage might at least fix parts of some people's lives who are less fortunate. I don't see why we can't easily do this sort of thing since the wealth disparity is so high here and a lot of people have a gross excess of money they throw away on $7 frappacinos. I always see the argument against raising it that being cashier or something is a transition job and that these people are stuck here because they don't work hard enough or something and that it's up to them to better their life instead of crying about minimum wage. I can't stand when someone says that, upward mobility these days is so limited.

[Cordeos]

I've had this conversation with a friend of mine who's an accountant, and he provides a compelling reason as to why minimum wage is so low in some cases. People with no experience or skill are not worth more. If minimum wage was higher, he asserts that unemployment would be higher too. 

I don't know how realistic that is, I know nothing about economics so it sounds like a decent explanation to my lay ears. My counter argument (well half-assed counter argument) was that minimum wage should have a mandatory increase over time to account for the increase in experience and skills new workers get. His argument was that the increase numbers would be arbitrary and unfair because different people blah blah, I don't remember the rest. 

He is making a basic error. Work has no inherent value, we play football players far more than teachers because of the way our messed up system works not because football players are more valuable to society than teachers. Wage is not a reflection of skill, horrible workers get paid the same as good workers. If the minimum wage was $15 people wouldn't get fired for their labor not being worth that much, we would still need fast food workers in a $15 minimum society. People may get fired because companies couldn't afford to pay as many workers as before, but if demand stayed the same the workers would still be needed. Demand might not even drop, think about it this way: if you give someone on the minimum wage $1000 they will spend that money relatively quickly and the money will return to the economy. If you give someone in the 1% that money, their spending habits won't change one bit and that money will stay stuck at the top.

[Griddlelol]

I should probably clarify that we were discussing youth unemployment specifically. 

[BobbyBesar]

 

I've had this conversation with a friend of mine who's an accountant, and he provides a compelling reason as to why minimum wage is so low in some cases. People with no experience or skill are not worth more. If minimum wage was higher, he asserts that unemployment would be higher too. 

It's a fairly common argument, although one that has significant problems. The argument is that (assuming the labor market is perfectly competitive) the labor market clears at, say, $7 an hour. A minimum wage is a price floor on labor. Therefore, setting the minimum wage to $15 (above $7) results in a labor surplus: there are more people willing to work at that price than are willing to hire.

 

There's a couple problems with that. One is that minimum wage jobs may not be price-sensitive: if you want somebody to wait the tables, increasing the cost of labor may not decrease your demand. If you needed X waiters before, you still need X waiters. Maybe you could get away with fewer than X waiters, but how many less? Is your need for waiters going to be cut in half? Probably not. Will some restaurants go out of business due to increased labor costs pricing their product out of reach of their customers? Maybe. But, all restaurants will be equally affected by this rule, and so the playing field is still fair for all competing restaurants. And as Cordeos mentions above, the multiplier effect of increased demand from the low-wage workers may result in restaurant demand remaining more or less constant. (Studies indicate that this is probably the case).

 

The other thing is that labor is very much not a perfectly competitive market. For one, it's kind of impossible for a laborer to exit the market. (i.e. You have to pay for food and lodging). The unemployment numbers don't count people who aren't actively looking for work, so the unemployment _metric_ might reflect a roughly competitive market, but those people still need to eat somehow. As long as they're alive, they are still "producing" labor.

 

Personally, I don't think any of that even matters though. I've come to view the minimum wage not as an economic efficiency argument but as a moral one: we have a moral obligation to provide a living wage to people who are working. (I'm also increasingly in favor of a guaranteed minimum income for people who are priced out of the labor market, but that's a whole other can of worms).

 

 

I typed the above before your youth unemployment clarification. While it's true that's a different case, there's a canard that minimum wage jobs are entirely (or primarily) gateway jobs for young people, and so pricing it as supplemental income (below living wage) is fine. However, that's simply not true. There are large (and increasing) numbers of adult people who rely on one or several minimum wage jobs to make ends meet (see the DOL link above).

[Cordeos]

I typed the above before your youth unemployment clarification. While it's true that's a different case, there's a canard that minimum wage jobs are entirely (or primarily) gateway jobs for young people, and so pricing it as supplemental income (below living wage) is fine. However, that's simply not true. There are large (and increasing) numbers of adult people who rely on one or several minimum wage jobs to make ends meet (see the DOL link above).

 

 

I should probably clarify that we were discussing youth unemployment specifically. 

 

Young people making more money might even be a better economic stimulus, more people could pay for schooling which increases economic output drastically or just inject money into the economy because their parents are paying for their housing and food, so the young worker would have a lot of disposable income. 

[syntheticgerbil]

Thanks for that Wheeljack, this is all stuff I wish I understood more and arguments with people against minimum leave me kind of lost for words. Oftens it's just trying to remember stuff I've heard on why it's necessary (adjust for inflation, for instance) and then just being told they were making x dollars in high school and it's ridiculous that fast food workers or whatever want to get paid the same as their first career job. What you got paid 5 years ago just doesn't really matter in my opinion.

 

But yeah definitely a moral thing, I agree. There's no reason in this country of excess that we can't move that wealth around. Ultimately I wish I could get out of here because of the healthcare system. I don't like the idea of going bankrupt and having your life financially ruined if there were some kind of major medical issue.

[Zeusthecat]

But yeah definitely a moral thing, I agree. There's no reason in this country of excess that we can't move that wealth around. Ultimately I wish I could get out of here because of the healthcare system. I don't like the idea of going bankrupt and having your life financially ruined if there were some kind of major medical issue.

 

Our year in a nutshell. Even with health insurance we're paying out over $5000 out of pocket for our medical expenses. Same last year and the year before that. In fact, we are finally on the last payment on the medical bills from our son's birth. He's two now.

 

I have major issues with how our healthcare system works. It's fucked beyond belief. We've seen so many disgusting charges on our medical bills like a $200 charge from the hospital for a fucking tube of diaper rash cream that costs $5 at the store or a $600 charge for a nurse's assistant to spend 3 minutes flushing earwax out of our kid's ear because it was considered "surgery". And you better not ask any questions at a well check up because that's another $200 charge for the doctor to spend 5 minutes "consulting" you. And I'm not exaggerating one bit. We went to one doctor for a major thing and he spent less than 10 minutes talking to us, gave us horrible advice, and sent us a $400 bill. We then went to see another doctor who told us that we should absolutely not do what the first doctor told us because the first doctor misdiagnosed the problem. Then another $400 bill.

 

Doctors in this country are worse than car salesman and mechanics combined. They are fucking garbage and most of them will do whatever it takes to get you into some bullshit surgery or other procedure so they can make a quick $20,000 for 45 minutes of work.

[syntheticgerbil]

Fuck! And you have health insurance right?

 

I have no insurance. I need asthma inhalers and they are like $80 now without insurance for a 30 day supply. Also I need a perscription which means (when I had insurance), I had to go to the doctor every few years to have the doctor make sure, yes I still have asthma. Since my asthma isn't bad they try to always push some useless bullshit daily medicine on me like Singulair along with the inhaler.

 

My mom's a physical therapist assistant, so the past few years she has had a nurse friend at the hospital and he runs and gets people cheap pharmaceuticals from Mexico everytime he visits his family. So now I get 6 packs of inhalers every time for $15 and stockpile them. They are also the good shit, before they banned the usage of CFCs to deliver the medicine (which is partly why an inhaler cost so damn much now, some patent or other).

[Zeusthecat]

Fuck! And you have health insurance right?

 

Yes, actually. And it's good health insurance too. But it's high deductible so we pay most things out of pocket until we reach our $4000 family deductible, then the insurance kicks in to cover 90%. But when they charge you $17,000 for a 45 minute surgery thing, even after the deductible you are still paying $1700 out of pocket until you hit the $10,000 out of pocket max. We had fairly major things happen the last three years and as a result we are swimming in years worth of payment plans, which come in as about 7 or 8 different bills every month. One bill from the doctor, one from the hospital, one from the anesthesiologist, one from the lab that processes the bloodwork, and then more surprise bills that just pop up months later from some other third party that had some tertiary role in whatever procedure we had. It's all a giant steaming load of horse shit.

[dibs]

If you don't mind me asking, how much is that insurance per month?

[Dewar]

Logically, it seems like a raise of the minimum wage to $15 an hour would mostly hurt people who currently make $15-$20 an hour. In that pay range, you aren't getting a raise out of it, but the purchase power of your money is going down as restaurants, grocers, etc. raise prices to combat rising costs. If you're in a good job, you'd hopefully get a raise the same time that minimum wage goes up (my first job actually did this, so that's nice) but I'd imagine a lot of places wouldn't. The problem with income disparity and minimum wage arguments is that the disparity you're reducing isn't between the poor and the rich, but between the poor and the not quite as poor.

[Bjorn]

 

[Zeusthecat]

If you don't mind me asking, how much is that insurance per month?

 

$65 per month premium, plus we put another $85 per month into our health savings account. But our medical bills are so high that we are easily paying about 2-3 times as much as the amount we've accrued in our HSA over the same time span that we had all of these medical issues. My company is pretty solid at least and has enough HSA matching that we get about another $1400 deposited into our HSA each year in addition to what we put in. It's nice but it doesn't come anywhere close to being enough to cover all of the costs.

[Gormongous]

I'm getting really sick of a select group of people on my Facebook feed exulting in the troubles that the so-called "Center for Medical Progress" has manufactured for Planned Parenthood over the past few weeks. They are so unshakably convinced by a handful of heavily edited videos that it's literally impossible to engage them in conversation about the supposed contents. I just want to say, "It's been a while since I've attended church, but you realize that I could easily edit a video of any denomination's service into something heavily implying that Christian are cannibals, that they drown babies, that they wish the entire world to be destroyed, that they do not believe their actions have consequences, and that their leaders take bribes in return for their services, right? It wouldn't even be hard!"

 

It's too trite to quote Matthew 7:1-3, but James 4:11-12 works just as well: "Do not speak evil against one another, brothers. The one who speaks against a brother or judges his brother, speaks evil against the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge. There is only one lawgiver and judge, he who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you to judge your neighbor?" It's so goddamn frustrating, because my work inclines me to be sympathetic towards Christianity even though I'm not remotely religious, but so many Christians are such awful people, completely poisoned with myopic self-righteousness.

[clyde]

People tend to want to believe things that support their positions on hot topics so that they will fit convincingly into the group they identify with. I'm not really condemning them, I'm that way too.