> But it isn't a straight $9/hr. It is $10/hr some hours, $5/hr some hours, $3/hr some hours, etc.
It's basic arithmetic to add up how many total dollars you make in a week, divide it by the number of hours and compare it to what other jobs pay. Then threaten to quit unless your boss pays you as much as you could get elsewhere, or take the other job if they won't.
> And as these studies suggest, that will literally kill people.
Renegotiating base pay or changing jobs will literally kill people?
These studies are correlational. They equally suggest that people with preexisting health problems take more flexible jobs.
> The same type of legislation that people here are complaining about.
But that's the legislation that upholds the status quo.
> When the only work for change is withholding your money, it certainly seems like the motivation is selfishness covered with a thin facade of concern for the service workers.
Those are the things that work best, because the incentives are aligned. If your plan relies on people acting against their own interests, how often does that work?
>It's basic arithmetic to add up how many total dollars you make in a week, divide it by the number of hours and compare it to what other jobs pay. Then threaten to quit unless your boss pays you as much as you could get elsewhere, or take the other job if they won't.
The uncertainty is the problem. Sure, you can wait a few months and do some math to get what your average weekly pay would be. However not every week is an average week. Some weeks you might see 2x your average pay and some weeks you might see 1/2x your average pay. Have 3 of those below average weeks in a month and maybe you can't pay rent. That is what causes the stress. Stress kills people.
>But that's the legislation that upholds the status quo.
These people don't have benefits. New legislation gives them benefits. I doubt the people who now receive these benefits are worried about upholding the status quo.
>Those are the things that work best, because the incentives are aligned. If your plan relies on people acting against their own interests, how often does that work?
There are two incentives for abolishing tipping, help the service workers and make things easier for the consumer. An individual consumer refusing to tip is making things easier for themselves and saving money. However, while they claim to be motivated by helping service workers, they are in fact harming an individual service worker. I doubt that service worker thinks the incentives are aligned.
But that's the thing tipping creates regardless of this. You don't know if you're going to get 10% or 30%. Abolishing this is the goal.
Meanwhile a typical waitress has hundreds of customers per week. That's enough for a statistically valid sample without needing months to figure it out, and it's not likely to change dramatically overnight based on the actions of one individual customer.
> These people don't have benefits. New legislation gives them benefits.
New legislation eliminates some of their jobs, or requires them to work under different conditions because more restrictions are needed to justify paying benefits, or have their hours cut to below whatever threshold is needed to avoid paying them benefits even though they'd have chosen to work more etc.
And other jobs with those restrictions and inflexibility were already available if they wanted them.
> However, while they claim to be motivated by helping service workers, they are in fact harming an individual service worker. I doubt that service worker thinks the incentives are aligned.
The short-term interests of the customer are aligned with the long-term interests of the service worker and the customer is the one making the decision. That's a great alignment of incentives.
>But that's the thing tipping creates regardless of this. You don't know if you're going to get 10% or 30%. Abolishing this is the goal.
Yes, and a 0%-30% tip has more uncertainty than a 10%-30% tip.
Also you appear to be arguing as if I'm defending tipping as a practice. I'm not. I'm saying that an individual who refuses to tip despite it being an expected practice is being a bad member of society.
>Meanwhile a typical waitress has hundreds of customers per week. That's enough for a statistically valid sample without needing months to figure it out, and it's not likely to change dramatically overnight based on the actions of one individual customer.
You are arguing against your own point here. If a single customer is meaningless to the compensation of the service worker, that single customer is not making any meaningful dent in the system that goes way beyond that one individual service worker.
>New legislation eliminates some of their jobs, or requires them to work under different conditions because more restrictions are needed to justify paying benefits, or have their hours cut to below whatever threshold is needed to avoid paying them benefits even though they'd have chosen to work more etc.
This is true of any labor protections. Having a minimum wage eliminates jobs. Having safety regulations eliminates jobs. Sometimes eliminating jobs is in the best interest of society.
>The short-term interests of the customer are aligned with the long-term interests of the service worker and the customer is the one making the decision. That's a great alignment of incentives.
Try asking a service worker whether they would prefer a tip today or a hypothetical abolishment of tipping decades in the future. I don't think they are going to make the choice you are implying.
> Yes, and a 0%-30% tip has more uncertainty than a 10%-30% tip.
Which is why it should be done away with whatsoever.
> Also you appear to be arguing as if I'm defending tipping as a practice. I'm not. I'm saying that an individual who refuses to tip despite it being an expected practice is being a bad member of society.
A person who refuses to tip is attacking tipping as a practice and acting to end it. Calling them a bad member of society is by extension defending the alternative.
> You are arguing against your own point here. If a single customer is meaningless to the compensation of the service worker, that single customer is not making any meaningful dent in the system that goes way beyond that one individual service worker.
No, it's fully consistent. The point is that you can change your individual behavior without causing excessive harm to some hapless service worker in particular, because you're <1% of their customers.
What really changes things is what happens in the aggregate, but that works too. If almost everyone tips, that's the status quo. Whatever percentage of people stop, employers will have to make up the difference to retain staff. Some intermediate period where the service worker's pre-tip hourly wage is $4 instead of $2 is fine. When that percentage finally reaches 100%, tipping is abolished.
> This is true of any labor protections. Having a minimum wage eliminates jobs. Having safety regulations eliminates jobs. Sometimes eliminating jobs is in the best interest of society.
Minimum wage eliminates jobs and we shouldn't have one. Causing some people to be involuntarily unemployed so some others can make slightly more money is a poor trade off when better alternatives exist, like UBI.
[Good] safety regulations don't eliminate jobs, because the alternative is safety incidents resulting in legal settlements, which cost the employer more than complying with preventative measures. The preventative measures therefore destroy fewer jobs, and if they don't you've implemented them wrong.
Many "labor protections" are paternalistic and net harm workers.
> Try asking a service worker whether they would prefer a tip today or a hypothetical abolishment of tipping decades in the future. I don't think they are going to make the choice you are implying.
Ask anyone if they would prefer an immediate gain for themselves personally or a larger future gain for a class of people they belong to. You've now discovered collective action problems.
Lining up someone other third party's incentives with the better overall outcome is a great way to solve them.
It's basic arithmetic to add up how many total dollars you make in a week, divide it by the number of hours and compare it to what other jobs pay. Then threaten to quit unless your boss pays you as much as you could get elsewhere, or take the other job if they won't.
> And as these studies suggest, that will literally kill people.
Renegotiating base pay or changing jobs will literally kill people?
These studies are correlational. They equally suggest that people with preexisting health problems take more flexible jobs.
> The same type of legislation that people here are complaining about.
But that's the legislation that upholds the status quo.
> When the only work for change is withholding your money, it certainly seems like the motivation is selfishness covered with a thin facade of concern for the service workers.
Those are the things that work best, because the incentives are aligned. If your plan relies on people acting against their own interests, how often does that work?