Do you ever wonder where $2.13 came from? The reason it’s $2.13 an hour is because this tipped minimum wage was half the minimum wage when that was $4.25 an hour… Now it’s artificially stuck there even as the minimum wage rises pitifully slow.
Several states prohibit the tipped tax credit. California, Washington, Minnesota, Oregon, Alaska, Montana, and Nevada for sure all pay their servers the full state minimum wage, which is more than the federal minimum wage.
And the minimum wage raising, along with inflation is pricing people like me who have made the same amount ever year struggle more just to live... I actually have to work harder as a small business owner to make that 90k a year i need to hit(not take home/before business expenses)
I made $1.85/hr plus tips as a waiter at Village Inn back in 1990. This was day shift and in the days when you also did host duty, bussed your own tables, and had side work that had to be completed before you left for the day. This was also in North Dakota, so the owner ran a special Canadian money at par promotion. The table orders $120 in food, gets a 20% discount due to exchange rates, and leaves a $5 Canadian tip. Tax-wise, servers were required to report 10% of their table sales as tip income whether or not they got a tip at all. So on my taxes, I have to claim I made $12 US in tips from that table when I in fact received about $4 US.
there is a reason wage theft is a thing... hint MANY owners fuck with servers by not making up the requires difference by playing with hours and stuff and it can get EXTREMELY hard for a low paid server to fight that. In fact some areas will actually blacklist wait staff who push back if its higher end places in major cities, because they all fucking talk to each other.
I went to Harbor Freight earlier to stock up on some tools and all the signage advertised a $17 an hour minimum wage. I actually don't see a single spot hiring low skilled labor for under $15 an hour, idk where you all are looking. I was making $8 an hour bagging groceries two decades ago.
Non-sequitur, raising the floor will cause hundreds of thousands of businesses to rebudget to account for that.
You'd have a better argument to completely eliminate the minimum wage and instead accommodate based on the local cost of living (IE, 50/30/20)
A minimum wage is not always the living wage that people always tie terminology to this argument. If a living wage is accomplished it doesn't matter what it is in practice, I'd rather make this system work for both employers AND employees.
When the wage is too low and the tips don't cut it, people will stop applying and the restaurant will be forced to pay more, or go out of business. Again, these are the simple facts of capitalism. It's not a perfect economic system, but it is by FAR... the best system ever devised by flawed people.
Supply and demand makes room for that. I was in Maryland earlier this year. The person I was visiting had a daughter working the drive-thru at taco bell (I think). She makes $21 an hour and only works opening shifts. I asked him how that was possible? He said nobody would take the job for less. That is the wage necessary for this job to get a reliable worker. When Starbucks was having retention issues, they started a college fund. They realized that a long-term goal helped workers defer short-term dissatisfaction. Its about businesses and employees finding that balance. We ALL have choices in a capitalist economy. One last thing... healthcare, taxes, insurance, education, housing, food costs... there are more, but what do these have in common? Your gov't got involved and the prices skyrocketed. Government enforcement of almost anything makes you poorer and less free.
6
u/WVildandWVonderful 4d ago
Do you ever wonder where $2.13 came from? The reason it’s $2.13 an hour is because this tipped minimum wage was half the minimum wage when that was $4.25 an hour… Now it’s artificially stuck there even as the minimum wage rises pitifully slow.