This is definitely one way to approach it, but I currently make minimum wage plus tips in a city where the minimum wage is over $20 and it’s still hard to make ends meet at times. I’m a single adult with no dependents and although I have a reasonable standard of living I’m by no means thriving. The tips are still a very necessary part of my paychecks.
The problem is complex, like I said in my first comment. Lots of sub-industries thrive off of milking restaurants, and simply doing away with tipping is not going to fix it. I just wish people would have some sense of worker solidarity instead of attacking people who live off of tips.
Yeah, I haven’t seen any recent data on this, but I suspect that $20 an hour still isn’t a living wage. I remember hearing before the pandemic that the, “Fight for Fifteen,” was outdated and needed to be the, “Fight for Twenty,” and we’ve had two rounds of astronomical inflation since then.
If the minimum wage was appropriately adjusted, most people in the service industry should be able to make a decent living. The only group that will be difficult will be people who work in vacation towns in remote areas. Some of those people earn their annual income during the tourist season, and even if they wanted to work in the off-season, there just aren’t enough jobs. Restaurants can feasible raise prices high enough to subsidize there employees during that time either, so the only real solution is a UBI system.
I have my concerns about UBI but I think it’s likely going to become necessary in the near future. In time it will probably run into the same problems of minimum wage increases, where the CoL goes up and up as the income floor is raised meaning that being near the floor feels the same no matter how big the number is.
But despite my concerns, at this point I’ll take it 😅
This is definitely one way to approach it, but I currently make minimum wage plus tips in a city where the minimum wage is over $20 and it’s still hard to make ends meet at times. I’m a single adult with no dependents and although I have a reasonable standard of living I’m by no means thriving. The tips are still a very necessary part of my paychecks.
The problem is complex, like I said in my first comment. Lots of sub-industries thrive off of milking restaurants, and simply doing away with tipping is not going to fix it. I just wish people would have some sense of worker solidarity instead of attacking people who live off of tips.
Yeah, I haven’t seen any recent data on this, but I suspect that $20 an hour still isn’t a living wage. I remember hearing before the pandemic that the, “Fight for Fifteen,” was outdated and needed to be the, “Fight for Twenty,” and we’ve had two rounds of astronomical inflation since then.
If the minimum wage was appropriately adjusted, most people in the service industry should be able to make a decent living. The only group that will be difficult will be people who work in vacation towns in remote areas. Some of those people earn their annual income during the tourist season, and even if they wanted to work in the off-season, there just aren’t enough jobs. Restaurants can feasible raise prices high enough to subsidize there employees during that time either, so the only real solution is a UBI system.
I have my concerns about UBI but I think it’s likely going to become necessary in the near future. In time it will probably run into the same problems of minimum wage increases, where the CoL goes up and up as the income floor is raised meaning that being near the floor feels the same no matter how big the number is.
But despite my concerns, at this point I’ll take it 😅